What Happens When Whales Can’t Hear Their Families?

0:00 Imagine trying to have a conversation with your family while standing beside a jet engine. Now imagine that noise never stops. That's the reality for some pilot whales living in one of the busiest shipping corridors in the world. This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekday ocean news update. If you care about staying informed of the ocean every weekday, Monday to Friday, hit that follow button right now on the podcast app that you're listening to this episode right now. Listen, a new study highlighted by Mongabay found that pilot whales in the Strait of Gibraltar may be struggling to hear each other because of noise from commercial ships. That's how busy it is in that corridor.

0:40 And you can't really blame them. It's a huge corridor going into the Mediterranean, coming out of the Mediterranean. So I can't really blame it for being that loud when there's so much going on within. So many countries are involved in the Mediterranean. They line the Mediterranean. And so it makes it really difficult to navigate that traffic. And while that might sound like a niche whale story, it's actually about something much bigger. And today we're gonna answer a simple question: What happens when the ocean gets so loud that whales can't communicate? Now, let's just talk about whales for a second and in the way that they communicate, because it's not well known to people who are not scientists and people who are not interested in whales, but whales communicate by sound, and each whale species has their own dialect.

1:24 And even within whale species, the pods tend to have their own dialect for many species, like orcas and stuff. I don't know if it's for every species, but they tend to develop their own language. And so that's a way for them to be able to communicate across, like, tens if not hundreds of kilometers away. These pods are huge, like sometimes greater than 50, sometimes even 100. And so they can't all just be scrunched up in the middle of the pod. A lot of times they're spread out and they have to communicate over a distance. And when they can't communicate or there's other noise that gets in the way, that interrupts their communication, and they just don't know what's going on. So imagine like you have a son or daughter, you have a kid. And they're in the-- maybe five or six, and you're in a busy place.

2:08 If you are in a busy place and your son or daughter or kid goes a little further away, and say they're like maybe five feet away, and you yell out, they might be able to hear you. They're probably gonna be able to hear if you yell out long, loud enough. But if the noise gets louder and louder or you're at a concert, it's really difficult for you to hear. Imagine being like a kilometer away. Obviously you don't wanna be that far away from your kid in a busy area, but then it gets really more difficult to project your voice across that whole area 'cause that noise kinda interferes with that. And that's what this new study examined. They examined pilot whales in the Strait of Gibraltar. And the research found that shipping noise may be interfering with whale communication. And that Strait of Gibraltar is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. And pilot whales rely heavily on sound.

2:51 So that's a big, big problem right there when we just introduced. So most of us experience the world, primarily through sight. We look at around a room, we watch the traffic, we see people approaching. These are just things that we constantly feel, right? But whales don't live in our world. They live in the world of sound. And sound travels much further underwater than in light, like, than in air. For marine mammals, sound is often more important than vision. It's how they communicate. It's how they find their family members. It's how they coordinate movement. It's how they navigate. And it's how they actually grab food too, using echolocation. And according to this new research, the growing amount of shipping traffic in the Strait of Gibraltar is making those conversations increasingly difficult.

3:38 Like I said, imagine being in this big area and you can't really hear what's going… You can't talk to people who are two, three, four feet away. This becomes a huge problem. I was a marine mammal observer in the Arctic when I was younger, in 2008, 2009. I had the opportunity to go to the Arctic, and the goal there, we were on a ship where there was a seismic survey going on. So we were trailing acoustic guns that were trailing about nine kilometers behind the boat. It was an array of guns, and what that array of guns would do, the array goes down to the bottom, looks for hydrocarbon deposits, and then the sound travels up and it gives a signal. But the thing is, is if you and I were swimming around those guns when they went off, it would blow our eardrums off. That's how loud these guns are.

