Spinning Dead Whales
Danny | 03.04.2006 15:09 | Animal Liberation | Anti-militarism | Ecology
A US study into a mass stranding of whales in North Carlina last year during naval exercises has just been published. The top two links to the story on Google give the impression Naval sonar was found not to be to blame. However, the navy was using active sonar at the time, and the report does state that naval sonar could have been to blame since no other possible explanation was found. Naval sonar was found to be to blame for many other mass-strandings, including most recently on the Costa del Sol in January. In February there has been another mass-stranding in Indonesia - again duing joint naval exercises with the US navy using active sonar.
As one scientist said "A deaf whale is a dead whale." I think it is time environmentalists team up with anti-war protestors to overcome this ongoing spin. We should hit the UK naval active sonar programme, specifically the Qinetiq base at Kyle of Lochalsh, which also refits ships bound for the gulf. Anyone interested in a little constructive destruction ?
As one scientist said "A deaf whale is a dead whale." I think it is time environmentalists team up with anti-war protestors to overcome this ongoing spin. We should hit the UK naval active sonar programme, specifically the Qinetiq base at Kyle of Lochalsh, which also refits ships bound for the gulf. Anyone interested in a little constructive destruction ?
Top two links on googlenews :
Study fails to link naval sonar with whale strandings
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8922
Sonar Not at Fault in 2005 Whale Stranding http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,92741,00.html
Actual Story:
GOVERNMENT REPORT ON MASS WHALE STRANDING IN N.C. IDENTIFIES NAVAL SONAR AS POSSIBLE CAUSE
http://www.nrdc.org/media/#0329a
LOS ANGELES (March 29, 2006) -- A report today by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on the 2005 mass stranding of whales in North Carolina identifies sonar operated by the U.S. Navy as a possible cause of the incident. The report also excludes most other causes. The following is a statement about the report by Michael Jasny, a senior consultant to NRDC: "Today's report by the federal government establishes that sonar was a possible cause of the January 2005 mass stranding in which 37 whales of three different species died, and that most other possible causes were not in play. The report establishes that sonar was used in the vicinity of the strandings and that the timing was right for sonar to have caused them. It confirms that the event itself was highly unusual, being the only mass stranding of offshore species ever to have been reported in the region; and that it shared 'a number of features' with other sonar-related mass stranding events (offshore species, stranding alive, atypically distributed). Finally, investigators appear to have eliminated many other potential causes, including viral, bacterial, and protozoal infection, direct blunt trauma, and fishery interactions. However, it is rare that a stranding investigation gives definitive proof of a connection with sonar. The report released by NMFS today shows once again that this problem endemic to stranding investigations remains true."
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/health/umese0501sp.pdf [13.1mb]
Report on marine mammal unusual mortality event UMESE0501Sp: Multispecies mass stranding of pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus), minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), and dwarf sperm whales (Kogia sima) in North Carolina on 15-16 January 2005.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/prot_res/readingrm/MMSURTASS/Res_Wkshp_Rpt_Fin.PDF
Nonetheless, the event was associated in time and space with naval activity using mid-frequency active sonar. It also had a number of features in common (e.g., the "atypical" distribution of strandings involving multiple offshore species, all stranding alive, and without evidence of common infectious or other disease process) with other sonar-related cetacean mass stranding events. Given that this event was the only stranding of offshore species to occur within a 2-3 day period in the region on record (i.e., a very rare event), and given the occurrence of the event simultaneously in time and space with a naval exercise using active sonar, the association between the naval sonar activity and the location and timing of the event could be a causal rather than a coincidental relationship. However, evidence supporting a definitive association is lacking, and, in particular, there are differences in operational/environmental characteristics between this event and previous events where sonar has apparently played a role in marine mammal strandings. This does not preclude behavorial avoidance of noise exposure.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060327/full/440593a.html
More whale strandings are linked to sonar
Examinations of four whales found stranded along the Spanish coast in January seem to confirm a 2003 Nature report linking sonar to the deaths of several beaked whales.
