The Silent Cry of the Whales:Understanding Ocean Noise Pollution

The Whales are the Elders, who still inhabit our Earth. They are mammals just like us. But if humans conquered land, whales mastered the ocean, adapting completely to a world we can’t survive in without technology, they use sound instead and rely almost completely on their ears for survival.Whales are ancient beings - some species live 150–200 years, meaning a single whale can span several human lifetimes. They embody memory of the ocean, a realm that was once a cradle for all life. In indigenous traditions, whales are seen as keepers of wisdom, holding the “song” of the Earth itself.It is said that eyes are the windows to the human soul; likewise, ears are the windows to the whales' soul. And this is for a reason.

We humans are all sight-creatures, it is hard to imagine how our life and world will be without the eyes. Most of the sensory information from the outer world we consume by eyes. Light of the sun allows us to see many miles ahead of us by our eyes.

Situation is very different in the ocean. Light does not penetrate beyond about 200 meters, so vision is almost useless. Sound, however, travels five times faster in water than in air and can carry for hundreds of kilometres.

Deep-sea animals have evolved to “speak” and “listen” using clicks, rumbles, pulses, and even songs.

Whales and dolphins are the virtuosos of ocean sound. Whale songs are one of the most beautiful and mysterious forms of animal communication on Earth. They’re primarily associated with baleen whales, especially humpback whales. Due to nature of sound this songs can spread across entire ocean basins. Computer analysis of these exchanges has shown an information density of between one and ten million bits per half hour of whale song - which is the approximate amount of information contained in the Odyssey.

Males sing to attract females and compete with other males, but there is a lot more..

Whales are navigators of the deep, same as we perceive the world by vision, whales perceive the world through hearing. Whale produce clicks and or nasal ultrasonic sounds far beyond human hearing and use this sounds for echolocation. The sound waves travel through water and bounce off objects - like fish, rocks, or other whales. The returning echoes carry information about: distance, size and shape, movement. Echoes are received through the whale’s lower jawbone, which is filled with specialized fats that conduct sound to the middle ear.

The signals are sent to the auditory cortex in the brain, creating a detailed 3D "image" of the surroundings - like a visual map made entirely of sound. What's why the whale's ear is the window to their soul - because sound allows them to make to perceive the world auditory.

Whales and as well dolphins produce special high-pitched sounds for echolocation, then the songs are purely cultural phenomenon.

For example, dolphins produce signature whistles - unique, name-like sounds that identify individuals. Each dolphin develops its own whistle early in life, and others can call it specifically, almost like saying: “Hey, you!”

But the whale songs songs are long, patterned sequences of sounds that can last from a few minutes to over 30 minutes, and whales often repeat them for hours. It has phrases and themes - same like our human song. Whale songs evolve over time, and entire populations adopt new "versions" of songs, much like human musical trends. For example, in the South Pacific, a new song pattern can spread thousands of miles over a few years as different pods "learn" it.

These sounds travel incredibly far underwater - sometimes across entire ocean basins - thanks to water’s high sound conductivity. This allows whale to keep communication across the vast distances and literally feel the ocean and planet.

Our planet, Earth, is known as the Blue Planet, with water covering nearly 70% of its surface.

According to recent research, whales are not just guardians of the oceans - they play a role in shaping our atmosphere that surpasses even the forests of our planet. [1]

The carbon capture potential of whales is truly startling. Whales accumulate carbon in their bodies during their long lives. When they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean; each great whale sequesters 33 tons of CO2 on average, taking that carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries. A tree, meanwhile, absorbs only up to 48 pounds of CO2 a year.

Sadly, due to decades of industrialised whaling - the whale population diminished significantly. Some species, like the blue whales, have been reduced to only 3 percent of their previous abundance. Thus, the benefits from whales’ ecosystem services to us and to our survival are much less than they could be.

While green business are proposing high-tech technology for combating global warming, many of which are complicated and costly. The nature already provided the solution, which is apparently "low tech", but could be out of competition. And the name of this "earth-tech"is whale-pump.

Whales are planetary engineers in their own right, deeply connected to the health of our oceans and even the air we breathe. Their role in maintaining the Earth's atmosphere is often overlooked.

If whales are the greatest giants of the sea, then the tiny, plant-like beings called phytoplankton - rarely spoken of - are the lungs of our planet.

While trees produce only 20% of total oxygen, the phytoplankton produce 50–80% of the oxygen we breathe - far more than all the world’s rainforests combined. Although they are microscopic, phytoplankton are responsible for more than half of the oxygen in our atmosphere.

When they dive deep to hunt for krill, fish, or squid, they consume nutrients at depth and then release nutrient-rich feces near the surface when they return to breathe. These waste products are loaded with iron, nitrogen, and phosphorus - exactly what microscopic phytoplankton need to thrive. Whale feces float! Unlike most marine waste, they stay near the surface where phytoplankton grow. This vertical nutrient transport is like a fertilizer system for the ocean, stimulating massive plankton blooms.

