This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Arriving on the Caribbean island of Dominica for the first time "feels a little bit like stepping into Jurassic Park," said Giovanni Petri, a professor in the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University London. Known as Nature Island, Dominica has thick rainforest, volcanic mountains with dramatic waterfalls and vibrant coral reefs that fall away into deep blue waters.
But when Petri came here in August 2022, he didn't come to study the extinct Tyrannosaurus rex but the largest predator that lives on our planet today—the sperm whale. These massive marine mammals, which can grow up to 60 feet (18 meters) and weigh as much as 57 tons (52 metric tons), can be found across the world's oceans, from the equator to the frigid oceans around the two poles. But Dominica is one of only a handful of places where they live throughout the year, offering the chance to observe their activity and listen in on their conversations.
This matters because Petri is one of the lead researchers for Project CETI, a nonprofit scientific initiative that aims to use advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning and whale-friendly robotics to record and ultimately decode the acoustic communication of sperm whales. Founded in 2020, Project CETI is the largest effort at interspecies communication in history, comprising more than 50 researchers at leading research institutions in the U.S. and worldwide. In Dominica, its researchers have built a comprehensive research platform, where they observe whales, engineer listening devices and develop new ways to analyze data.
"We have three boats, drones carrying tags, hydrophones in the water and whole pipelines of analysis trying to find structure in the data," said Petri. Petri explained to Northeastern Global News how the enigmatic whale sounds can be turned into understandable language. Each day, a sperm whale needs to eat 3% to 4% of its body weight to survive—and for a species that can weigh up to 57 tons (52 metric tons), this means a staggering quantity of food.
By some estimates, a fully grown sperm whale can eat more than a ton (0.9 metric tons) of food in 24 hours. Dominica's year-round community offers the chance to observe exactly how they manage this. Project CETI uses boats to gather unique video and has developed a method for attaching complex sensors to the whales' gigantic bodies.
Researchers fly quadcopter drones that stick advanced wildlife tracking devices directly onto the side of a whale. These biologger devices attach with nonharmful suckers and contain GPS trackers with depth sensors, movement trackers, heart rate monitors and more. The resident whales embark on deep "foraging dives," spending 45 minutes to an hour descending from the warm sunlit waters around Dominica into the extreme pressure and near-complete darkness at a depth of around 700 meters (2,300 feet), explained Petri.
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