The author included, near the end, a paragraph about me and my best friend the sonar operator who taught me a lot of what I know about cetacean communication in the 1970s. He was hunting soviet subs in 1962 and he saved us from a nuclear war during the October Missile Crisis because he had detected a sub that the Russians were thinking was not detectable. My friend had also conducted experimental acoustic interactions with cetaceans at sea.
If this article is interesting to you I highly recommend War of the Whales. It is an interesting look at Cold war science+politics and the environment. A decent part of the book is about SOSUS.
> the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), a complex array of hydrophones fixed on the ocean floor and connected by cables to secret listening stations set up along coasts all over the world.
No conspiracy needed, SOSUS was a known fact, the Soviet Union made attempts to find and disable the hydrophones, Tom Clancy wrote many a novel in which SOSUS was mentioned or played a role, etc. It was the ocean equivalent of the Key Hole satellites, used to monitor the movements of Soviet 'boomers' - nuclear missile subs.