The Marine Biologist Who Learned to Listen Below the Surface

In 1992, a young researcher named Michelle Fournet arrived in southeastern Alaska to study humpback whales. For weeks, she dropped hydrophones into the icy waters of Glacier Bay and heard nothing but static. She nearly pulled the equipment, convinced it was broken. But her mentor, a veteran marine acoustician, told her to stop listening for what she expected to hear and start listening for what was actually there.…