4:20 Now, of course, as we mentioned before, being underwater, sound travels, and if you've ever scuba dived or gone swimming and you hear noise underwater, it's difficult to find out where that noise is coming from. It's often disorientating. And so that could also be a problem. Now, when out, we were out there being marine mammal observers, what we would do is we'd watch whales, especially in the Arctic. So we're watching beluga whales, we're watching bowhead whales, and sometimes we saw gray whales as well. Some people saw orcas. I never saw orcas, which is very disappointing, but we were in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. And so, what happened is like we had a specific radius we were looking at, one or two kilometers, depending on where we were in the Beaufort Sea, and that had to do with acoustics of sound travel. And the whole point was once a whale came close within our range or was coming close or looked like it was gonna enter that radius, we know we had to shut the instrumentation off.

5:06 We were telling the captain and the crew to shut the instrumentation off until that whales got out of the area where the noise would affect. And the reason being is because the noise would affect them so much and then it was so loud that after they heard that or were exposed to it, they wouldn't be able to hear as well. And if they were constantly exposed, and at the time the Arctic was being heavily surveyed for hydrocarbon deposits, they would be like, okay, like this could actually affect their hearing if they're exposed more than once or multiple times. Essentially, like think about if you've ever listened to music in earbuds, and you listen to them as loud as possible. And then when you take them out, you can't hear as well.

5:46 So you may seem like, uh, things are muffled or things like that. That's how they feel, essentially. And so having that feeling is gonna interrupt communication for feeding, for navigation, for everything. And if you look at pilot whales, going back to the pilot whales, pilot whales can get disoriented. And because they follow one pilot whale, that pilot whale goes off anywhere, like if it gets off course and it beaches itself, the whole pod will beach itself. And that's where we see these mass strandings of pilot whales in specific areas like New Zealand, the UK, and so forth. So it's very important that these animals do not feel disoriented. And I think that's something that people don't realize and something that we should be more of… The amount of noise underwater is absolutely phenomenal in that regard.

6:31 So, it's quite interesting. And that's where the story kind of shifts from being about whales to being about us because there's so much noise. We produce so much noise. Because the noise isn't coming from nature. It's coming from human activity. It's coming from ships. It's could be coming from sonar. It could be coming from seismic activity, boats, speed boats and stuff. It really does do that kind of stuff. And the thing is, is pilot whales are highly social animals, so they need to have that communication. They live in close family groups. Communication is essential for group cohesion. If we don't have that, things can get disoriented. Either parts of the pod can go off on its own, and that's not good for the entire pod. And noise pollution can reduce communication distance.

7:12 That means the pod has to be closer together, which could interrupt the way, their natural way of being. The problem likely affects any other marine mammal species, just like I talked about in the bowheads as well as other dolphin species. Pilot whales aren't solitary animals. They're very incredibly social. They travel in groups. They coordinate the movements. They stay connected through sound. Researchers have found that the ship noise can dramatically reduce the distance over which the whales can hear each other. Think about that for a second. Imagine you're talking to a family member across a room, just like I mentioned before. Now imagine somebody turns on a leaf blower. That person's not gonna be able to hear that. You have to raise your voice, or maybe you just stop talking altogether if you need to move closer.

7:53 That's essentially what's happening with these whales. That's what they're dealing with here. Except the leaf blower doesn't turn off. The ships are always there. The Strait of Gibraltar, the ships are always coming and going. These massive ships, these over 250,000 ton ships, these are extremely loud. And the noise feels like it's coming from all over the place. It's like being at a concert all the time. And I think what you have to ask yourself is like, what would happen if every important conversation in your life became harder? Just think about that. That's essentially what's happening for these animals. You're trying to make sure they're safe, so they're out of harm's way. So you're trying to warn them of something. And if you can't warn your kids or you can't warn an elderly person in your family, that's difficult. If they can't hear you, say like take the elderly person, if they can't hear you well, 'cause some elderly people can't hear as well, then it's difficult to communicate with them what they want to eat, how they're feeling.

