I am saddened by how long we've known about cetacean communications--decades--and how little progress there's been, given the giant strides tech has made in DSP and pattern matching. If only we applied a fraction of the tech effort we put into cell phones or weapons.
People seem to be generally highly apathetic to notion that anything other than humans might exhibit complex behaviors worth studying. It probably doesn't help that there's money in cell phones and weapons, but you can't even convince people to stop killing dolphins, never mind learn something about them.
I also have to wonder if there's some deep dread that we're going to learn just what a crime our treatment of quite a few species has been, and continues to be. If we face it, gather evidence to support what is currently only a series of likely hypotheses, we might have to change our behavior or learn ugly truths about ourselves.