Arctic whales sync up dives despite being 60 miles apart, study says

It turns out, synchronized diving isn’t just for humans.

Bowhead whales in the Arctic Ocean also sync up their dives — except they’re able to do so while dozens of miles apart from each other, new research reveals.

The unexpected discovery suggests the animals may be “acoustically connected” over vast distances, according to a study soon to be published in the journal Physical Review Research.

Bowhead whales — which can weigh up to 100 tons and measure up to 62 feet long — live almost exclusively in the frigid waters of the Arctic.

They’re known for their bulky heads, which allow them to smash through thick sheets of sea ice, and their longevity — studies suggest they can live to be over 200 years old.

But, much about their behavior remains unknown.

Intent on learning more about the mysterious creatures, an international team of researchers spent about five months studying the diving and foraging habits of 12 tagged bowhead whales off the coast of Greenland.

They then applied chaos theory to the collected data in the hopes of spotting patterns, according to an Aug. 9 news release from Hokkaido University in Japan.

Their analysis revealed that the whales dive in 24-hour cycles during the spring, with the deepest dives occurring in the afternoon.

“We find that foraging whales dive deeper during the daytime in spring, with this diving behavior being in apparent synchrony with their vertically migrating prey,” Peter Heide-Jørgensen, one of the study authors, said in the release. “Until now, this hasn’t been shown for spring, and remained contradictory for autumn.”

The analysis also resulted in at least one “surprising” discovery.

Two bowhead whales, it turned out, had been diving in sync with one another — even when they were about 60 miles apart.

“The pair — one female and one of unknown sex — were sometimes as close as five kilometers and sometimes hundreds of kilometers apart, yet they would closely time their diving bouts for durations of up to a week, although to different depths,” the release said.

These co-occurring dives were observed when the two animals were within each other’s acoustic range, which can surpass 60 miles. However, their vocalizations were not measured, so it is not known whether they were in contact.

Still, “the possibility of acoustically connected whales, which seem to be diving alone but are actually together, is mind bending,” Evgeny Podolskiy, one of the study authors, said in the release.

“Our study identifies a framework for studying the sociality and behavior of such chaotically moving, unrestrained marine animals, and we encourage the research community to collect more simultaneous tag data to confirm if our interpretation is appropriate,” Podolskiy added.

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