This dependency on sound makes whales vulnerable to the rising level of noise in the ocean. The number of cargo ships has tripled in the past 75 years, with bigger ships plying the seas each year. Bio-acoustician Chris Clark describes these chronic sounds as a “smog of human-generated acoustic noise.” The constant buzz, which can impact whales’ ability to hunt and reproduce, is punctuated by intense pulses from seismic air guns, used to map petroleum deposits on the shelf. These pulses, some of the loudest sounds produced by humans, reach across oceans and may be responsible for the stranding of whales in Mexico. The United States is right to protest commercial whale hunts that violate the suspension of whaling, but we should also protect the soundscape where the world’s largest mammals reside.