{"id":124982,"date":"2025-08-07T00:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T00:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/124982\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T00:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T00:44:10","slug":"blue-whales-have-gone-silent-why-that-has-scientists-worried-about-earths-biggest-animals-and-the-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/124982\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue whales have gone silent. Why that has scientists worried about Earth\u2019s biggest animals … and the ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blue whales<\/a> \u2014 the largest animals on Earth \u2014 aren’t singing as much anymore, and that’s got scientists concerned<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A study published in PLOS<\/a> analyzing six years\u2019 worth of acoustic data collected from the ocean’s floor<\/a> found that blue whale vocalizations have been decreasing as the animal’s food sources have disappeared.<\/p>\n

The monitor \u2014 a hydrophone sitting on the sea floor off the coast of California<\/a> \u2014 collected sounds from the various creatures in the ocean, including multiple whale species.<\/p>\n

By coincidence, the recordings began during a marine heatwave<\/a> that is unprecedented in modern times. According to the study, the heatwave reduced the amount of krill available for blue whales to consume. As the krill disappeared, so too did the blue whale songs.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the acoustic collection, blue whale songs deceased by approximately 40 percent.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A breaching blue whale. Blue whale songs off the coast of California have reportedly dropped by approximately 40 percent as their primary food source – krill \u2013 have become more scarce as a result of rising ocean temperatures ((Alamy\/PA))<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you really break it down, it\u2019s like trying to sing while you’re starving,\u201d John Ryan, a biological oceanographer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute told National Geographic<\/a>. \u201cThey were spending all their time just trying to find food.\u201d<\/p>\n

The marine heating event began in 2013, when a stubborn, dense pool of hot water \u2014 later dubbed “The Blob” \u2014 moved from the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska down the eastern North American coast.<\/p>\n

In some places the ocean temperatures were more than 4.5 Fahrenheit above average due to the heating. The Blob grew and covered a 500 mile wide and 300 feet deep region in the Pacific Ocean<\/a>. By 2016, it covered approximately 2,000 miles of the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

The increase in temperature allowed for toxic algae blooms that killed off krill \u2014 tiny, shrimp like creatures \u2014 and other marine life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we have these really hot years and marine heatwaves, it\u2019s more than just temperature,\u201d Kelly Benoit-Bird, a Monterey Bay Aquarium marine biologist and co-author of the paper told National Geographic. \u201cThe whole system changes, and we don\u2019t get the krill. So the animals that rely only on krill are kind of out of luck.\u201d<\/p>\n

The blue whales were among those animals who were out of luck. They feed on densely packed krill \u2014 their huge mouths take in thousands of gallons of water at once, sucking in enormous numbers of the tiny creatures \u2014 but without krill present, they went hungry.<\/p>\n

Ryan said the whales have stopped singing because they’re “spending all their energy searching” for food.<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s just not enough time left over\u2014and that tells us those years are incredibly stressful,” he said.<\/p>\n

Climate change, driven by the human burning of fossil fuels, will only make the situation worse, the researchers warn. The world’s oceans already absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat from climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are whole ecosystem consequences of these marine heat waves,\u201d continues Benoit-Bird. \u201cIf they can’t find food, and they can traverse the entire West Coast of North America, that is a really large-scale consequence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue whales \u2014 the largest animals on Earth \u2014 aren’t singing as much anymore, and that’s got scientists…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":124983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[76934,76936,76937,76935,159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-124982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-blue-whale","9":"tag-coast-of-california","10":"tag-john-ryan","11":"tag-ocean-temperatures","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114984718342406455","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}