The mystery continues.
Did sonar exercises in May by a Navy destroyer, the USS Shoup, cause several porpoises to strand themselves and die on area beaches, including Whidbey Island?
For now, Navy officials are not saying much.
The Navy declined an invitation from the federally initiated Island County Marine Resources Committee on Wednesday to discuss alternatives to making the military exercises more compatible with marine mammals.
Rich Melaas, community planning liaison for Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, was sent to the meeting but was instructed to say only that the Navy is investigating the incident and the National Marine Fisheries Service is handling the post-mortem examinations of the porpoises.
Those necropsies have been delayed for at least several weeks. Some of the whale researchers and environmental activists who first brought public attention to the incident are getting nervous that the scientific inquiry won’t be as independent or as transparent as they would like it to be.
Whale researcher Ken Balcomb told a group of about 25 people at the Marine Resources Committee’s meeting on Wednesday that the necropsies are being delayed because CAT scan equipment in Seattle is booked indefinitely with human patients.
Despite the $250,000 price tag for a CAT scan machine, Balcomb said the federal government should invest in a separate machine to do marine research, because strandings occur often enough to justify it.
“There should be a West Coast-dedicated machine so you don’t have to stand in line,” Balcomb said.
Susan Berta of the Whidbey Island-based Orca Network said she was worried to hear that federal officials were considering shipping the carcasses to facilities on the East Coast, away from the public scrutiny here.
“It would be nice if there was a neutral body doing these necropsies,” Berta said.
Balcomb has one of the 10 carcasses in his freezer, but he said he is not sure whether federal officials are going to allow him to pursue an independent examination of the carcass.
After the meeting, Balcomb said he has not formed a conclusion about whether the Navy destroyer’s sonar led to the deaths of the porpoises.
“I just think it’s evidence that ought to be examined,” Balcomb said.
Balcomb is a natural fit to be in the cross hairs of this controversy. He first learned about sonar while serving in the Navy. Later, he turned to a career in marine biology.
Balcomb is well-known locally for his groundbreaking research identifying the different pods of orcas in the San Juan Islands where he lives. But he was also one of the first researchers to study beaked whales, an elusive species that he only saw five or six times a year during 12 years of study.
Beachfront autopsies of beaked whales that were stranded in March 2000 in the Bahamas indicated bleeding in the ears. Balcomb knew the Navy had been conducting training exercises in waters the whales frequented, and he suspected sonar pulses had done the damage. More extensive necropsies later confirmed his suspicion, as far as he was concerned.
In a video of a “60 Minutes” television news story that Balcomb showed the committee, Navy officials admitted it was likely that sonar harmed the beaked whales, but that the evidence stopped short of a smoking gun.
Balcomb said many incidents of marine mammal strandings all over the world since 1963 could be linked to the use of low- to mid-frequency sonar.
“The only ones I’m sure were killed (by sonar) were the ones in the Bahamas,” Balcomb said.
He said the Navy has stepped up exercises for the past year and a half in and around Haro Strait, the area between Vancouver Island and San Juan Island, which is prime summer feeding grounds for orcas. Several times, researchers and whale watchers with hydrophones have recorded bursts of Navy sonar, but usually the ship is beyond the horizon.
But in May, Balcomb had a front-row view of the Shoup from his home on San Juan Island, and he videotaped a pod of orcas hugging the shore in what he said were attempts to escape the more than 150-decibel screeches.
“People walking on the shore could hear the sound coming out of the water,” Balcomb said.
Even after the Shoup moved from five miles to 20 miles away, the sound was still loud, because the sonar’s low frequencies travel well underwater, he said.
“I was thinking, we’re going to have J pod stranded right in front of my house,” Balcomb said. “It’s like deja vu, and I’m going to have to go through the whole thing again like in the Bahamas.”
After the March 2000 Bahamas incident involving the beaked whales, the Navy imposed new rules to military maneuvers, including posting lookouts and helicopter spotters to warn of marine mammals in proximity to ships using sonar. But Balcomb said the one-kilometer buffer zone the Navy is using is not sufficient, especially when his San Juan Island hydrophone is picking up loud sounds from ships as far as 20 kilometers away.
“To me, it’s obvious,” Balcomb said.
Balcomb suggested changing the maneuvers to computer simulations for the bulk of the work. And when real-life exercises are required, he said the Navy should avoid corridors of high marine mammal use and find dead zones in the sea whenever possible.
Scott Morris, The Herald