In recent years, naval sonar devices have been the suspected cause of an increasing number of whale strandings worldwide. The whales are thought to take evasive action to avoid the noise, sometimes diving and surfacing until they suffer decompression sickness and die.
In 2003, British and Spanish researchers reported that Cuvier's beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris), stranded off the Canary Islands the previous year, had deadly gas-bubble lesions called emboli in their livers. They suggested these were caused by decompression (P. D. Jepson et al. Nature 425, 575–576; 2003).
After a group of beaked whales went ashore in January, along Spain's Costa del Sol, the Spanish Cetacean Society in Madrid called veterinarian Antonio Fernandez to perform necropsies on four of the animals. He and his colleagues from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria found the same embolic syndrome as that found in the 2003 study...Earlier this month, about 45 pilot whales died after stranding on the western side of the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, following joint US and Indonesian naval exercises in the nearby Macassar Strait. The cause of the stranding is under investigation. Some US Navy officials, and oceanographers who use devices to generate air bursts underwater for seismic studies, have been accused of blocking efforts to uncover the links between noise and whale strandings
Navy denies killing Thames whale
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-2005730,00.html
Why the Navy's Conclusions About the Safety of LFAS Are Scientifically Flawed
http://www.oceanmammalinst.org/navyconclusionsflawed.html
Scientists’ Comments on the Navy’s Assertion that 180 dB is a Safe LFAS Exposure Level for Marine Mammals
http://www.oceanmammalinst.org/scientists-comments-180db.htm
U.S. Marine Mammal Commission - Annual Report for 1997
Page 169 - Low Frequency Active Sonar
"the possible effects could include:
* death from lung hemmorrhage or other tissue trauma;
* temporary or permanent hearing loss or impairment;
* disruption of feeding, breeding, nursing, acoustic communication and sensing, or other vital behavior and, if the disruption is severe, frequent, or long lasting, possible decreases in individual survival and productivity and corresponding decreases in population size and productivity;
* annoyance and subsequent abandonment or avoidance of traditional feeding, breeding, or other biologically important habitats and, if suitable alternative habitats are not available nearby, decreases in both individual survival and productivity and in population size and productivity;
* psychological and physiological stress, making animals more vulnerable to disease, parasites, predation; and
* changes in the distribution abundance, or productivity of important marine mammal prey species and subsequent decreases in both individual marine mammal survival and productivity and in population size and productivity."
Lindy Weilgart, Ph.D.
Research Associate
Dept. of Biology
Dalhousie Univ.
Halifax, Nova Scotia
I have about 17 years experience in the field of whale bioacoustics, having studied both sperm whale and pilot whale vocalizations. My M.Sc., Ph.D., and subsequent post-doctoral research were in this particular field of expertise. I have also reviewed a EIS that likewise concerned the problem of undersea noise pollution, namely the ATOC project's EIS. As appalled as I was at the ATOC EIS's many errors, misrepresentations, and minimization of risk, the LFA EIS makes ATOC's look positively nvironmentally enlightened. I am so overwhelmed at the phenomenal lack of honesty, and therefore uselessness, of this document, that I do not know where to begin with my comments. What is glaringly absent throughout this EIS, is a lack of acknowledgment of the profound ignorance that exists about the effects of sound on marine life. There may be the odd sentence here and there in the EIS that pays lip service to the paucity of our information, but this concept is quickly forgotten when the nice and neat mathematical models are pulled out that provide us with howlers such as "...below 120 dB the risk [of non-injurious harassment] was zero." (p. ES-10). There is absolutely no basis for this assumption in the real world. The EIS cites the results of its LFS SRP (Low Frequency Sound Scientific Research Program) as "validity" for its models, but, as the Navy has been warned again and again even before undertaking these studies, the results of this research can not be used to show the absence of harmful effects of LFAS on any marine life. The reasons for this are: a) not knowing or observing an effect is not the same as "no effect"; b) studies were only short-term (over weeks) and did not examine long-term effects on population parameters like birth rates, growth rates, and death rates, which are the most biologically significant effects; c) the LFS SRP did show some potentially serious effects (decrease in number of calling fin and blue whales, avoidance of LFAS for inshore migrating grey whales, half of humpbacks studied ceased singing temporarily), which could have dire consequences for the health of whale populations but this would be extremely difficult to ascertain; d) only four species of whale were studied and not the most vulnerable deep divers; e) the LFAS was not used at its full operational power level for the SRP; f) no examination of the effects of LFAS on ecological processes was made. The only information that the LFS SRP showed us was that whales eren't visibly harmed outright, which is all but meaningless.