When a whale dies, its body becomes a massive carbon sink - a single great whale carcass can sequester tons of carbon, sending it to the deep ocean where it stays for centuries or even millennia. This is similar to how trees lock carbon in wood, but on a much bigger scale.

Whales don't just influence their immediate surroundings - they create positive feedback loops:

More whales → more nutrients → more phytoplankton → more oxygen & carbon capture.

Historically, before industrial whaling, whale populations were 4–5 times larger, meaning the oceans were far more productive and breathable for the entire planet.

Restoring the whale population to pre-whaling numbers will add hundreds of millions of tons of carbon capture per year.

Restoring the whale population to pre-whaling times - will have the same effect as planting billions of trees.

Let the whales live - is the mindset for new world. (or the old before our civilisation came in xx)

Joke aside, even that the industrial whaling has been stopped, whales are fighting for their survival in this very moment.

Almost everyone, at least once in their life, has found themselves at a party or a rock concert where the noise was so overwhelming that it drowns out your thoughts, and leaves you desperate to escape for a breath of fresh air..

Oceans are a sonic symphony. Every living creature on Earth is humming and singing it's life-song. But what is the music of our civilisation ? Man-made civilisation has filled the oceans with machine rumble , explosions and high-pitched pulses. Sound is essential to the survival and prosperity of marine life. Unfortunately, the level of noise with which our civilisation polluted is unimaginable. Over the last 50 years, our increasing ocean presence has drastically transformed the ocean acoustic environment.

Our nightmare, when machines are came on Earth to capture and torture the humanity has already become a reality for the denizens of the deep.

Undersea noise pollution is invisible, but it is damaging the web of ocean life.

There are three main causes of man-made ocean noise: commercial shipping, military sonar and oil & gas seismic activities.

This post is about bringing awareness, so I briefly explain all of them and in the separate posts I will touch it in details.

Merchant shipping is the main way of transporting goods in global trade, because of it's cost efficiency. Each year, between 80–90 percent of products and commodities in global trade are carried by ships. Worldwide, the international commercial fleet numbers more than 100,000 ships. [2]

And the global merchant shipping is the main source of underwater noise.

A single cargo ship can reach 180–190 decibels underwater - comparable to a jet engine at takeoff, but spread through the water where sound travels farther and faster. Sound in water moves 4.5x faster than in air and can carry for thousands of kilometers, creating an ocean-wide background roar.

The total carrying capacity of the global fleet nearly quadrupled between 1996 and 2020, as new and larger ships have been added to keep pace with the growing global economy, and industry analysts expect this growth trend to continue. Scientists measuring ocean noise have found that noise from shipping is doubling roughly each decade.

A recent study titled "Underwater noise emissions from ships during 2014–2020" from the journal Environmental Pollution mapped the geographical distribution of global underwater noise emissions from ships in 2019, demonstrating that very few areas of the ocean are unimpacted by shipping noise (see image below).

Global map of underwater noise emissions from ships in 2019. The labeled areas are 1: Baffin Sea, 2: Kara Sea, 3: Palmer basin, 4: Galapagos Islands, and 5: Socotra.

Credit:

From Jukka-Pekka Jalkanen, Lasse Johansson, Mathias H. Andersson, Elisa Majamaki, and Peter Sigray, 2022. “Underwater noise emissions from ships during 2014-2020”. Environmental Pollution, 311: 119766.

Now imagine again this rock concert, but now imagine if you are not able to leave. For whales, this isn’t a single night of overwhelming sound - it is every moment of their lives.

These ancient beings - who once communicated across entire ocean basins - now struggle to hear one another even a few miles away. The great whale songs, which for millennia have echoed like cathedral hymns through the deep, are being smothered by the industrial hum of our machines. Some regions, like the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, and South China Sea, are now so noisy that whales there can only hear across 10–20% of their historical communication range.

But we can change this, it's only depends on which world we want to see in decades.

As our civilisation increasing it's pace - the quantity of the goods shipped across the rivers, seas and the ocean increasing as well. The biggest contributors to ocean noise pollution are container ships - the massive vessels that carry everything from online shopping orders to dangerous chemicals and even nuclear cargo across the world’s oceans. There is tremendous commercial pressure implied to the owners and operators of this ship to arrive at port faster.And I know it firsthand.But often what happens - when the ship will get there, she will sit at anchor for a few days waiting for a berthing schedule.

Wouldn't it be better if she will go slower and arrive at port just in time ?

Ships can also drastically cut their noise emissions through the simple act of slowing down. A general rule of thumb is that for each 1 knot in speed reduction, a ship’s noise is reduced by 1 decibel. An analysis by Russell Leaper found that slowing the global fleet by a modest 10 percent could reduce the total sound energy from shipping by around 40 percent. [2]

Proceeding with economic speed is also reducing the air pollution from ships. So it's like win-win-win situation.

