Articles from studies on effects of navy testing on and .

Every year, thousands of whales, dolphins and get into trouble on coastlines around the world. There are reports of since records began and it is a potential issue for every country with a coastline. Stranding occurs for two reasons – natural processes including age and disease, or human-related issues including bycatch, vessel collisions, navy sonar testing/blasting, and environmental degradation. Natural and human-related factors can also interact to cause stranding. Animals may strand alive on the beach, or die at and be carried on to land by the currents.

There is evidence that active sonar leads to beaching. On some occasions cetaceans have stranded shortly after military sonar was active in the area, suggesting a link.[10] Theories describing how sonar may cause deaths have also been advanced after necropsies found internal injuries in stranded cetaceans. In contrast, some who strand themselves due to seemingly natural causes are usually healthy prior to beaching:

The low frequency active sonar (LFA sonar) used by the military to detect submarines is the loudest sound ever put into the . Yet the U.S. Navy is planning to deploy LFA sonar across 80 percent of the world ocean. At an amplitude of two hundred forty decibels, it is loud enough to kill whales and dolphins and has already caused mass strandings and deaths in areas where U.S. and/or NATO forces have conducted exercises.

— Julia Whitty, The Fragile Edge[11]

The large and rapid pressure changes made by loud sonar can cause hemorrhaging. Evidence emerged after 17 cetaceans hauled out in in March 2000 following a sonar exercise. The Navy accepted blame agreeing that the dead whales experienced acoustically-induced hemorrhages around the ears.[12] The resulting disorientation probably led to the stranding. Ken Balcomb, a cetologist, specializes in the populations that inhabit the Strait of Juan de Fuca between and Vancouver Island.[13] He investigated these beachings and argues that the powerful sonar pulses resonated with airspaces in the dolphins, tearing tissue around the ears and brain.[14] Apparently not all species are affected by sonar.[15]

Another means by which sonar could be hurting cetaceans is a form of . This was first raised by necrological examinations of 14 beaked whales stranded in the . The stranding happened on 24 September 2002, close to the operating area of Neo Tapon (an international naval exercise) about four hours after the activation of mid-frequency sonar.[16] The team of scientists found acute tissue damage from gas-bubble lesions, which are indicative of decompression sickness.[16] The precise mechanism of how sonar causes bubble formation is not known. It could be due to cetaceans panicking and surfacing too rapidly in an attempt to escape the sonar pulses. There is also a theoretical basis by which sonar vibrations can cause supersaturated gas to nucleate, forming bubbles (cavitation).[17]

The overwhelming majority of the cetaceans involved in sonar-associated beachings are Cuvier's beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostrus). This species strands frequently, but mass strandings are rare. They are so difficult to study in the wild that prior to the interest raised by the sonar controversy, most of the information about them came from stranded animals. The first to publish research linking beachings with naval activity were Simmonds and Lopez-Jurado in 1991. They noted that over the past decade there had been a number of mass strandings of beaked whales in the Canary Islands, and each time the Spanish Navy was conducting exercises. Conversely, there were no mass strandings at other times. They did not propose a theory for the strandings. A letter to Nature by Fernández et al. in 2013 reported that there had been no further mass strandings in that area following a 2004 ban by the Spanish government on military exercises in that region.[18]

In May 1996, there was another mass stranding in West Peloponnese, . At the time, it was noted as "atypical" both because mass strandings of beaked whales are rare, and also because the stranded whales were spread over such a long stretch of with each individual whale spatially separated from the next stranding. At the time of the incident, there was no connection made with active sonar; the marine biologist investigating the incident, Dr. Frantzis, made the connection to sonar because he discovered a notice to Mariners about the test. His scientific correspondence in "Nature" titled "Does acoustic testing strand whales?" was published in March 1998.[19]

Dr. Peter Tyack, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, has been researching noise's effects on marine mammals since the 1970s. He has led much of the recent research on beaked whales (Pilot Whales and Cuvier's beaked whales in particular).

