Why whales are making Star Wars sounds in Aussie waters
More hardware, more software and more researchers are being deployed along Australia’s east coast to track the growing whale migration season, and what they’re finding is straight out of a movie.
Marine experts from Griffith University and Google are installing more underwater microphones off the Queensland coast this week as part of an expansion of a whale-tracking project using artificial intelligence.
Experts say the technology has found whale species in unexpected places, as well as “mysterious sounds” that resemble the swish of a lightsaber that mammals use to communicate.
The firms launched the whale-watching project in 2024, funded by Google’s Digital Future Initiative and designed to use audio recordings rather than visual observations to track whales.
Although the project started with three underwater microphones, called hydrophones, by 2026 the number of microphones will increase to 14, which will be installed between Lizard Island in Far North Queensland and Bateman Bay off the NSW South Coast.
Google Research data scientist Dr. Lauren Harrell said installing a hydrophone off the Sunshine Coast on Sunday provided instant data and entertainment while capturing an interesting sound from a southern pygmy minke whale.
“One of our recorders heard a mysterious sound and asked me what it was and I said ‘oh please, let it be one of these fun, mechanical sounds… oh my god, that’s the Star Wars call,'” he told AAP.
The sound, which mimics the whir of a lightsaber, is often heard on the Great Barrier Reef.
Dr Harrell said the project had found whale species in unexpected places, such as orcas off the Gold Coast, and used artificial intelligence to scan recordings for specific whale sounds.
“We use bioacoustic fundamental models that are very good at isolating features that are really important for biological sounds,” he said.
“Most of these models are trained primarily on birds.”
Griffith University research fellow Dr Olaf Meynecke said researchers were able to track minke whales, southern beluga whales, orcas and other pilot whales using microphones placed 500 km apart and collected 10 terabytes of recordings by 2025.
“Obviously there’s a lot of data, so it’s good to have Google on your side and be able to leverage its resources and expertise when it comes to AI,” he said.
Dr Meynecke said tracking whale migration was vital as the season expanded, potentially driven by climate conditions and food availability.
“Humpback whales are arriving in Australia earlier and earlier each year, so we want to collect additional data so we can link this to environmental factors,” he said.
“For most populations, their time in Antarctica has decreased and they are spending more time on migration and breeding grounds.”
The researchers will publish the collected data on Kaggle and GitHub.
