If a new study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is correct, the power of whale song, like much great music, has everything to do with feel.

Led by WHOI biologist Aran Mooney, a team of researchers measured the reach of whale songs produced by humpback whales off the coast of Maui, taking readings of both pressure waves and vibrations.

While pressure waves push on eardrums, allowing humans to hear, particle motion causes substances to vibrate as it moves through them.

The scientists found that the vibrations from whale song traveled much farther than previously thought.

The study’s findings were published in the Wednesday edition of the online journal Biology Letters.

In a statement Wednesday, Mooney described what the team did when it encountered a group of humpback whales while aboard a small research boat off Maui.

“We threw our gear over the side and let ourselves drift away from whales while measuring both particle motion and sound pressure,” he said. “We didn’t expect particle motion to be projected much at all — just a few meters away at most. But as we got progressively further away, the particle motion stayed loud and clear.”

The group was able to measure vibrations from 200 meters away from the whales, but Mooney said particle motion could travel much farther, particularly at lower frequencies.

Humpback whales have ear bones that are fused to their skull. This provides direct linkage to vibrations in the water.

“This could mean that their hearing is influenced by the way sound conducts through their bones,” Mooney said.

Mooney said the finding raises the question of whether whales’ ability to sense vibrations means that human-generated noise, from activities such as shipping or oil exploration, could interfere with the way they communicate.

“It’s a whole other avenue of sound that we never knew whales could use,” Mooney said.

The different avenues are illustrated by a common experience: waiting at a red light next a car blasting music.

“The stuff you hear is pressure waves,” he said. “The stuff you feel vibrating your seat is particle motion. When it comes to whale songs, particle motion hasn’t really been studied much. It’s a lot more complex to measure than pressure waves, so we don’t have a great sense of how it propagates in water or air.”

Pressure waves are relatively simple to detect using a specialized underwater microphone called a hydrophone, sold commercially for decades. Detecting particle motion, however, requires sensitive undersea accelerometers, which until recently have not been widely available to researchers.

Mooney and his team had both sensors on hand for an unrelated study in the area, allowing them to collect these unexpected recordings.