Data from two acoustic monitoring networks operating off New England in an area frequented by whales reveal acoustic features of those habitats. These seafloor and moored systems continuously sample the acoustic environment, and resultant data provide mechanisms for mapping, quantifying, and describing the spatio-spectral-temporal variability of the acoustic habitat over ecologically meaningful scales. By focusing on species-specific frequency bands used by fin, humpback, and right whales for long-range communication, we are beginning to measure the acoustic dynamics of their primary communication channels. Results reveal the extent to which different sources of sound in the ocean, both natural and man-made, influence the probability of whale communication. In some habitats with high rates of vessel traffic and high levels of vessel noise, the predicted area over which animals can communicate is reduced to a small proportion of what it would be under quiet conditions. The dynamics of this masking effect are highly variable and vary by species. When considered from a large-scale and behavioral ecological perspective, this reduction in acoustic habitat, as measured in terms of the proportional loss of communication space, likely represents a significant loss for species in which acoustic communication is known to serve critical biological functions.