War of the Whales: A True Story

Winner of the 2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award: “Horwitz’s dogged reporting…combined with crisp, cinematic writing, produces a powerful narrative…. He has written a book that is instructive and passionate and deserving a wide audience” (PEN Award Citation).

Six years in the making, War of the Whales is the “gripping detective tale” (Publishers Weekly) of a crusading attorney, Joel Reynolds, who stumbles on one of the US Navy’s best-kept secrets: a submarine detection system that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound—and drives whales onto beaches. As Joel Reynolds launches a legal fight to expose and challenge the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his research station in the Bahamas. Investigating this calamity, Balcomb is forced to choose between his conscience and an oath of secrecy he swore to the Navy in his youth.

“War of the Whales reads like the best investigative journalism, with cinematic scenes of strandings and dramatic David-and-Goliath courtroom dramas as activists diligently hold the Navy accountable” (The Huffington Post). When Balcomb and Reynolds team up to expose the truth behind an epidemic of mass strandings, the stage is set for an epic battle that pits admirals against activists, rogue submarines against weaponized dolphins, and national security against the need to safeguard the ocean environment. “Strong and valuable” (The Washington Post), “brilliantly told” (Bob Woodward), author Joshua Horwitz combines the best of legal drama, natural history, and military intrigue to “raise serious questions about the unchecked use of secrecy by the military to advance its institutional power”

Whales flee from the loud military sonar used by navies to hunt submarines, new research has proven for the first time. The studies provide a missing link in the puzzle that has connected naval exercises around the world to unusual mass strandings of whales and dolphins.

Beaked whales, the most common casualty of the strandings, were shown to be highly sensitive to sonar. But the research also revealed unexpectedly that blue whales, the largest animals on Earth and whose population has plummeted by 95% in the last century, also abandoned feeding and swam rapidly away from sonar noise.

The strong response observed in the beaked whales occurred at noise levels well below those allowed for US navy exercises. "This result has to be taken into consideration by regulators and those planning naval exercises," said Stacy DeRuiter, at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who led one of the teams.

"For whales and dolphins, listening is as important as seeing is for humans – they communicate, locate food, and navigate using sound," said Sarah Dolman, at charity Whale and Conservation. " threatens vulnerable populations, driving them away from areas important to their survival, and at worst injuring or even causing the deaths of some whales and dolphins." Dolman said there were no accepted international standards regarding noise pollution and there was an urgent need to re-evaluate the environmental impacts of military activities.

The US Navy part-funded the new studies but said the findings only showed behavioural responses to sonar, not actual harm. Nonetheless, Kenneth Hess, a US Navy spokesman, said permit conditions for naval exercises were reviewed annually and added: "We will evaluate the effectiveness of our marine mammal protective measures in light of new research findings."

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Unusual mass strandings, where multiple species of whale and dolphin beach at several locations at once, have soared since the introduction of military sonar in the 1950s and can be fatal. The strandings occur every year and major recent events saw up to 15 animals beached in the Canary Islands, the Bahamas and Greece. In May, the naval activity was found to be the most probable cause of the deaths of at least 26 short-beaked common dolphins in Falmouth Bay, Cornwall in June 2008.

Beaked whales are the most common species affected by unusual mass strandings, perhaps because their shy nature makes them more easily scared by noises that they may interpret as killer whale sounds. Researchers used suction cups to attach digital devices to Cuvier's beaked whales off the coast of Southern California to measure the noise they were exposed to and their response.

When a simulated military sonar signal was sounded at 200dB and between 3km and 10km away, the whales initially stopped feeding and swimming. They then swam rapidly away from the noise and some performed unusually deep and long dives. "The missing piece of the puzzle was how whales changed their behaviour and how that led to mass strandings," said DeRuiter. She added that they also stopped feeding for 6-7 hours, which is unusual. "If they miss out on food, they will be less healthy," she said, noting that where populations have been measured, numbers of Cuvier's beaked whales are declining.

