When a whale sings, it fills the sea with more than just serene sounds. It also sends vibrations coursing through the water like a speaker with the bass turned way up.

Though scientists have long listened to the marine mammals’ melodies, they haven’t really been feeling the music. Now, a new study highlights this overlooked and poorly understood component to the whale’s song.

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, a team of researchers reported detecting humpback whale vibrations from more than 650 feet away. The researchers said that the rattles traveled farther than expected, suggesting that they may play a role in whale-to-whale communication.

“They are these noisy animals in the ocean — noise is central to their biology,” said T. Aran Mooney, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the lead author on the study. “We have not really been measuring half of the whale sounds out there.”