It was that most celebrated of conteuses, the legendary Mrs Patrick Campbell, who famously remarked about three quarters of a century ago: "I don't mind where people make love, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses."
A somewhat similar attitude prevailed among marine conservationists a year or two ago when they heard of ATOC, the latest trick by climatologists to monitor global warming. They were afraid it might disturb the whales.
ATOC stands for Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate, and uses the speed of sound to measure ocean temperature. The technique is based on the principle that sound travels faster in warm water than it does in cold water: it follows therefore, that the time taken for a pulse of sound to travel from one spot to another is a measure of the average temperature of the intervening ocean.
To implement the technique, a very powerful "loudspeaker" is lowered some distance beneath the surface of the sea, and short bursts of low-frequency sound are transmitted at very high volume.
As it happens, the structure of the ocean is such that the sound is channelled in a shallow layer at a depth of about one kilometre; temperature variations near the surface and pressure variations lower down both "reflect" the sound waves, so they do not dissipate as otherwise they might.
A pulse transmitted from Antarctica, therefore, might be detected in Bermuda a little over three hours later - but the precise time would depend on the average temperature of the ocean in between. By comparing observations taken over months, or even years, scientists hoped to be able to detect any gradual trend towards warmer oceans.
ATOC has now been in use experimentally for about two years, and the results are most encouraging. Theory had suggested that the technique should work up to a range of about 2,000 miles, but in practice it has been found to be effective at distances in excess of 3,000 miles.
As a result, scientists are able to estimate ocean temperature to within 0.006 of a degree Celsius, which makes the technique a very sensitive detector of any global warming. Of course, measurements will have to continue for at least another decade before any trend can be identified.
Initially, it seems, the US National Fisheries Service looked askance at ATOC, and called a halt for fear that all that noise might cause discomfort to the denizens of the deep. Extensive tests, however, failed to produce any evidence of harm, and so the experimenters had leave to continue with their work.