Most disturbingly, this EIS fails to mention the only open-and-shut case we do know of which clearly demonstrates an undeniably biologically significant effect (i.e. death) of LFAS or even noise pollution in general--the Frantzis (1998) paper in which 13 Cuvier's beaked whales died in the Mediterranean. These deaths were as conclusively tied to LFAS transmissions (both in timing of transmissions and movement of the broadcasting vessel) as is possible in any natural system. Bear in mind that this was just one case that happened to have been observed and correlated to LFAS by an astute independent scientist. How many more such cases happen in the vast ocean or on remote shores that we know nothing about? The fact that the Navy in its EIS is assiduously avoiding any mention, even a citation, of this vital study in the world's most major scientific, peer-reviewed journal, speaks volumes. I realize that the Navy, in its panic over this study, will attempt to argue that the NATO LFAS is different from the U.S. Navy's LFAS. Yes, the NATO LFAS used a dual frequency system with concurrent transmission of broadband waveforms centered at 600 Hz and 3 kHz (SACLANTCEN Newsletter, No. 4, Dec. 1996-April 1997), but we have absolutely no information as to which frequency characteristics (or other sound characteristics) caused this reaction in the beaked whales. Besides, the transmissions were broadband and thus it is simply unacceptable for the U.S. Navy to argue that only the higher frequency of the NATO LFAS was responsible for this tragedy. This serious omission casts grave doubts about the Navy's sincerity, commitment, or trustworthiness in protecting the marine environment.
Study fails to link naval sonar with whale strandings
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8922 Sonar Not at Fault in 2005 Whale Stranding
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,92741,00.html Actual Story:
GOVERNMENT REPORT ON MASS WHALE STRANDING IN N.C. IDENTIFIES NAVAL SONAR AS POSSIBLE CAUSE
http://www.nrdc.org/media/#0329a LOS ANGELES (March 29, 2006) -- A report today by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on the 2005 mass stranding of whales in North Carolina identifies sonar operated by the U.S. Navy as a possible cause of the incident. The report also excludes most other causes. The following is a statement about the report by Michael Jasny, a senior consultant to NRDC: "Today's report by the federal government establishes that sonar was a possible cause of the January 2005 mass stranding in which 37 whales of three different species died, and that most other possible causes were not in play. The report establishes that sonar was used in the vicinity of the strandings and that the timing was right for sonar to have caused them. It confirms that the event itself was highly unusual, being the only mass stranding of offshore species ever to have been reported in the region; and that it shared 'a number of features' with other sonar-related mass stranding events (offshore species, stranding alive, atypically distributed). Finally, investigators appear to have eliminated many other potential causes, including viral, bacterial, and protozoal infection, direct blunt trauma, and fishery interactions. However, it is rare that a stranding investigation gives definitive proof of a connection with sonar. The report released by NMFS today shows once again that this problem endemic to stranding investigations remains true."