A second study, also off Southern California, estimated that a blue whale spooked by the sonar missed out on over a tonne of krill, about a day's worth of food. "Blue whales rely on large aggregations of dense krill to sustain their extreme body size, so they continuously dive and feed throughout the day when high-density prey patches are present," said Jeremy Goldbogen, at Cascadia Research, a non-profit US research organisation in Olympia, Washington. "Because of this, we suggest that sonar-induced disruption of feeding could have significant and previously undocumented impacts on individual fitness and the health of their populations."

A spokesman for the UK's Royal Navy said: "The Royal Navy already limits its use of sonar around whales. We are committed to taking all reasonable and practical measures to protect the environment and mitigate effects on marine mammals. This new research will be taken into account in the regular review of MoD active sonar mitigation procedures."

Sonar does affect whales, military report confirms

Animals stopped vocalizing and foraging for food during marine exercises. Daniel Cressey

Whales subjected to military sonar will neither dive nor feed, according to an unpublished 2007 report from the UK military, obtained by Nature after a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The impact of sonar on whales has become an increasingly fraught issue in recent years, with submarine exercises being linked to several high-profile mass strandings. The US Navy has admitted concerns over sonar’s effects on marine mammals, although actual evidence for harm has been in short supply.

Submarines' sonar has been implicated in whale strandings.Punchstock

But military-sponsored tests now suggest that low levels of sonar, which do not cause direct damage to whales, could still cause harm by triggering behavioural changes.

The UK military report details observations of whale activity during Operation Anglo-Saxon 06, a submarine war-games exercise in 2006. Produced for the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, it states the results are “potentially very significant”.

The study used an array of to listen for whale sounds during the war games. Across the course of the exercise, the number of whale recordings dropped from over 200 to less than 50. “ species ... appear to cease vocalising and foraging for food in the area around active sonar transmissions,” concludes the report.

It notes, “Since these animals feed at depth, this could have the effect of preventing a beaked whale from feeding over the course of the trial and could lead to second or third order effects on the animal and population as a whole.”

The report references a second military document from 2005, also seen by Nature, which explains that these second- and third-order effects could include starvation and then death, depending on the severity of the sonar's initial effect on the whales.

A spokesperson for the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in a statement: “Active sonar releases energy into the ocean, and there is evidence to suggest that this may have an effect on marine mammals. However, the precise scientific effects are not clear, thus the MoD has adopted a precautionary approach to mitigate effects on the marine environment. Environmental Impact Assessments are mandatory prior to the use of military sonar, and the ability to predict and detect marine life continues to be developed in order to minimise any perceived threats to marine life.”

Hidden details

Several details in the 2007 report, such as the location of the exercise and its participants, have been removed under section 27 of the UK’s freedom of information legislation, which governs information that might prejudice international relations. However, it is clear that a number of countries took part in the exercises, which involved at least four warships hunting two nuclear-powered submarines.

Although the location of Operation Anglo-Saxon 06 has been removed from the report, the pattern of hydrophones shown in one diagram matches that in the US Navy’s AUTEC range in the Bahamas. Because the author’s name has also been removed, Nature was not able to contact them for comment, nor assess the degree of peer review the report may have undergone. However, research from respected marine scientists is also beginning to come to the same conclusions as the anecdotal evidence detailed in the military report, showing that whale behaviour is modified by sonar, even if it is not yet possible to say that behavioural changes equate to actual harm.

At the Acoustics 2008 conference held in Paris in late June, Peter Tyack of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts reported on a groundbreaking study that also took place in the AUTEC range. The study monitored the response of a tagged beaked whale to both sonar and killer-whale calls, at levels that would not pose any risk to the animals.

Data recorders were attached to the whale with suction caps to log its location. Combined with information from the hydrophones, the researchers were able to monitor the response of the whale to sounds.

The whale showed similar, although weaker, responses to sonar as it did to killer-whale calls: it stopped foraging with echolocation shortly after it heard them. This suggests that this anti-predator response may ultimately harm the animals, although the levels of noise were unlikely to cause direct injury.

“We know that sonar is linked to strandings, but we do not know the cause of the chain of events from sonar exposure to stranding,” says Tyack. “The number of whales known to have been harmed by sonar is relatively small, but until we know exactly how whales respond to sonar, and what sound exposure causes these responses, we cannot assess the full scope of the problem.”

