become a search for "Moby Dick''.

The Norfolk, Virginia US Navy base's pioneer deep-sea whale tracking programme, reported on by NBC News on Monday night, was yesterday welcomed by local marine experts who felt it was long overdue.

They said it could significantly expand data on humpback whales, the subject of annual whale watching expeditions off South Shore each spring.

Bermuda Aquarium curator and former Fisheries Department employee Mr. Jack Ward was particularly excited over the recent "sighting'' of a rare blue whale just off Bermuda.

Named "Ole Blue'' by naval officers, the whale was first detected northeast of Bermuda in the spring.

It came within 15 miles of the Island, NBC reported on Monday. Using the Navy's high-tech underwater submarine tracking system -- used heavily during the Cold War -- Lt. Charles Gagnon pursued it south to the Caribbean.

From there, it went straight north.

Mr. Ward could not remember a blue whale -- as the world's largest mammal it can grow to more than 100 feet -- ever being sighted in local waters.

"They are rare all over the world so they are extremely rare around here,'' he said. "But that does not mean they don't pass through -- they just aren't seen.'' NBC said another rare blue whale was spotted off Maine two months ago. The news segment focused on America's post-Cold War "challenge'' of "what to do with all that high-priced, sophisticated military technology''.

Mr. Ward pointed out Fisheries had in fact suggested 10 years ago that the Navy use the equipment to search for whales.

"We tried to get them to do it a long time ago, but they were concerned that the information gathered may in some way be used to find their submarine hydra phones (underwater wireless microphones),'' Mr. Ward said.

"They wouldn't help us at all because of their Cold War concerns.'' At the time, Fisheries had been involved in a whale study with expert Dr. Steve Katona of Rhode Island University and diver Mr. Teddy Tucker, he said.

Dr. Katona continues to visit the Bermuda Biological Station every spring for whale watching expeditions off South Shore.

"I think it's wonderful that the political reality is such that they can use that equipment now for non-military uses,'' said Mr. Ward.

The US Navy had spent millions of dollars on an underwater system to track submarines during the Cold War, in which Bermuda's soon-to-close US Navy played a major role.

"Now it is using the same system to track whales, wherever they are,'' the NBC reporter noted.

"During the Cold War the Navy assaulted the ocean with hundreds, perhaps thousands of underwater wireless microphones. How many or exactly where they are is still classified.

"When tracking Soviet submarines, the whale sounds interfered. Now they are the system's reason for being.

"The Navy sees all this as a way of saving the programme, which is due to be phased out over the next few years due to budget cuts.

"The programme not only tracks but inventories whales -- each kind of whale has its own voice print.'' In its first day, the system recorded more whales than scientists have been able to record in 20 years.

"The Navy hopes this will prove significant enough to keep the network in place. So do scientists,'' NBC said.

Mr. Ward said there was not much understanding of the migration of whales, especially blue whales.

The current system of tracking, which involved going out on whale watches and photographing their individually unique tails, was "rather primitive'' compared to the Navy's "elegant'' sound tracking system, he said.

"Through cataloguing their unique calls, we can come up with a decent census of the number of whales,'' he added. With the so-called fingerprinting system, you have to be in "the right place and wait until they raise their tails.'' "(The programme) means more hard data on whales and better protection of them. All we know of them right now is when they come to the surface,'' said Museum curator Dr. Wolfgang Sterrer, who is currently updating the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo's whale exhibits.

WHALES such as this humpback, photographed leaping out of the Atlantic, are now being tracked off Bermuda by sophisticated Navy equipment.