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/health/umese0501sp.pdf [13.1mb] Report on marine mammal unusual mortality event UMESE0501Sp: Multispecies mass stranding of pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus), minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), and dwarf sperm whales (Kogia sima) in North Carolina on 15-16 January 2005.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/prot_res/readingrm/MMSURTASS/Res_Wkshp_Rpt_Fin.PDF Nonetheless, the event was associated in time and space with naval activity using mid-frequency active sonar. It also had a number of features in common (e.g., the "atypical" distribution of strandings involving multiple offshore species, all stranding alive, and without evidence of common infectious or other disease process) with other sonar-related cetacean mass stranding events. Given that this event was the only stranding of offshore species to occur within a 2-3 day period in the region on record (i.e., a very rare event), and given the occurrence of the event simultaneously in time and space with a naval exercise using active sonar, the association between the naval sonar activity and the location and timing of the event could be a causal rather than a coincidental relationship. However, evidence supporting a definitive association is lacking, and, in particular, there are differences in operational/environmental characteristics between this event and previous events where sonar has apparently played a role in marine mammal strandings. This does not preclude behavorial avoidance of noise exposure.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060327/full/440593a.html More whale strandings are linked to sonar
Examinations of four whales found stranded along the Spanish coast in January seem to confirm a 2003 Nature report linking sonar to the deaths of several beaked whales.
In recent years, naval sonar devices have been the suspected cause of an increasing number of whale strandings worldwide. The whales are thought to take evasive action to avoid the noise, sometimes diving and surfacing until they suffer decompression sickness and die.
In 2003, British and Spanish researchers reported that Cuvier's beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris), stranded off the Canary Islands the previous year, had deadly gas-bubble lesions called emboli in their livers. They suggested these were caused by decompression (P. D. Jepson et al. Nature 425, 575–576; 2003).
After a group of beaked whales went ashore in January, along Spain's Costa del Sol, the Spanish Cetacean Society in Madrid called veterinarian Antonio Fernandez to perform necropsies on four of the animals. He and his colleagues from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria found the same embolic syndrome as that found in the 2003 study...Earlier this month, about 45 pilot whales died after stranding on the western side of the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, following joint US and Indonesian naval exercises in the nearby Macassar Strait. The cause of the stranding is under investigation. Some US Navy officials, and oceanographers who use devices to generate air bursts underwater for seismic studies, have been accused of blocking efforts to uncover the links between noise and whale strandings
Navy denies killing Thames whale
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-2005730,00.html Why the Navy's Conclusions About the Safety of LFAS Are Scientifically Flawed
http://www.oceanmammalinst.org/navyconclusionsflawed.html Scientists’ Comments on the Navy’s Assertion that 180 dB is a Safe LFAS Exposure Level for Marine Mammals
http://www.oceanmammalinst.org/scientists-comments-180db.htm U.S. Marine Mammal Commission - Annual Report for 1997
Page 169 - Low Frequency Active Sonar
"the possible effects could include:
* death from lung hemmorrhage or other tissue trauma;
* temporary or permanent hearing loss or impairment;
* disruption of feeding, breeding, nursing, acoustic communication and sensing, or other vital behavior and, if the disruption is severe, frequent, or long lasting, possible decreases in individual survival and productivity and corresponding decreases in population size and productivity;
* annoyance and subsequent abandonment or avoidance of traditional feeding, breeding, or other biologically important habitats and, if suitable alternative habitats are not available nearby, decreases in both individual survival and productivity and in population size and productivity;
* psychological and physiological stress, making animals more vulnerable to disease, parasites, predation; and
* changes in the distribution abundance, or productivity of important marine mammal prey species and subsequent decreases in both individual marine mammal survival and productivity and in population size and productivity."
Lindy Weilgart, Ph.D.
Research Associate
Dept. of Biology
Dalhousie Univ.