But there is another question we need to ask ourselves.

Do we really need all this online orders so fast and do we really need so many ?

Maybe we can support a local business.

But also I believe that for a new world we need a new mindset for our consumption.

If we allow our goods to travel a little slower across the ocean - it will have a tremendous effect on reducing the noise pollution across the oceans.

In a real-world example, the Vancouver-Fraser Port Authority in British Columbia asks ships to slow down to either 11 or 14.5 knots (based on ship type) as they approach the port, to reduce noise disturbance to the critically endangered Southern Resident orca population. The Port found that, with over 80 percent of large vessels participating in the slow down in 2022, underwater sound intensity in the area decreased by as much as 55 percent.

The other decisions to remove the noise even further goes to design of new ships and retrofitting the old ones, which I discuss in separate post here.

Let's break down two other factors significantly contributing to reducing the whales population, which are military sonar and seismic survey.

SONAR stands for Sound Navigation and Ranging - it is a system which is used by all military ships around the world to detect underwater submarines. Submarines are dangerous for this giant ships with up to 5000 sailors onboard, that's why they use this technology for early detection of the enemy.

Sonar works on the principle of echolocation - the same method whales, dolphins, and other deep-sea creatures use for navigation. It sends out powerful sound pulses (called pings) into the ocean. When these sounds hit an underwater object, they bounce back as echoes and return to the sonar system. By measuring the time it takes for the sound wave to travel to the object and back, sonar calculates the distance - giving humans a way to “see” underwater.

However navy use very intense impulses for their sonar systems. Military sonar can reach 235–240 decibels underwater. For comparison - a jet engine at takeoff is ~140 dB (in air). The sound can travel hundreds of kilometers, filling entire regions of the ocean with intense acoustic energy. 240 dB in water is equivalent to a massive underwater explosion.

As you know already whales and dolphins are far more acoustically sensitive then we are, they rely purely on sound and their ear for survival. They depend on sound for everything: communication, navigation, hunting, and social bonding. If commercial shipping is the cause of permanent noise pollution, then military sonar is the source of immediate danger for deep-sea denizens and even death. Loud sonar pulses can rupture whale eardrums, causing permanent deafness.

Whales are deep-sea creatures and can dive up to 3000m underwater, they are naturally adapted to dive and surface safely. However, military sonar creates impulses which are so unbearable for them that they rush to the surface too fast and don’t have enough time to decompress properly. Decompression is the slow, safe release of built-up pressure from the body. Without it, escaping gases form bubbles in the bloodstream and organs. The result is massive internal damage: bleeding around the brain, lungs, and other organs. This often results in mass strandings, where entire pods beach themselves and die.

U.S. Navy recently faced many court law-suits and now is required to fill permits to use their sonar systems under Marine Mammal Protection Act. Before they can use it whenever they want with no prior assessment.

However permit is barrier to turn on this system, but in the end this is only a paper. And what about other navies in the world ? How many people would care about the "fish" if they need to protect themselves from the enemy?

Eventually what we are the facing is a mindset issue if not to say transformation of consciousness.

For humans, sonar is like radar - a way to see the unseen.

For whales, it is like living inside a war zone filled with invisible explosions.

When a sonar blast rips through the ocean, it doesn’t just detect submarines - it shatters the ancient soundscape that whales have relied on for millions of years.

The third cause of underwater noise pollution is Oil & Gas Seismic Survey.

To detect oil and gas deposits beneath the ocean floor, the petrochemical industry uses seismic airguns, the modern form of exploratory dynamite. Ships tow arrays of these guns, discharging extremely intense pulses of sound toward the seafloor.

During seismic surveys, acoustic explosions continue for days or weeks on end. The blasts disrupt critical behavior and communication among whales and can have massive impacts on fish populations. [3]

Our civilisation still depends heavily on oil and gas, yet today we already have a full spectrum of alternative, green energy solutions ready to be embraced.

Before I mentioned that military sonar issue and oil & gas are actually different aspect of the same question that we are facing now.

However the permits for sonar use is some kind of defence for whales and denizens of the oceans, but sonar is a technology only which is utilised for wars between humans. It's not hard to notice that until we fight each other we are also genociding other races of mammals, which sharing this Earth with us.

As mentioned above, the oceans are the true lungs of our planet, and whales play a vital role in their ecosystems. By exterminating whales, we are not only destroying the entire oceanic balance but also depriving ourselves of the very air we breathe.

The oil needle we’re hooked on comes at an incredibly high cost.

The oil and gas industry is one of the most powerful forces shaping our modern world. It fuels our cars, heats our homes, powers industries, and even provides the raw materials for plastics, fertilizers, and countless everyday products. But this dependency comes with immense environmental, economic, and geopolitical consequences.

