are several knock-on consequences of a noisy marine environment. Whales may have to group together more closely in order to hear each other. And, should they fail to find prey as effectively, they will need to use up their stores of excess blubber. This is problematic as this blubber often contains manmade pollutants that are toxic to whales if released fully into their systems. Veirs said more work needs to be done to identify how badly the noise is affecting whales and also to quieten the ships that pass near the cetaceans. “It should be easy to reduce noise pollution,” he said. “Military ships are quite a bit quieter and there could be straightforward ways of transferring that technology to the commercial fleet. Another way to reduce noise is to slow down. Decreasing speed by six knots could decrease noise intensity by half.” While the fortunes of some whale species, such as humpbacks and blue whales, the largest mammal on Earth, have improved as whaling has declined, others are still under threat from a range of factors. The US federal government has recently protected nearly 40,000 square miles of the Atlantic in an attempt to avoid losing the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, a species with just 500 individuals left. In Europe, killer whales are carrying dangerously high levels of banned polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) chemicals in their