Maritime Commerce and Whale Risks Collective App
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Tutorial
Tutorial
1. Welcome to Jeopardy: Whale Health!. This game contains 5 different categories of questions concerning human impacts on whale health: Anatomy, Noise, Stress, Collisions, and Toxins. You are free to select any of the 20 multiple-choice questions and click on one of the 4 available answer options (A, B, C, or D) to log your answer. You can customize your learning experience by selecting questions in whatever order is most intuitive to you!
2. Each section has 4 questions, with increasing point values (200, 400, 600, 800) that correspond to increasing “uncomfortability.” Essentially, the questions are grouped together based on how much they challenge anthropocentrism and cause uncomfortability in the human user (you). Unlike typical Jeopardy, which rewards players for choosing increasingly difficult questions, this game rewards players for choosing to confront increasingly uncomfortable topics of anthropocentric shipping, pollution, and extractive practices, and their impacts on whale health. This approach was inspired by Katherine Hayles’ integrated cognitive framework (ICF), as described in the About Game section of this module.
3. If you select the correct answer, you'll earn the associated number of points. If you select an incorrect answer, you won't earn any points. Each question can only be answered once, so think carefully! After reading the corresponding explanation, you can select another question by selecting the “Exit” button.
4. You are encouraged to embrace the uncomfortability of this experience. Why are these questions uncomfortable? Please reflect on your perspective of humans and whales, and our interactions with one another. Once you've answered all 20 questions, the game will end, and your total score will be displayed.
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About Game
Theme & Critical Lense
This module builds on the larger website theme of whale life by exploring whale health and wellbeing. In particular, our module is focused on the role that anthropocentrism plays in perpetuating human activity that is harmful to whales. Anthropocentrism, broadly speaking, refers to the viewpoint that human life is more valuable and significant than other life forms. This viewpoint fuels extractivist and exploitative behaviour that harms the environment and animal life.
Drawing upon Katherine Hayles’ integrated cognitive framework (ICF), we challenge anthropocentrism by “humanizing” whales as independent actors in relation to humans. Our Jeopardy game on whale health causes users to confront the dehumanization of humans and simultaneous humanization of whales. Accordingly, users will re-learn cognition as something that is possessed by non-human species, including whales. To achieve this, the language of our Jeopardy questions refers to humans by their species name, Homo sapiens, and emphasize the human-like characteristics of whales. For example, instead of referring to young whales as "calves", we call them as "babies". Additionally, instead of rewarding more points for more difficult questions, we will more points for increasingly uncomfortable topics that challenge the user's anthropocentric values and biases. These questions look at the impact of shipping, pollution, and other human practices on whale health and wellbeing.
Hayles (2025) also argues that “cognitive assemblages,” or decision-making collectives of humans, nonhumans, and computational media, determine the choices that humans make. Humans’ decisions and ideas are formed and mediated by computational media (Hayles, 2025). Jeopardy, a game that has been traditionally framed as the intellectual pursuit of objective truths, is an example of a cognitive assemblage. By employing Jeopardy’s epistemic authority, our module reframes whale health not as an isolated environmental tragedy but as a consequence of widespread and harmful anthropocentrism.
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The Impact of Human Activity on Whales' Longterm Wellbeing
Jeopardy: Whale Health!
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Sources
CBC News. (2024). Baleen whales are being drowned out by ship noise pollution. https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/baleen-whale-ship-noise-pollution-1.7120701
Connor, S. (n.d.). The anatomy of a whale. BBC Earth. https://www.bbcearth.com/news/the-anatomy-of-a-whale Department of Conservation. (n.d.). Threats to whales. https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/marine-mammals/whales/threats/
Erbe, C., Dunlop, R. A., & Dolman, S. J. (2018). Effects of noise on marine mammals. In H. Slabbekoorn, R. J. Dooling, A. N. Popper, & R. R. Fay (Eds.), Effects of anthropogenic noise on animals (pp. 277–309). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8574-6_10
Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (n.d.). Threats to whales. https://baleinesendirect.org/en/discover/whales-future/threats/
Guan, Y. & Brookens, T. (2023). An overview of research efforts to understand the effects of underwater sound on cetaceans. Water Biology and Security, 2(2), 100141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watbs.2023.100141
Hayles, N. K. (2025). Bacteria to AI: Human futures with our nonhuman symbionts. University of Chicago Press. ProQuest Ebook Central. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mcmu/detail.action?docID=31887642
International Fund for Animal Welfare. (n.d.). Whales. https://www.ifaw.org/uk/animals/whales
Johnson, C. (n.d.). Whales on the move - mapping threats and solutions for our ocean giants. World Wildlife Fund. http://wwfwhales.org/news-stories/whales-on-the-move
Majestic Whale Encounters. (n.d.). Top 4 threats to whales. https://www.majesticwhaleencounters.com.au/top-4-threats-to-whales
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (n.d.). Whale anatomy. https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/whaleanatomy/
Rolland, R. M., Parks, S. E., Hunt, K. E., Castellote, M., Corkeron, P. J., Nowacek, D. P., Wasser, S. K., & Kraus, S. D. (2012). Evidence that ship noise increases stress in right whales. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1737), 2363–2368.
Washington State Academy of Sciences. (2020). Summary of key research findings about underwater noise and vessel disturbance. https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-09/reportwsas_srkw_summary.pdf
Whale and Dolphin Conservation. (n.d.). Their biggest threats. https://hval.whales.org/en/meet-the-whales/their-biggest-threats
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