Preliminary scientific tests on dead whales point to undersea noise from naval maneuvers by Spain and other NATO countries as the likely cause of the mass stranding of 15 whales in the Canary Islands, a scientist said Wednesday.
The tests, commissioned by the regional government of Spain’s Canary Islands, is strengthening suspicions that powerful sonar equipment used in these and other naval exercises may interfere with the sound waves emitted by the species known as the beaked whale to locate food.
“This would be the seventh time there is a coincidence … between NATO exercises and the stranding of beaked whales” since 1985, said Michel Andre, a veterinary scientist leading the tests.
Nine Cuvier’s beaked whales were found dead on Sept. 24-25 after they washed up on the Canary Islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. Six were released back into the sea while another two were spotted floating lifeless off the coast.
At the same time, ten NATO countries – Germany, Belgium, Canada, France, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Britain, Turkey and the United States – were conducting a multinational exercise known as Neo Tapon 2002.
The maneuvers are meant to practice securing the strategic Strait of Gibraltar, 900 kilometers (550 miles) northeast of the islands, according to the Spanish Defense Ministry.
Defense Minister Federico Trillo, responding to a question in the Senate from a Canary legislator, said the ministry was investigating the beachings. He added that there were no plans to suspend the annual exercise.
Andre, a veterinary researcher at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, stressed that the findings did not establish a direct relationship between sonar from the NATO vessels and the stranding.
However, he added that after preliminary tests “the only cause which we cannot rule out … is acoustic impact.”
The researcher said autopsies on the dead whales found brain damage consistent with impacts from military sonar signals. The tests also demonstrated the whales were “healthy and in good shape” before their deaths.
A second set of tests focussing on the inner ears, expected to take a few weeks, is expected to establish the cause of the beaching with greater certainty, he said.
The Cuvier’s beaked whale is a toothed cetacean found in waters around the world, usually in groups of up to 25 family members. Adults range from five to eight meters (17 to 26 feet) in length.
Beachings of beaked whale groups coinciding with military exercises have previously occurred in the Bahamas, Greece and one other time in the same Canary Islands, according to Andre.
Last weekend, more than 1,000 people demonstrated in front of a Spanish government building, demanding that the waters around the islands be declared a whale sanctuary off limits to military maneuvers, according to Spanish press reports.
Richard Page of environmental group Greenpeace said military exercises are just another environmental threat (along with oil drilling, shipping, and industrial pollution) that “are pushing animals out of their preferred feeding and breeding places.”
