An adult female sperm whale approaches the surface off the coast of Dominica in the Eastern Caribbean. It’s one of the few moments she’ll spend in the light before diving hundreds of meters back down. In that brief window, researchers from the Cetacean Translation Initiative (CETI) use a drone to attach suction-cup recorders to the backs of sperm whales like her with minimal disturbance or stress.
Such devices have already logged thousands of click sequences known as codas. CETI scientists feed the data through machine learning models trained to decipher “whale” the way a baby learns human language—by listening, over and over, and identifying patterns.
So, can we understand what whales are saying yet? According to Berkeley associate professor and CETI’s linguistics lead, Gašper Beguš, we already have “the ability to, in a sense, transcribe their communication system. What we don’t have is just what each of those elements means specifically.” Translation in progress.
Beguš spoke about the project for California’s podcast, The Edge.
