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For other species, less noise pollution is no doubt welcome. Michelle Fournet, a marine ecologist at Cornell who studies acoustic environments, is hoping to position underwater microphones off the coast of Alaska and Florida, where she has studied humpback whales and other marine life, to investigate how the waters have changed in the absence of noise from cruise ships as the industry suspends operations worldwide.

“Just pulling those cruise ships out of the water is going to reduce the amount of global ocean noise almost instantaneously,” Fournet told me. “We’re experiencing an unprecedented pause in ocean noise that probably hasn’t been experienced in decades.”

Read: It’s tough being a right whale these days

Research has shown that ambient noise from ships and other maritime traffic can increase stress-hormone levels in marine creatures, which can affect their reproductive success. Whales have even shown they can adapt to the din, pausing their singing when cargo ships are near and resuming when they move away.

The unexpected ecological moment brought on by the pandemic reminds Fournet of an accidental experiment that unfolded in the days after 9/11, when ship traffic in North American waters ground to a halt. Researchers working in Canada’s Bay of Fundy—already making recordings and taking samples before the terrorist attacks—eventually found that over the course of just a few days, when the noisy waters calmed, right whales in the bay experienced a drop in their stress-level hormones.