A range of hydrophones, on buoys monitored by Andre, is now picking up audio signals in seas all around the world. And the computer analysis is done extremely quickly – according to Andre there’s just a three-second delay between picking up the sound and predicting algorithmically what it is. Then, the result is transmitted back to the shore.

“We are overloaded with information,” he says. “It’s 24/7 – data coming from over 100 channels around the world.”

Andre’s team aren’t just listening – they have also studied the physiological damage caused to animals by noise. After taking tissue samples from the ears of beached whales, evidence of harm was found in the cells of those sensory organs. This, then, was why creatures had lost their ability to detect the noise of ships.

“If there are some missing structures of these cells, it means that the animal cannot codify any more the sound that corresponds to this specific cell,” he explains.

The kind of noise that whales and other marine animals have to contend with is not trivial, ranging from ship sounds to loud explosions.