8:45 Trying to communicate with them to say they have to go to the hospital and be treated, it's hard for the doctors to communicate with them because they just can't hear as well. It's difficult to navigate complex environments. It's difficult to have social bonds. I'm not sure if you've ever had like an elderly person who can't hear very well and they're out of conversations. They can't participate in conversations as much 'cause they can't hear as much. That's what happens essentially with pilot whales. If they can't hear, they can't participate in some important conversations. Let's be honest, like we have it easy as humans. Safety for some people is not as difficult to achieve. But when you need to hear someone talk to like, say, get out of the way for something, you wanna make sure you can hear them. So like when we talk about the noise in these habitats, we often refer to it as acoustic habitat.

9:27 We talk about protecting physical habitat all the time, which is really important. We talk about coral reefs, we talk about seagrass beds, mangroves, salt marshes, anywhere, sponge reefs, and all that kind of stuff. But animals also need healthy sound environments. For humans, we talk about noise pollution, how we need to reduce noise pollution. Well, the same thing goes for animals. Like, just a case in point, another analogy that's very, very, with today's time is data centers. A lot of people are starting to put videos up where they have, like, these sound measurements, these instruments that's, measure sound. And they're showing that houses that are right beside data centers are hearing sounds, like this buzzing sound, loud buzzing sound above what you're normally supposed to hear that could affect your hearing all the time, every day, twenty-four/seven.

10:09 Obviously, that's not something you want. You can't sell your home if that's the case, or you wanna move, or it's very difficult to just be in that place, living in a place like that when you hear noise all the time. So you have to deal with that. The same thing's happening to species. You need to protect that acoustic habitat. And especially for species that rely on communication, noise pollution is habitat degradation. And I think that's something that could be a really, really difficult thing to do. We often focus on the threats that we can see, but we hardly ever address the threats that we can't see. We can see plastic pollution, we can see oil spills, we can see habitat destruction. That's easy to say over time this habitat has gotten worse. Because we don't always measure noise, it's difficult to manage that.

10:50 Although, there are some places, especially around whales, and whale watching, like orcas on the west coast of Canada, you have to be with two hundred meters away from the orca to make sure that the noise doesn't affect their natural habitat. So there are certain marine mammals that are protected from that type of thing. And the Marine Mammal Protection Act also protects animals from noise distribution or noise pollution, or it used to. I don't know if it will anymore with this different administration. So, you know, you have noise pollution, chemical pollution, climate impacts. Those are very difficult to measure when you really look at it. Now, I just have to ask a question. Like, if you're getting value from this podcast, this is just about the podcast from these updates, from these quick shows five days a week, please follow the show so you never miss an episode. We're gonna be talking about a lot of different stuff tomorrow and the day after.

11:33 Monday to Friday is what we do. So don't forget to follow. When you follow, it helps us get to the top of charts so that other people can learn about the ocean and can follow the ocean as well, just as much as you get value. So that's always good. Now, what's happening next? Now that we've identified that this area in the Strait of Gibraltar gets a lot of noise, more than normal, and it's affecting pilot whales, shipping traffic is unlikely to decrease. Like, we know that, because business is booming, and this is what we need to do. A lot of things, most things come by boat when we think about how things get to our places, like when we order stuff. Scientists are exploring mitigating options. So slowing vessel speeds can reduce noise, and new ship designs can be quieter. And of course, there's also policy solutions that can help too.

12:16 Now, I wanna say that the shipping industry has been pretty good, from my understanding, about participating in these types of things to make better efficiency, less noise, looking at shipping lanes. I'm sure they haven't been perfectly cooperative, but you're starting to see this happen a lot more. So I think that's a good thing from the shipping industry to say, "Hey, you know, we're actually looking to help in a way." And I hope they are in that situation in the Strait of Gibraltar as well. The challenge is that shipping isn't going away. Around ninety percent of the global trade moves by sea, not by plane, but by sea. And the products we buy every day arrive on ships, so food, electronics, clothing, furniture, everything.

12:56 So the solution isn't to eliminate shipping. The question is whether we can make shipping quieter, and how do we do that? And the good news is that researchers and engineers think we can do that. Some studies suggest slower vessel speeds can reduce underwater noise, but I know that's not the objective because the faster we get to places, the more business can be done and people get paid more. Now, new propeller designs can also help, and different engine technologies can help. So we've started to see some activities in there. The challenge is that all of those solutions require awareness first. Without awareness, people are not gonna change. People have to recognize there's a problem before they're willing to solve it, and hopefully it doesn't take orcas sinking some of these ships to get less noise being done.

