"We actually found that these animals are here quite a bit more often than we had realized," says Will Oestreich, a researcher from MBARI and the lead author of a study published last month in Movement Ecology, a journal that covers research on animal migration.
"This study allows us to recognize they're a persistent part of the biodiversity here," he says. "We did not know that. We didn't know it from our eyeballs."
The underwater microphone recorded sperm whales on over one-third of the days between 2015 and 2022, shedding light on their habits and presence.
Sperm whales spend most of their time deep underwater, making it hard for humans to observe them; local whale watching reports seeing them every five years.
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