The oil itself is the cause of our conflicts, because the oil & gas is a finite resource. Renewable energy (sun, wind, tide, thermal etc) is in abundance. So if we want to stop conflicts across the globe and we need to seriously re-access our dependancy on oil.

Jeff Colgan, a political science professor at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, coined the term “petro-aggression” to describe his finding that countries where petroleum accounts for more than 10 percent of their gross domestic product are 250 percent more likely to instigate military conflicts with other countries.

Such example is russia, which is the biggest country in the world is not enjoying the diversified economy, its economic health, in fact, depends almost entirely on its ability to produce and export energy products - primarily crude oil and natural gas. [4]

russia spends around $20 billion per day bombing Ukrainian cities, including energy infrastructure, malls, kindergarteners, maternity hospitals and breadlines.

In 2014 when the invasion started with occupation of Crimea, russia also took over 80 percent of the offshore oil and gas deposits that had been under Ukrainian control.

Meanwhile U.S leveraging the war in Ukraine was trying to convince the public that they are facing energy crisis to lease new offshore exploration in Gulf of Mexico in 2022 [5]

and in 2025 in Gulf of California [6]

Oil and gas make up over 55% of the world’s total energy consumption, but oil & gas is also ingredients for modern civilisation: plastic and packaging, fertilisers, medical supplies (syringes, gloves, even some medicines rely on petrochemicals), clothing (polyester, nylon, and other synthetic fabrics are oil-based.)

So all the "good" stuff, what we call a "progress". We call it progress when we drain the “blood” of the Earth without giving her time to recover, while killing one another and destroying ecosystems that existed thousands of years before us.

At the same time, we label civilisations that have lived in harmony with nature for millennia as “primitive,” simply because they never produced plastic.

But perhaps, when they faced this very problem, they simply chose not to create it.

If we continue extracting and burning oil and gas without drastic change, the consequences will be devastating and irreversible. Oil and gas are the largest sources of greenhouse gases, which are the main cause of global warming. Burning fossil fuels releases CO₂, while natural gas leaks methane, a greenhouse gas 84x more potent than CO₂ in the short term. This drives global warming, leading to: extreme weather (heatwaves, hurricanes, floods), melting glaciers and rising sea levels, collapse of ecosystems like coral reefs and Arctic habitats.

Seismic airguns used in exploration blast 250 dB sound pulses, terrifying whales and dolphins and causing mass strandings. Oil spills, like Deepwater Horizon (2010), devastate entire regions for decades. Offshore drilling disrupts marine ecosystems and creates underwater noise pollution.

As being said, the main thing to consider that oil & gas are finite resources. Experts predict that easily accessible oil could peak around 2030–2040, forcing extraction of more environmentally sensitive areas: deep sea reserves, Arctic drilling, Tar sands (Canada).

These methods are more expensive and environmentally damaging, creating a destructive feedback loop.

If the world does not transition away from oil and gas, here’s what the future could look like by 2100.

Global temperatures rise 3–4°C, far beyond safe levels. Many coastal cities - Miami, Jakarta, Shanghai - partially or completely underwater. Billions displaced, leading to wars and migration crises.

Ocean acidification kills most coral reefs and collapses fisheries. Polar ecosystems vanish as ice sheets melt. Terrestrial species lose habitats to droughts and wildfires.

Wars over water and energy resources. Fragile economies collapse as oil prices fluctuate wildly.Trillions spent on disaster recovery instead of sustainable development. Entire industries fail as fossil fuels become harder to extract and more expensive.

It’s not too late to change course. Transitioning to renewable energy offers a way out: solar, wind, and geothermal are now cheaper than new fossil fuel plants in many regions. It's only requires shift in our consciousness and the will to choose our future.

Eventually the world without the wars and use of military sonars is maybe utopian, but for sure transition to renewable energy will reduce the amounts of this conflicts drastically. Anyhow it is the only choice, if we don't want to experience "Mad Max" for real with rising seas, dying ecosystems, and conflicts for oil everywhere around.

If whales were allowed to return to their pre-whaling number of 4 to 5 million - from slightly more than 1.3 million today - it could add significantly to the amount of phytoplankton in the oceans and to the carbon they capture each year. At a minimum, even a 1 percent increase in phytoplankton productivity thanks to whale activity would capture hundreds of millions of tons of additional CO2 a year, equivalent to the sudden appearance of 2 billion mature trees. Imagine the impact over the average lifespan of a whale, more than 60 years.[1]

Meditation with the Whale Song:

Nature's Solution to Climate Change

Why All the Concern About Underwater Ship Noise?

Sonic Sea

It’s Time to Defuse Oil as a Weapon of War

Understand What Whales Are Saying - Project CETI