Halifax, Nova Scotia
I have about 17 years experience in the field of whale bioacoustics, having studied both sperm whale and pilot whale vocalizations. My M.Sc., Ph.D., and subsequent post-doctoral research were in this particular field of expertise. I have also reviewed a EIS that likewise concerned the problem of undersea noise pollution, namely the ATOC project's EIS. As appalled as I was at the ATOC EIS's many errors, misrepresentations, and minimization of risk, the LFA EIS makes ATOC's look positively nvironmentally enlightened. I am so overwhelmed at the phenomenal lack of honesty, and therefore uselessness, of this document, that I do not know where to begin with my comments. What is glaringly absent throughout this EIS, is a lack of acknowledgment of the profound ignorance that exists about the effects of sound on marine life. There may be the odd sentence here and there in the EIS that pays lip service to the paucity of our information, but this concept is quickly forgotten when the nice and neat mathematical models are pulled out that provide us with howlers such as "...below 120 dB the risk [of non-injurious harassment] was zero." (p. ES-10). There is absolutely no basis for this assumption in the real world. The EIS cites the results of its LFS SRP (Low Frequency Sound Scientific Research Program) as "validity" for its models, but, as the Navy has been warned again and again even before undertaking these studies, the results of this research can not be used to show the absence of harmful effects of LFAS on any marine life. The reasons for this are: a) not knowing or observing an effect is not the same as "no effect"; b) studies were only short-term (over weeks) and did not examine long-term effects on population parameters like birth rates, growth rates, and death rates, which are the most biologically significant effects; c) the LFS SRP did show some potentially serious effects (decrease in number of calling fin and blue whales, avoidance of LFAS for inshore migrating grey whales, half of humpbacks studied ceased singing temporarily), which could have dire consequences for the health of whale populations but this would be extremely difficult to ascertain; d) only four species of whale were studied and not the most vulnerable deep divers; e) the LFAS was not used at its full operational power level for the SRP; f) no examination of the effects of LFAS on ecological processes was made. The only information that the LFS SRP showed us was that whales eren't visibly harmed outright, which is all but meaningless.
Most disturbingly, this EIS fails to mention the only open-and-shut case we do know of which clearly demonstrates an undeniably biologically significant effect (i.e. death) of LFAS or even noise pollution in general--the Frantzis (1998) paper in which 13 Cuvier's beaked whales died in the Mediterranean. These deaths were as conclusively tied to LFAS transmissions (both in timing of transmissions and movement of the broadcasting vessel) as is possible in any natural system. Bear in mind that this was just one case that happened to have been observed and correlated to LFAS by an astute independent scientist. How many more such cases happen in the vast ocean or on remote shores that we know nothing about? The fact that the Navy in its EIS is assiduously avoiding any mention, even a citation, of this vital study in the world's most major scientific, peer-reviewed journal, speaks volumes. I realize that the Navy, in its panic over this study, will attempt to argue that the NATO LFAS is different from the U.S. Navy's LFAS. Yes, the NATO LFAS used a dual frequency system with concurrent transmission of broadband waveforms centered at 600 Hz and 3 kHz (SACLANTCEN Newsletter, No. 4, Dec. 1996-April 1997), but we have absolutely no information as to which frequency characteristics (or other sound characteristics) caused this reaction in the beaked whales. Besides, the transmissions were broadband and thus it is simply unacceptable for the U.S. Navy to argue that only the higher frequency of the NATO LFAS was responsible for this tragedy. This serious omission casts grave doubts about the Navy's sincerity, commitment, or trustworthiness in protecting the marine environment.
Danny
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
Possibe, BUT (a very big but)
03.04.2006 23:11
While it is certainly plausible that naval high energy sonar, etc. are causing some whale strandings it would be most peculiar if they were the sole or even most common cause.
The problem is ---- sonar is only perhaps 70 years old. Could not have been the reason for whale strandings that took place 80 years ago, 180 years ago, 800 years ago. And we certainly do have records of whale strandings going way back. Presumably whatever mechanisms that caused pre sonar whale strandings might be causeing some of the whale strandings today and sonar. etc. perhaps responsible for ADDITIONAL whale strandings.
