We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrea Lynn a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Andrea, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
The mystical sea creature with the alicorn—the whale we call a narwhal, is entwined with my story …
“If we lose the Arctic, we lose the globe.”
With this distressing quote, Finland’s former president Sauli Niinistö stressed the crisis of the melting Arctic to world leaders during the World Leaders’ Summit in Glasgow in November 2021.
It’s been more than two years since those emphatic words were spoken, and still, we are not much closer to mitigating the harm brought on by a substantially warming Arctic.
One of the largest transformations in the rapidly melting Arctic involves the introduction of anthropogenic noise. The issue of ocean noise pollution—what it sounds like beneath the waves—motivated me, mid-career, to embark on a doctoral path to learn how I might be able to help.
I believe that science shifts policy, after story stirs human hearts.
The Narwhal Tusk Force is a tiny group of five people, of which I am one, dedicated to policy work aimed at mitigating the effects of underwater radiated noise (URN) in the Arctic Ocean. We are a nimble team of sailors, scholars, and artists determined to transform the ways by which humans traverse the ocean by telling the story of what increasing noise in the ocean means to ocean life, to all life.
Noise in the ocean? I’ve often heard people say, “So what! We have the issues of plastics pollution, fossil fuels contamination, sea level rise, dying coral reefs, and endless other concerns with which to contend.”
“Noise pollution … seriously?”
Seriously.
From the protected marina at Eidkjosen, Norway—69° N, 18° E—we sailed north into ice-strewn ocean, trading gentle breezes and lapping waves for White Horses (white caps), Force 5 winds on the Beaufort Scale with occasional gales, walls of water, and the underwater radiated noise (URN) of massive ships traversing Arctic sea routes. Among the five of us existed extreme oceans sailing expertise to navigate whatever the icy ocean desired to throw up at us aboard our 13.8-meter sailing vessel in the high Arctic. We also had the artistic and technical gifts needed to safely collect and record the necessary acoustic data. I am grateful to our captain and to the other three sailors who made this journey with me: Captain Peter. Birgir. Basia. Margarita … the best crew anyone could ever ask to have with them in such conditions—in any conditions.
Although our team’s concerns, my concerns, involve all Arctic Marine Mammals and ocean life, we are especially focused on Monodon monoceros—the narwhal, known to be extremely sensitive to anthropogenic noise and the most at risk as the Arctic is swiftly transformed due to a rapidly warming planet.
“Narwhals? You know they aren’t real, right?”
One of my peers tried to guide me away from what they considered a fantasy, but narwhals are indeed real. They have been aspects of Arctic Indigenous cultures since time immemorial. They are sustenance—essential when living in a frozen world where the food chain is thin and Vitamin C is scarce.
And yet, beyond these Indigenous cultures, this powerful talisman—the mystical whale with an alicorn—has all but disappeared from our collective memory.
How?
As Odell Shepard concluded in his 1930 publication, “The Lore of the Unicorn,” narwhals became uninteresting when they became real. Unlike the days when the narwhal’s tusk was treasured as a magical weapon, as the antidote for poisonings, as medicine for a myriad of ailments (Martin Luther tried it), the horn and the animal have been somewhat demystified and allowed to slip back below the ice.
But, have the animal and alicorn really been demystified?
It’s a misnomer that only male narwhals have tusks, and some narwhals have two. The tusk’s role for the animal is still up for debate (researchers disagree).
Why aren’t we still fascinated?
Maybe we are.
When tales of the animal’s existence are reexamined, such as the encounter with a dead narwhal by 16th century English seafarer Martin Frobisher and his crew as they searched for a northwest passage, it is striking to consider how one might relish the feeling of being lured back into the lore. According to the journals of a sailor who was a part of Frobisher’s 1577 voyage, Dionyse Settle, the sailors, having found the body of a narwhal on a Baffin Island beach, poured spiders into its broken tusk. Seeing the spiders die, they declared the creature to be a “sea Unicorne.” Magic.
The human family still needs a talisman, but the object that embodies the ideal shifts, melts away, reappears and morphs, just like the ice on which the narwhal is dependent.
Through cultural, historical, scientific, and even fanciful lenses, the alicorn and the animal are representative of both the known and unknown, of the understood and yet unexplainable. To me the whale represents our capacity to venture on, continuing to believe in … something.
Transforming an entire global society is no small feat. As Homo sapiens face the effects of climate change and struggle to adapt, the challenges Arctic Marine Mammals like the narwhal face to adapt are even more severe. Images of polar bears digging through human trash bins fill social media sites; their somber expressions are captured to implore us, seemingly pleading with us—the humans—to do something as their magnificent claws barely cling to a shrinking ice floe.
According to the first official report card on the 2015 Paris Agreement published in September, countries have made only limited progress toward the fight against global warming. Last year for the first time the temperature ceiling of 1.5° C, above which the planet faces crucial climate tipping points, was breached across an entire year.
And the devastating effects of a warming planet are nowhere more apparent than in the Arctic.
I am committed to listening as a way to affect positive ocean policy. Without the ocean, without the Arctic, without the Arctic Marine Mammals that inhabit this fragile polar ecosystem, we are all lost.
Andrea, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
“What are they saying?”
Who could have imagined that such a simple question, seemingly fixed within a curious child who posed it often to her inventor grandfather, would come to be central to the child’s eventual career choices, scholarly work, and research?
“What are they saying?”
As my acoustic listening devices fell into the icy Arctic waters and Arctic Marine Mammal vocalizations came to my ears, I recalled the question I had asked my grandpa so many times as we listened to the wrens for whom we had built so many birdhouses, beginning our construction efforts one muggy Midwest summer when I was seven.
As I strained to hear the whales, the seals, and the walruses dwelling in the deep, frigid darkness below the cracking, creaking ice, I realized just how much the question remained fundamental, defining my life.
