An exhibition led by Mhairi Killin in collaboration with others
An Tobar, Isle of Mull, UK
Closes 27 August
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SOMETIMES art and science come together to raise our awareness of a compelling issue. One such occasion is a multimedia exhibition called On Sonorous Seas, led by artist Mhairi Killin and prompted by her experience of a mass stranding of dead whales.
At the An Tobar gallery on the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, UK, Killin explores the complex relationship between biodiversity and militarisation in Scottish waters, using science, sculpture and sound to show how our oceans are increasingly full of human-made noise that is killing whales.
In 2018, the carcasses of more than 100 beaked whales washed up in . One carcass washed up on Iona, the Hebridean island where Killin lives. The event was one of the largest of its kind, with evidence pointing to human causes 鈥� particularly to military activity in the region.
Killin had been considering an art project exploring the presence of the military in the Hebrides, so she approached the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust (HWDT), which was worried about the impact of mid-range sonar on cetaceans. The trust was already investigating this by collecting acoustic and visual data during the biannual NATO Joint Warrior exercises off the Scottish shores.
鈥淚 knew that if the trust was concerned, then there was an area of concern and I wanted to be part of that,鈥� says Killin. The HWDT welcomed her onto its research vessel, the Silurian, as a citizen scientist on a 10-day expedition coinciding with the 2021 naval manoeuvres. Her experiences turned into On Sonorous Seas.
Killin used scientific data she collected as a 鈥渃onduit to another world鈥�, the secretive world of whales and the military. This is reflected in a piece she created with Fergus Hall, a Glasgow-based composer. It is a soundtrack of mostly underwater recordings to accompany A Constellation of Strandings, a 45-minute multimedia work made with digital artist Tom deMajo.
Replicating the world of deep-diving whales, the experience occupies the larger of An Tobar鈥檚 exhibition rooms, creating a dark, void-like space full of clicks, whirrs and rumbles from the recordings. So much cetacean experience is through sound, says Hall, which is why human-made noise can be so damaging. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e an animal that experiences your world through sound, then it鈥檚 almost like you鈥檝e been blinded,鈥� he says.
Using a hydrophone to record underwater, HWDT researchers study the changes in noise over time. The recordings often include porpoise clicks, dolphin whistles and whale songs. However, sounds from boats, acoustic deterrent devices (used to scare off cetaceans in fish farms) or from dredging and trawling are increasingly common. We have industrialised the oceans, making them more dangerous and noisy for marine animals, says Andrew Brownlow, a pathologist for the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme, who studied the 2018 strandings.
This human-made noise in oceans can change behaviours, disorienting whales and leaving them unable to communicate or forcing them into more hazardous areas. In extreme cases, it causes whales to surface too quickly, creating decompression sickness.
Beaked whales are a deep-diving species that communicate and hunt through mid-range sonar frequencies. Unfortunately, so does the military. By combining pathology results from the dead beaked whales with the audio data collected by the HWDT, Brownlow and his team identified the most likely location of the whales in 2018: in the region of the Rockall Trough and the Porcupine Seabight, north-west of Scotland.
In 2021, . 鈥淚t seems there鈥檚 this overlap between areas that are important for tactical military use and areas that are important for beaked whales,鈥� says Brownlow.
In 2004, following a spate of cetacean strandings in the Canary Islands linked to naval exercises, the Spanish government imposed a moratorium on certain sonar frequencies. Since then, no mass strandings have been recorded.
Back at the gallery, on-screen pulses in A Constellation of Strandings remind us of sonar screens. Connected by thin lines, a stellar constellation starts to appear. It is only when a map of the Hebridean islands comes into focus that the significance of these dots is clear: they are data points, representing sites where whales were stranded in 2018. This motif repeats on the opposite wall, now as silver casts of whale ear bones, from 3D scans created by the .
A quieter room showcases a poem by Miek Zwamborn, with calligraphic artwork by Susie Leiper using spectrograms (visual representations of the sound recordings). Hanging from the ceiling is the skull of a Cuvier鈥檚 beaked whale, washed up on the Isle of Harris in 2018 鈥� a visceral reminder of what little remains of the magnificent mammals.
While the 2018 stranding was large and not a one-off, most people still know little about the effects of anthropogenic sound, says Killin. Talking to her and the researchers, and sailing on the Silurian 鈥� albeit not in the shadow of a military operation 鈥� gives you a better understanding. But it also leaves you dismayed by how little time we take to contemplate the vast world in our seas and the beautiful animals dying in droves from avoidable human activity.
There is a balance to be struck between justifiable activity in our oceans, military or otherwise, and the effect it has on these important species. On Sonorous Seas explores the hidden world of cetaceans in an engaging way, turning scientific research into an accessible and powerful narrative. It shows us what we need to learn to start sharing Earth with other animals.
If you can get to Mull, do.
