Naval Sonar and the Right Whales

Voices – either animal or human – must be heard if we are to sustain our planet. In St. Marys, Georgia, a small group of people came together to create a curbside recycling program: one that now boasts extraordinarily high compliance rates. This group became the St. Marys EarthKeepers and its membership continues to grow as citizens realize the power and hope of positive change.

We are now faced with an issue that transcends local concerns and speaks to all people of this planet. The heartrending list of extinct and endangered species mounts - and none among us can count the cost to our environment or our collective souls. Members of the St. Marys EarthKeepers have contacted legions of Federal, State and local elected officials and have spoken with dozens of national and international environmental agencies: all are appalled, all are “looking into the matter”…and meanwhile the clock ticks out the remaining moments of the right whale’s existence.
The people of Georgia and Florida must decide whether they will allow the implementation of a monumental decision that goes by the name of “Progress” and yet is, in truth, a profound step backward in terms of species survival. Our area is the proud host to the endangered right whale (among other marine genus) and the very existence of that regal and fragile species is at grave and immediate risk. If the Navy’s plan to create a massive sonar testing range in the heart of the right whale calving grounds is realized, we will condemn the entire species to certain extinction. Can we withstand that shame? Can we, knowingly, violate the trust of those treasured creatures while looking into the eyes of our children?

The presence of the right whale in our waters is both privilege and a benison. We must act now; we must speak for this silent wanderer or we, and they, will pay the ultimate price.

On Wednesday, November 12, 2008 the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Navy is allowed to conduct sonar-training exercises off the southern California coast without restrictions designed to protect whales, dolphins and other marine mammals. In an effort to save the whales, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) had sued to stop the Navy from conducting operations in areas of “environmental fragility” but the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5–4 ruling, dismissed the suit, thus giving the Navy free rein to continue blasting sound waves despite the devastating impact upon marine life.

The Supreme Court’s egregious decision consigned 37 species of marine mammals, including sea lions and endangered blue and right whales, to certain peril. This unconscionable ruling sets a precedent thus opening the doors to the expansion of the East Coast training facilities that the Navy proposes, including a massive sonar training range along the ocean bottom between North Carolina and Florida.

While the Navy insisted that there has been no documented “direct injuries” to whales due to sonar, it estimates that the proposed offshore Jacksonville sonar testing would cause in excess of 170,000 disruptions of marine mammal behavior. This erroneous conclusion appears to have been pulled from thin air for the Navy offered no comprehensive environmental impact evidence with which to bolster their claim. Be that as it may, any disruption of migratory patterns spells the end of the right whales.
Noise is far more detrimental to marine mammals than to terrestrial creatures, for hearing is their primary sense - and because sound travels so well in water, the noise could be 50 kilometres away but still seem like it is just around the corner.
Marine noise is not a new phenomenon, of course: natural noises occur in the oceans constantly, including earthquakes, storms and singing baleen whales. However, it is the man-made noises that are causing problems - in particular, military sonar and the use of seismic testing for oil and gas exploration.
The Navy uses sonar to detect enemy submarines: the sounds are emitted across the ocean and bounce back when they hit an object. The lower the frequency of the sounds, the further they travel. At present, mid-frequency active sonar (MFA) is in widespread use and low frequency active sonar (LFA) is being developed for use by the US and its allies. LFA sonar can generate one of the loudest sounds that it is possible for humans to make.
Mid-frequency sonar can cause whales to make a dramatic change in behavior. On hearing sonar, whales may dive or rise deeply and rapidly. This can cause a form of decompression sickness, also known as 'the bends', resulting in sometimes fatal damage to the lungs, brain and ears. Thus the much-documented "Cetacean Brain-bleed Phenomenon" witnessed and duly documented in the presence of naval sonar.
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) recently released a report that backs up previous claims of the harm that sonar can do. The report adamantly states that the noise produced by the military is damaging to cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) and in particular, rare beaked and right whales.
The report cites recent cases, such as the unusual behavior in Hawaii of 200 melon-headed whales (Peponocephala electra) in July 2004. These typically deep-water whales were observed swimming in a tight circle in shallow water just 100 feet from shore, showing clear signs of distress. One of the whales was later found to have died. This bizarre and near-stranding behavior coincided with a U.S.-Japanese naval training exercise.
A previous case documented the mass stranding of 17 cetaceans in the Bahamas in March 2000. Six of the dead animals, which included five Cuvier's beaked whales and one Blainville's beaked whale, were found to have experienced acoustic or impulse trauma that led to their stranding and subsequent death. The strandings also coincided with ongoing Naval activity using MFA sonar in the area.
When other sonar exercises have taken place, mass strandings and whale mortalities have occurred. These include cases in the Haro Strait off the coast of Washington State, the Canary Islands, Madeira, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and in Greece...to name but a few tragedies.
Despite numerous scientific studies and reports proving the damaging effects of sonar, the US Congress and others still insist that the effects of sonar testing upon cetaceans are "unproved" - thus the passing of the bill in November that allows the Secretary of Defense to permit the Navy to use sonar wherever and whenever they "need" to.
A coalition of conservation groups, including NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) and The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), are still threatening to sue the US Navy, for the military's use of mid-frequency sonar violates laws imposed to protect marine mammals, such as The Marine Mammal Protection Act, set up in 1972.
In 2000 a mass stranding of whales on the beaches of the Bahamas was linked to U.S. Navy exercises using mid-frequency sonar. Many of the beached whales died, bleeding from the ears and brain. Sonar produces intense sound waves that probe the ocean to reveal underwater objects. The waves spread tens and even hundreds of miles and create ear-splitting noise comparable to rocket blasts. Navy sonar, in fact, reaches 235 decibels - the Saturn V rocket launch registered 220. Even low-frequency sonar affects whale behavior, and mid-frequency sonar can be lethal.
The right whale is a 40-ton, 50-foot-long creature that whalers virtually eradicated in the 19th century. Fewer than 400 are known to exist - a number so perilously low that researchers consider every living right whale vital to the survival of the species. The whales spend their winters in the waters of Georgia and northeast Florida, raising their young. It is the only known calving grounds for the right whale.

Still, the U.S. Navy proposes to construct a sonar range off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. The planned site is 625 square miles. This, if allowed, will result in the signing of a death warrant for the right whale.
Meanwhile, apparently, technologically advanced acoustic equipment is to be installed in the waters of Florida and Georgia so that we all might more clearly hear the heartbreaking calls of right whales as they fade into extinction. What bitter irony. It would appear that NOAA, the DNR and others have chosen to fund a project that will simply magnify the final songs of a condemned species.
Should the Jacksonville Sonar Testing Site be created as planned, we shall be left with only the photographic images of the magnificent right whale…and the responsibility of bearing the shame of having stood idly by while a species was eradicated in the name of “military progress.” Is this, then the legacy that we leave to our children – the ghostly echoes of whales that we have knowingly doomed to extinction?
Alex Kearns