The sounds of whales in Dyes Inlet that dark evening sounded crystal clear, masked only slightly by a sloshing noise as waves splashed against the boat. The whales themselves were nowhere to be seen, but that was not unusual. The sounds of whales can travel for 10 miles underwater when boat motors and other man-made noises are absent. All three types can, at times, exceed the range of human hearing. Whistles are tonal in quality, like a high musical note or a dog whistle.
Calls are actually a series of clicks or brief pulses of sound.
When a door is opened rapidly, the clicks blend together into a whine. According to Ford, resident pods in the Northwest produce between seven and 17 distinct calls, depending on the particular pod. They can recognize each other by the way they make their shared calls. It is not a language that we can relate to. Namu, one of the first whales captured and placed on public display, made the same calls in a net in Seattle as his relatives that remained in the wild, he said.