Normal text size Very large text size Rescuers say the noise is the hardest part. When whales are stranded on a beach, they keep calling to one another. Sometimes others will come in from safe water to join their dying pod. Whales and orcas move through life alongside family and friends, as humans do. But instead of GPS, they navigate with sound through echolocation, even in the empty darkness of the deep. Whales have been recorded calling to each other between Britain and the Carribean. The voices of humpbacks are so powerful that one note could travel the globe, says expert Wally Franklin, who has been studying whales for 30 years up north at Hervey Bay. “Our first sense is our eyes,” he says. “For whales, they start at their ears.”