“What are they saying?”
It informs my drive to listen completely, deeply, to all that is around me.
I wasn’t always good at this. In fact, I was a terrible listener. A noise-sensitive human (but not diagnosed with misophonia, which is now a common condition according to hearing wellness company Mumbli), I closed my ears to so much until, I learned that there were many in the world like me, and the issue fencing me in was HOW I was listening.
Narwhals, like me, are incredibly sensitive to sound. When I learned that there is a whale species in the Arctic that has such sensitivities, I felt a greater connection to the world beyond me.
And I learned that there’s a deeper, necessary question: Why, did I ask the question?
Why am I curious to know what the birds, the narwhals, what other animals are saying?
The building blocks that brought me to my doctoral research were music, athletics, and journalism. Annoyed by a lot of noises, I didn’t realize how these opportunities were shaping me, teaching me to listen. As a musician, I was listening to my instrument and the orchestra that surrounded me. As a runner, I was listening to the vibrations that penetrated my body with every step, and to the voices of my teammates.
As an undergraduate I was trained to investigate, gather, write, and disseminate information to the public concerning news events. I was listening.
Then, I earned my MFA, because I learned that the deeper question I was asking required that I try to hear our interconnectedness; story was the answer.
Now, adding acoustics to the mix, I explore sonic stories.
How can we locate compassion for self, for others, for our Earth home? Where does interconnectedness dwell?
I share acoustic ecoadventures with anyone willing to walk with me through the city to a park; people who like to hike or run with me up a mountain trail; individuals ready to sail with me on the sea. I’m not sure what label defines me, my interests, my work: auditor, a hearer, a listener; ecoacoustician somewhat embraces it, combining listening with the study of the effects of sound, and the ecology and wonder of place.
When I am not conducting research in the Arctic or running up a mountain trail, I am teaching compassion-centered courses at Florida Gulf Coast University, where I work with the university’s ROCK (Roots of Compassion and Kindness) Center to promote compassion, kindness, and empathy through education, action, and research.
Working from the vantage point of social purpose, I am just beginning to offer acoustic ecoadventures through my little shop called Cotton Wolf Company. This is how I hope to support compassionate listening in the world, alongside my research, teaching, and storytelling. I think that listening this way reconnects us to ourselves, to one another, to the natural world.
And I want to develop listening spaces and events for children, so they have protected, unspoiled opportunities to listen to all that is around them, supporting sonic experiences of place. Connecting with sounds, asking about their sources and exploring those sources, imitating them, creating simple instruments with our hands and exploring frequencies, harmonics, rhythm and rhyme is not just fun. As we create reciprocal relationships with the wind, the creatures, the water, the stones, with one another, we might develop better connections to, and appreciations for, ourselves. Self-compassion seems essential for development of compassion for everyone, and for everything around us.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
Choosing to care can change everything, and including self in the mix is essential.
Self-compassion is crucial to loving others. For such a big part of my life I thought of self-compassion as indulgent—selfish. But I have learned that when we train an overcritical eye on self, we tend to look out into the world that way, too. Fred Rogers in his lifetime had a lot to say about the way we treat ourselves as a catalyst for the way we treat others. Watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, children (well, all of us) were encouraged to think of self as friend—someone to whom kindness, help, and warmth would be offered without question. He asked children what it felt like when they were mean to a friend, and encouraged them to never be mean to any friend, including the friend called “self.” The lessons Mister Rogers inspired continue to be taught in the animated series on PBS called Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. In this updated and animated version of Mister Rogers’ neighborhood, Mister Rogers’ seemingly simple, but vital lessons about compassion, empathy, and kindness continue. Even though its content is for preschoolers, I’ve found joy in spending a few minutes once in awhile with Daniel Tiger.
There’s a wonderful book called “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.” I use it as a textbook when I teach. It was written by Karen Armstrong, who used her TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) prize funds in 2008 to help create the Charter for Compassion. Since its inception, the charter has become a global environment for learning, sharing, and support, situating compassion as central.
At Florida Gulf Coast University, where I have the privilege of being an instructor, there’s a new center called ROCK. The acronym stands for Roots of Compassion and Kindness. The impetus and director of The ROCK Center, Dr. Maria F. Loffredo Roca, explains better than anyone I know why a program about compassion should exist at a university. Her response is that of a hope carrier and incisive educator who embodies compassion:
“What better place to teach these topics? We are charged with helping create the citizens of the future. If we aren’t teaching our students to be compassionate in all aspects of their lives, I believe we are failing them. I have always believed that teaching in a university means developing the whole person, not just a person’s job skills. Compassionate habits of the heart are essential to building the whole person.”
My students and I have conversations about what it means to live in an interconnected world, and how working to build a more compassionate world helps us recognize and focus on the connections we share in our one human family versus on the things that separate us.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
The role I thought judgment played in our collective was so misguided.
Growing up I learned to assign the definition of judgment to an all-knowing deity, and aligned my perspectives about other humans to what I thought the deity’s perspective was. I gave myself the same rule book, which resulted in despising myself.
Although all faiths seem to maintain that compassion is the test of authentic spirituality (Karen Armstrong writes about this), some aren’t great at teaching humans concern for everyone. To really care (I continue to learn) means finding compassion for self, and then extending that compassion to everyone.
Although it is natural and so much easier to care for those individuals I identify as being part of my “group”—the familiar, things shifted immeasurably when I began to think about and practice caring for every … one. This practice, this learning, goes on, every day. It is a practice, and I still make so many mistakes. But to learn to care–to walk through life free from harshly judging others, and self, is a gift I wish I could give to everyone.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.andrealynn.me/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnD_71bAOG0STreC4kr9EQQ
- Other: https://www.cottonwolfcompany.com/