Ian Boyd, an expert on marine mammals at St Andrews University, UK, worked with Tyack on the response study. He says that it is possible to mitigate the effects of sonar by using forms that sound less like predators, for example, or simply by moving military exercises away from whales.

“We need to start doing some of these sorts of things,” he says. “But we need to do it within the context of an experimental set-up where we can genuinely test the extent to which there is disturbance to these animals, and potentially test new types of sonar signals, because they may only be sensitive to certain types of signal.”

U.S. Navy to limit sonar testing to protect whales

By Virginia MorellSep. 16, 2015 , 2:15 PM

The U.S. Navy agreed this week to limit its use of sonar and other activities that unintentionally harm cetaceans and other marine mammals.

A federal court on 14 September approved the settlement of two cases brought by environmental groups that challenged the Navy’s training and testing activities off the of southern California and Hawaii. The settlement comes in the wake of the court’s decision earlier this year that found the Navy’s exercises in these areas were illegally harming numerous populations of whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions.

The decision is being celebrated by conservationists and cetacean experts who have long sparred with the Navy and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the federal agency charged with protecting marine mammals, over the sonar tests. “By agreeing to this settlement, the Navy acknowledges that it doesn’t need to train in every square inch of the ocean and that it can take reasonable steps to reduce the deadly toll of its activities,” said David Henkin, an attorney in the Honolulu office of Earthjustice, one of the environmental organizations that challenged the Navy’s latest round of sonar training and testing, in a statement.

Under the agreement, the Navy will no longer carry out these tests or training exercises, nor set off explosives, in specified habitats around the Hawaiian Islands and southern California. The forbidden areas are known to be vital to marine mammals for reproducing, feeding, and migrating; some also harbor small, resident populations of animals. For instance, a prime feeding area for blue whales is found in the waters near San Diego, and rare beaked whales ply the waters between Santa Catalina and San Nicolas islands.

“It doesn’t mean the Navy has to cut the amount of training they have to do,” says Zak Smith, an attorney at the Santa Monica, California, office of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the environmental groups involved in the cases and the settlement. “They just won’t do it in some biologically significant areas.”

Since the mid-1990s, NRDC and other organizations have called on the Navy to find safer ways to carry out its explosive training and activities. Marine biologists also began questioning the Navy’s midfrequency sonar exercises, which they suspected were harming whales and other marine mammals. Their suspicions were confirmed in 2000, after more than a dozen whales from four different species were found beached and dying in the Bahamas—an event that a government-led investigation ultimately tied to U.S. naval sonar training.

The powerful sonar blasts that ships such as destroyers deploy to find submarines produce sound waves that can travel across hundreds of kilometers of ocean, disrupting the communication and feeding of marine mammals. At closer distances, the sonar can cause the animals to become deaf and disoriented, leading them to strand. Many of these beached whales have been found with physical injuries, such as bleeding in the ears, brain, and other tissues, and with large bubbles in their organs—damage that’s similar to the “bends,” an ailment scuba divers can suffer if they surface too quickly. Although scientists do not yet know the exact mechanism that causes some species of whales to panic, rush into shallow waters, then strand and die in response to sonar, they don’t question the connection.

Neither does the Navy. The service’s Marine Species Modeling Team prepares environmental impact statements that calculate the likely damage and injury to marine mammals during the training exercises. “They use the best science,” NRDC’s Smith says. In December 2013, the Navy estimated that its proposed training- and-testing plan would affect marine mammals in southern California and Hawaii some 10 million times over the following 5 years, and would permanently injure or kill more than 2000 of the animals. Still, NMFS approved the plan. In response, NRDC, Earthjustice, and other environmental groups filed suit, arguing that NMFS and the Navy had violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. Last March, a federal judge agreed with the conservation organizations. The Navy chose to negotiate the current settlement, recognizing that it “faced the real possibility that the Court would stop critically important training and testing,” if the case continued, Navy Lieutenant Commander Matt Knight, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, wrote to ScienceInsider in an email message. He also pointed out that the Navy employs other “protective measures [to] afford significant protections to marine mammals.”

