Underwater robot tracks sperm whale conversations in real time

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/underwater-robot-tracks-sperm-whale-conversations-real-time-2026-05-01/

by thedebuglife • 3 months ago

67 20 3 months ago

frotaur• 3 months ago

Not much info on the actual robot... For instance, I wonder how it has enough battery to follow a whale for 'months'? Which seems really unrealistic, as sperm whales can dive more than a kilometre, can't imagine an autonomous robot can support this kind of pressure, let alone for months at a time?

bigbadfeline• 3 months ago

The bot doesn't have to dive deep, it can track, follow and listen to the whales from above using the same sonar gear. Also, I kind of doubt the whales would talk much when in the deep.

rgovostes• 3 months ago

There exist many underwater vehicles that can withstand ocean pressures. The REMUS 6000 for example can reach depths of 6000m.

As the article describes, these are gliders:

A glider is a small robot that slowly changes its buoyancy, becoming slightly heavier to sink and lighter to rise.

It doesn’t need battery power to endlessly spin a prop. With little energy expenditure it can inflate or deflate a bladder; changing volume changes buoyancy and therefore vertical motion in the water column. The vehicle’s design allows it to “soar” as it does so. The tradeoff is control.

It seems the vehicle they are using is the Alseamar SEAEXPLORER: https://www.alseamar-alcen.com/ocean-science-sector/seaexplo...

deepthaw• 3 months ago

They said we have six months to get our shit in order or they're calling their big brother tube-shaped space probe and we won't like talking to him.

hulitu• 3 months ago

"There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”

Terr_• 3 months ago

It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard Seal'.

Aboutplants• 3 months ago

You mean the ones doing the same thing to us as we are to the whales? Just watching and trying to figure us out

U4E4• 3 months ago

I’ve never quite appreciated the peak hippie bizarreness of a space probe checking in to see if the whales are still home Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Great San Francisco based movie tho.

hmokiguess• 3 months ago

Would be interesting if this data could bring us ideas on information theory sort of how we have these nature parallels in algorithms like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization_algori...

Imagine Whales have better recall, pass@k metrics and deal with context windows differently, who knows!

lagniappe• 3 months ago

I'm so tired of the surveillance state.

skaushik92• 3 months ago

They’re getting salty about it for sure because it’s a breach of their privacy.

chrisweekly• 3 months ago

Are you shore? I thought it was just a fluke.

fluoridation• 3 months ago

The FBI had left-over budget.

deafpolygon• 3 months ago

After letting Mulder go early, I’m not surprised.

pvaldes• 3 months ago

Logistics here are extra interesting. Sperm whale clicks are basically a sonic weapon. This is maybe the loudest animal known in the history of the evolution, known to be capable to kill an human just with sound if they get alarmed. I wonder if we would be able to watch the destruction of the robot with a extra loud sound wave at any given point or how they designed to avoid it.

imzadi• 3 months ago

Then why aren't they killing all the fish?

remarkEon• 3 months ago

Is this actually true? I've heard this but have never seen evidence of this actually happening before. Are we saying that, theoretically, a sperm whale's ecolocation is so powerful that if a human was swimming near it within some specified range they'd die?

gurjeet• 3 months ago

I found this thread on Reddit, and the claim seems to be true!

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItBullshit/comments/dn9zz3/isitbu...

prawn• 3 months ago

Reminded me of the quantum cryptography concept where people could hoard encrypted data and wait until the tech caught up and allowed decryption. The whales would need to be communicating with this in mind...

thinkingemote• 3 months ago

How should we be communicating with this in mind? Assuming there's some higher intelligence, or future humans who can decrypt our private streams?

Underwater robot tracks sperm whale conversations in real time

Related Stories