13:39 I want you to think about how important it is to reduce this noise. It's going to reduce noise pollution in the ocean around the world, essentially. If we start mandating that ships have better propellers, slower speeds, better designs, these are all things that we can manage, and we can help by reducing the noise. We may not get rid of the noise altogether, but we can make significant fronts and significant advances in changing that and see what happens. But you can't manage what you can't measure. And so having a monitoring system and measuring the level of noise and seeing how much we have to reduce by for pilot whales to be okay, that's something that's interesting.

14:19 This study itself helps quantify the problem, and science often reveals impacts that were invisible before. So I think that's a really important point is that like a lot of times the engineering and science of it all, we can find stuff that we just didn't realize was there. I think that's the same thing as like when we look at the shark episode that we did on Monday. It's been a long while, I don't even think ever, we had great white on video in the Mediterranean. We didn't know that it was there. It was like invisible to us before 'cause we hadn't really been in that area looking for a shark, obviously, and we just so happened to be around it. Like Healthy Seas, that is, happened to be around it. So, there's ways to be able to detect it. You just have to be in the ocean, spend more time in the ocean, and have research and funding to be able to say, "Hey, you know what? This is something that is important because we need to make sure that we are measuring stuff."

15:07 And today's story reminds us that even when animals are present, the environment around them may be changing in ways we don't immediately notice. We don't notice how much noise there is 'cause we're probably not in those areas. It's probably not like a very big swimming area. One thing that I find fascinating about ocean conservation, though, is that many of these biggest threats are completely invisible. Carbon dioxide, we didn't really know. We can measure it, but it's really hard to physically see what's happening. Warming oceans, although we can measure it, we don't really notice all that much. It's very anecdotal. And then noise pollution is another thing that we don't really notice. I live in an area where I have train tracks on one side in the front of the house, like a little further, but in the front of the house, and then a highway behind the house a little further.

15:48 And a lot of times it becomes white noise. So we've been here for over 20 years. And so, a lot of the times, like when we hear the noise, 'cause there's an extra wind coming from that area. So if we hear the highway, 'cause there's a wind blowing to the south, or if we hear the train, the wind's blowing to the north. And because the wind will take that sound with us. Other than that, it's just kinda white noise. We'll know that the train's there, but we don't really talk about it. We don't really notice. It's not that big of a noise where we are. We're very fortunate. Other places, it's a lot louder, but we're pretty good. It's just kinda like white noise. We just don't realize it, but we don't realize how it affects us either, with these constant noise going off. So that's something that you have to worry about after a while, and I think that's something that's important to really look at.

16:28 But the most important part of this story isn't that the pilot whales are struggling to hear each other. It's that we're learning the ocean isn't just a physical habitat. It's also an acoustical habitat. And if we want marine mammals to thrive, protecting the ocean means protecting the sounds that allow them to communicate, navigate, and survive. I think that's what's really important is there's multiple scales to conservation and protection, and sometimes it's physical where we can actually see what's being protected, and sometimes it's just audible. It's an acoustic protection. And sometimes it's a taste or smell, like there's some nasty pollutants out there that can really affect the water. Like, we can't detect if there are metals in the water molecules that get ingested or get absorbed into, like, whale blubber or fish or anything like that.

17:09 But that's the episode for today. I wanna thank you so much for joining me. This has been a fun episode to go over. Obviously, this is a problem that needs to be solved. It can be solved over time, quicker the better. Hopefully, the shipping industry is being included on this conservation action and this trend that we're seeing, and hopefully we can see better rudders, better propellers, better ship design, slower speeds, all that kinda stuff, the management could come through. If we manage it, we can protect it, and that's what's really important. That's it for today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. You can DM me. You can do whatever you'd like with those socials. You can contact me through there. I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. Have a great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow, and happy conservation.