In 1949, researchers testing underwater acoustics off Bermuda lowered an early recording system into the water and kept the unexplained sounds it picked up. Seventy-seven years later they were identified as what may be the oldest preserved recording of a whale singing, made before scientists understood humpback whale song.
A man’s voice reads a date onto a plastic disc. “The date, 7 March, 1949,” he says, as…
