Blue Whales Are Going Silent

Inside the acoustic warning signs of a changing ocean

When I published We Nearly Killed the Blue Whales Once, I focused on the invisible changes in deep Antarctic water that are starving the food web from below.

Since then, I’ve been looking at how those changes are showing up elsewhere, namely across the Pacific. It turns out we’ve had a warning system for years, but we just weren’t listening.

In this piece, I’m following the sound, or rather, the sudden absence of it. Blue whales are still migrating. Still diving. Still surviving. However, they aren’t singing.

That silence is the real headline.

---

You will not hear it on the news. Most people will not hear it at all.
Yet across one of the loudest landscapes in nature, the world’s biggest mammals have stopped making noise.

Blue whales, the 150-tonne giants that once reverberated through every ocean basin, are falling quiet. They are not silent due to nets or ship strikes. They are simply running out of food.

A blue whale that has no energy to sing is not just tired. It is in trouble. So is the ecosystem around it.

Songs From a Vanishing Ocean

These following recordings, collected by the Australian Antarctic Programme, capture the haunting calls of blue whales in the Southern Ocean. Each example reveals a different aspect of how whales communicate.

Antarctic blue whale D-calls
Recorded in the Ross Sea and sped up 4× to be audible. These social feeding-ground calls vary across individuals, seasons, and years.

Antarctic blue whale Z-calls
Sped-up 8× recording from a 2014 Antarctic mooring near Casey Station. These long-range calls are likely made by individuals for distant communication.

---

A huge thank you to all Founding Members and paid subscribers. Your support makes this work possible, and keeps ocean journalism free for those who need it most.

These stories should reach everyone, especially in frontline communities where this knowledge matters but budgets don’t stretch.

To stay sustainable, new pieces are released to subscribers first. This one will open to all readers in two weeks.

If you’re on the free list, this is where your preview ends. To keep reading today, and help keep this work free for others, please consider a paid subscription.