[iwar] [fc:Whales'.Deaths.Linked.To.Navy's.Sonar.Tests]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-12-31 13:22:21
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 13:22:21 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Whales'.Deaths.Linked.To.Navy's.Sonar.Tests]
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Washington Post
December 31, 2001Whales' Deaths Linked To Navy's Sonar Tests
By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer 
The mysterious mass stranding of 16 whales in the Bahamas in March 2000 was
caused by U.S. Navy tests in which intense underwater sounds were generated
for 16 hours, according to a newly released government report compiled by
civilian and military scientists.
The report's conclusions mark the first time that underwater noise other
than from an explosion has been shown to cause fatal trauma in marine
mammals. The military's acknowledgment of responsibility also marks a sharp
departure from earlier statements by the Navy, which had denied
responsibility for the Bahamian beachings and other mass strandings of
marine mammals that coincided with sonar exercises.
Experts said the study -- which relied on an elaborate airlift of frozen
whale heads from the Bahamas to a Harvard Medical School X-ray facility --
places the Navy on notice that it will have to balance more carefully its
need to conduct underwater sonar tests against the need to protect marine
mammals. The report, approved by Navy Secretary Gordon R. England, concludes
that the Navy should "put into place mitigation measures that will protect
animals to the maximum extent practical" during peacetime training and
research efforts.
But the report also allows for the suspension of such protections in the
interest of "national security," a broad exemption that has yet to be
defined in practice. And it does not answer the contentious question of
whether marine wildlife may also be imperiled by a different kind of sonar
test proposed by the Navy, one that would involve much lower-frequency sound
waves in the ocean.
The latest report, a joint project of the Navy and the National Marine
Fisheries Service, grew out of the beaching of 16 whales and a spotted
dolphin on Bahamian shores over 36 hours starting March 15, 2000. Seven of
the animals -- five Cuvier's beaked whales, one Blainville's beaked whale
and the dolphin -- died. Ten other whales were pushed back to sea, and their
fates are unknown. The international group that lists threatened and
endangered species classifies the beaked whales as being too poorly
understood to know whether they are endangered.
The strandings coincided with a nearby Navy exercise meant to improve
coordination among ships sailing through enemy-infested channels. The test
involved middle-frequency (about 3,000 to 7,000 cycles per second) sonar
studies in which underwater noises of about 230 decibels were generated. For
comparison purposes, engineers have calculated that if Luciano Pavarotti
could sing underwater, his voice would register at about 173 decibels.
Tissue damage in sea animals is known to occur at about 10 times that sound
intensity, or 180 decibels (the decibel scale increases logarithmically),
and a 230-decibel sonar sound is about 100,000 times louder than that.
The cause of death in the Bahamian strandings may have remained unsettled
had it not been for Ken Balcomb, who with his wife, Diane Claridge, runs the
Bahamas Marine Mammal Survey on the Bahamian island of Abaco.
"The first whales stranded right in front of our research station," Balcomb
said last week. He and others worked furiously to push surviving animals
back to sea. But he also knew that studies of the cause of death in previous
strandings had been inconclusive because of a lack of preserved tissues --
in particular intact whale heads, which can allow careful study of the inner
ears and other pressure-sensitive organs.
So when Balcomb and his colleagues heard about two whales that were already
dead on the beach, they did not waste any time cutting off the animals'
heads.
"We went to the local restaurant and persuaded them to put them in the
freezer," he said -- a big request, as each head was about four feet long
and weighed a couple of hundred pounds.
National Marine Fisheries Service scientists flew out to study the beached
carcasses. But to obtain a more definitive diagnosis, arrangements were made
with Darlene Ketten, a whale hearing specialist with Harvard's department of
otology and laryngology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to
perform three-dimensional CT scan studies of the frozen heads.
Balcomb got the whale heads to Miami on a chartered plane and booked himself
a seat on a flight to Boston. The mission was briefly jeopardized when the
airline balked at the 600 pounds of thawing, excess baggage, Balcomb said.
But a sympathetic skycap gave providential advice: Upgrade to first class.
Balcomb did, smoothing the way for the heads' final leg of travel.
"We got there at 11 p.m. and we did scans all night," Balcomb recalled. "By
3 a.m., the damage was evident."
The X-ray studies showed bleeding around the inner ears, along with trauma
to the auditory system and parts of the brain and throat sensitive to
intense pressures. In one animal, the ligament that holds an eardrum-like
membrane taut had ruptured, evidence of having been exposed to a powerful
physical force. Other studies found that all but one of the animals had been
healthy (the dolphin was diseased, and its demise has not been linked to the
Navy), and the report ruled out other causes of injury, such as physical
strikes by ships or underwater seismic events.
"There's no question that these tactical mid-range sonars were the sound
source that caused the trauma," said Roger Gentry, who heads the acoustical
research team for the National Marine Fisheries Service, an agency of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It remains unclear whether the whales were fatally injured by the sounds
themselves or whether the sound-related injuries disoriented the animals,
sending them ashore, where they overheated and drowned, said David
Cottingham, NMFS's deputy director of protected resources.
Also uncertain is the fate of the 10 whales pushed back to sea. Balcomb, who
has maintained photographic records of all whales in the region for the past
10 years, said he has not seen those 10 or any other beaked whales since the
week of the strandings, leading him to believe that at least some died.
Navy spokesman Patrick McNally said the Navy believes that the injuries were
caused by the unique characteristics of Bahamian underwater topography and
other factors, and that similar tests may still be appropriate in other
waters. Meanwhile, the Navy is instituting new policies to prevent such
injuries, he said, and will increase funding of marine mammal research to $9
million in the coming year.
The Navy is expected to get federal permission to conduct tests of a
low-frequency (100 to 500 cycles per second) sonar system early next year --
permission that environmental groups have promised to fight.

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