Recently deployed electronic ears are eavesdropping on whales in the Gulf of Mexico, giving scientists insights into what areas they frequent, population numbers and how they are faring in the oil-ravaged waters.

"Night after night, on TV and on webcams, we saw oil spewing from the bottom of the ocean," said Christopher Clark, head of the Bioacoustics Research Program (BRP) team at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "You wonder, 'What can we do? What's the impact of this?' In the case of marine mammals, we don't know because we don't even know what's there."

The study will focus on sperm whales and Bryde's whales (a baleen whale that feeds on plankton), which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) identified as species of concern in the Gulf as a result of the oil spill.

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