Beluga whales produce a variety of acoustic signals, and deciphering them is a matter of the future, said Alexander Agafonov, a research associate of the sea mammals lab at the RAS Institute of Oceanology, delivering the lecture Voices in the World of Silence at the fifth Russia’s Primeval Nature festival.

He said today scientists can follow the logic of acoustic signals of killer whales and bottlenose dolphins. He explained that bottlenose dolphins make three types of sounds. First, there are broadband impulses (clicks), a series of similar sounds that are used for echolocation.  Second are separate tonal signals (whistles), which are the most diverse. Third, there are high frequency impulse tonal signals, which have not been practically studied so far. Researchers are still unable to systematise the speech of beluga whales in the same way.

“There are signals that are common for all beluga whales, and there are also signals produced by separate populations. Belugas emit individual, collective, emotional and probably other signals about which researchers do not yet know. They have a lot of work ahead to try and understand at least roughly what their functional meaning is and for what purpose they produce them. For the time being we have identified some individual signals, but that’s it,” said Agafonov, adding that researchers will likely decipher the language of bottlenose dolphins and use it to understand the language of beluga whales.