A humpback whale’s song does not just fill the water, it appears to track the whale’s dive.

New research suggests specific parts of a male humpback’s song line up with specific parts of its dive cycle. Scientists say it is the first study to connect an entire humpback whale song structure to a complete dive cycle.

The study, published in Current Biology, used data from suction-cup tags attached to singing humpback whales off Maui as part of a research project that ran from 2018 to 2024.

Julia Zeh said the findings reveal a previously unknown link between the structure of a humpback whale’s song and the whale’s movement through the water.

The tags were small, non-invasive sound-and-movement recording devices about the size of a tablet. Researchers attached them from small boats using long poles and, more recently, drones. The tags recorded underwater sounds and movement, then detached after losing suction so the team could retrieve them and download the data.

In total, the team tagged 16 whales, which the researchers said was a substantial sample from a tagging perspective and was selected to be broadly representative of the larger Hawaiian breeding population.

The team found some whales repeated their songs continuously for up to 16 hours without stopping.

They also found recurring song elements, known as themes, consistently matched specific portions of a dive. Earlier researchers had noticed some themes tended to appear as a whale approached the surface, but this study connected an entire song structure to an entire dive cycle.

Zeh said themes sung while whales stayed at a relatively constant depth during the deepest part of a dive showed different levels of variability than themes sung elsewhere. She said that suggests those sections may be more strongly shaped by sexual selection.

Zeh said: “This gives us direction for which parts of the song to investigate if we’re interested in variation, which is likely driven by sexual selection.”

She said themes tied to other parts of the dive may be constrained by physiological or environmental factors, including managing oxygen and buoyancy while singing.

The findings could also have practical uses. Researchers said acoustic monitoring is already commonly used to track whale populations, and understanding how song relates to movement could let scientists estimate a whale’s depth or position directly from a recording.

Zeh said the question of whether the same patterns apply to humpback populations outside Hawaii remains open. She said differences in song evolution between hemispheres raise the possibility that different populations experience different pressures on song structure.

Testing that would require comparable tag data from singing whales on breeding grounds around the globe.

Zeh carried out the research during her doctoral studies at Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences while she was a member of Susan Parks’ Bioacoustics and Behavioral Ecology Lab.

She said: “My time at Syracuse changed the way I think about what’s possible in this field.

“Projects like this one, where we combined acoustics with movement data, gave me the tools to ask exciting questions about whale behavior and the opportunity to be creative in how we look at well-studied phenomena like humpback whale song.”

She added: “These experiences inform how I conduct research and have given me the foundation for my current work in ecological monitoring and conservation.”

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