Mike Novack
e-mail:
stepbystpefarm mtdata.com
at 180 dB the human eardrum will burst
04.04.2006 00:15
However, the use of this new type of active sonar has been proven to cause previous mass beachings on several occassions, amongst a species of whale that rarely beach in a group. Just a month or so ago in the Costa Del Sol for instance, it is getting more regular as the snoar use becomes widespread. And there have been even more occasions where the active sonar is used where there have been simultaneous mass beachings, such as the North Carolina case where no direct link can be proven. You have to realise though, getting the navy to accept blame today is like getting the cigarette companies to admit cigarettes cause cancer 30 years ago. Even today most third world countries don't have health warnings on cigarettes. So the navy use this new type of sonar, and there are beachings. Some of these beachings are directly proven to be from the sonar, while some of them aren't. Those that aren't aren't proven to be linked to any other cause. Consistently the navy have lied and denied even the subsequently proven case, and have been exposed as scientists as liars.
I know more about physics than biology, although I forced myself to read through those reports before I posted here, and I asked biologist friends for help explaining what I didn't understand. Let me explain the sonar though. Low Frequency Active Sonar is a technology developed to detect 'silent submarines' but which also kills whales and other sealife. The Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System-Low Frequency Active (SURTASS-LFA) sonar emits a 180 dB 'ping' for 1 minute. The SURTASS-LFA website states: "The risk continuum presented in the SURTASS-LFA Environmental Impact Study estimates that 95 percent of the marine animals exposed to a single ping in water of 180 dB re 1uPa could suffer a risk of significant change in a biologically important behavior." (ie they die). They go deaf from limited repeated exposure - deafness is fatal to a whale, or in close exposure they rush to the surface and group tight, they panic, they beach - it is like stampeding bison over cliffs by firing a huge horn next to them. Sometimes their blood shows nitrogen damage similar to the 'bends' in humans - this may be due to rising too quickly or it may be due to the direct effect of the sonar on gases in their bodies, opinion is divided.
Bearing in mind whales hearing is sensitive to listen over oceans and ours isn't, what is the loudest rock concert you have been at ? 140 decibels is as loud as a space-shuttle launch and at 180 dB the human eardrum will burst. Each 3db increase in noise reduces our ability to handle that noise by half. ( ie the legal work noise limit of 85 dB for 8 hours is when increased to 88 dB is permissible for only 4 hours)
"The LFA system has 18 projectors, or sound sources, each capable of transmitting sound at a level of approximately 215 dB between 100 and 500 Hz. Because it is an array, if one looks at LFA from a distance, it will appear to have an “effective source level” on the order of 230 to 240 dB. However, in the actual water column, no portion of the ocean will experience sound levels greater than 215 dB."
Danny
Action against sonar
04.04.2006 12:43
Quinetiq is one of the companies that are attending Marelec. Qinetiq is also the main sponsor of the exhibitors floor. (from a posting here I understand that there is protest against Qinetiq?? Please post action reports at Indymedia Netherlands....)
Click on this link for a list of all UK companies involved in this military fair:
Peace and animal liberation,
Ontwapen!/Disarm!
ontwapen!/disarm!
e-mail:
ontwapen@hypocrisy.org
Homepage:
http://www.ontwapen.org
1st International Day of Action Against Sonar !
04.04.2006 14:31
We don't have an action organised here yet but I'm sure we could arrange something in the next weeks to coincide. If only 4 or 5 folk here sign up to hit each Qinetiq naval base here then we could either block each base, or, my preference, smash them up a bit. Security is lame at Qinetiq, I drove into their Kyle base once and walked in twice. And if the sea-going, well-equipped Greeenpeace folk can be persuaded to join in then it could be a major 'cross-campaign' event in both the UK and the Nederlands. It is always worthwhile linking up differing groups of activists to focus our effect.
If noone is interested in the UK action in time then I'll come to the arms fair in Amsterdam and get arrested there.
Danny