The agreement applies only to Navy activities through the end of 2018. At that the point, the Navy must apply to NMFS for a 5-year extension.

NRDC’s Smith does not foresee another court battle. “We were adversarial with the Navy for 15 years, but we worked together to reach this agreement. We hope this approach can now be applied in the future and to other areas, such as the Pacific Northwest,” where marine mammals also face threats from naval activities.

Posted in: Scientific Community

doi:10.1126/science.aad1763

Navy sonar that harms whales and dolphins was improperly approved, US court finds

The sonar is used across more than 70 percent of the world’s oceans by Alessandra Potenza@ale_potenza Jul 18, 2016, 7:13pm EDT

The US Navy is now using a particular type of sonar in more than half of the world’s oceans under an illegal permit. That sonar harms marine mammals like whales, dolphins, seals, and walruses. On Friday, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in California found that a 2012 regulation that allowed the Navy to use a low- frequency active sonar for training and testing violates the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The sonar harms whales, dolphins, seals, and walruses

The court found that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which gave the authorization, isn’t doing enough to avoid harming or killing marine mammals under the law. The Marine Mammal Protection Act calls for the "least practicable adverse impact" on marine mammals and their habitats. The court also found that the federal agency failed to protect areas of the world that its own government experts had flagged as "biologically important" to protect marine life. Such areas include the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off of Hawaii, and Challenger Bank off of Bermuda.

The Navy had been authorized to use the high-intensity long-range sonar — called low-frequency active sonar, or LFA — for five years across more than 70 percent of the world’s oceans, in areas of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. The NMFS has to set certain limits to activities, like military training, that could harm marine mammals. The goal is to reduce the impact on marine life to its lowest possible level.

In 2005, 34 whales died because of Navy sonar training

The Navy uses LFA to detect quiet foreign submarines. The sonar involves the use of 18 speakers lowered hundreds of feet below the surface. It produces low-frequency sound pulses of about 215 decibels (dB), in sequences that last about 60 seconds. That can interfere over hundreds of miles with some marine mammals like whales, dolphins, and walruses that rely on underwater sound for navigating, catching prey, and communicating. LFA sonar can harm the animals by interrupting mating, stopping communication, causing them to separate from calves, and inflicting stress. Sounds above 180 dB can disrupt the animals’ hearing and cause physical injury. In 2005, 34 whales became stranded and died off in North Carolina because of nearby offshore Navy sonar training, according to Scientific American.

To limit harm, the NMFS requires the Navy to shut down or delay sonar transmission if there are nearby marine mammals. It also forbids the Navy to produce pulses of 180dB or more within about 14 miles of any coastline, or within 0.6 miles of several "offshore biologically important areas." All these regulations exist to try to minimize the impact that the use of LFA sonar has on marine mammals, to try to comply with the law. But the court found that the measures aren’t enough.

"This systematic underprotection of marine mammals cannot be consistent with the requirement that mitigation measures result in the ‘least practicable adverse impact’ on marine mammals," the court said.

One of the NMFS’s arguments is that too little data on marine mammal distribution is available to ensure protection of certain habitats. But even when the federal agency consulted with leading marine mammal experts, their opinion was disregarded, according to Michael Jasny, the director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the organizations that brought the case against the NMFS.

The NMFS should err on the side of overprotection rather than underprotection

"The court soundly rejected that approach," says Jasny. "In doing so, it has ruled in ways that could significantly alter the way that the agency does business under the law." When enough data is lacking, the NMFS should err on the side of overprotection rather than underprotection, Jasny says.

This is the third time that the Navy’s authorization to use its LFA sonar has been challenged in court. In 2002, when the Navy first sought authorization for its LFA sonar system, and in 2007, plaintiffs and the Navy reached a court-ordered settlement allowing use of LFA in significantly reduced areas of the world's oceans, according to the NRDC.

"What the fisheries service did here was ... consistent with what until now has been an inadequate approach to mitigation that the scientific and conservation communities have frequently criticized the agency for," Jasny says.