Island Voices
Over the whales' dead bodies
By Lanny Sinkin
Hilo attorney
A new Navy sonar has already killed many marine mammals and will kill more unless it is stopped.
The Navy's new low-frequency active (LFA) sonar is a serious threat to the health of marine mammals, particularly whales, and other marine life.
A NATO exercise using LFA in 1998 left numerous beaked whales dead on the coast of Greece.
LFA testing off the Island of Hawai'i in 1998 caused humpback whales to leave the test area, apparently resulted in the separation of whale and dolphin calves from their mothers and appears to have produced a major decline in dolphin births and a major increase in dolphin birth defects.
The Navy claims this technology is necessary to detect newer, more silent submarines. Yet an admiral testified before Congress that the Navy can now rapidly deploy passive listening devices that can detect the same silent submarines.
The truth is that the Navy invested more than $350 million preparing to deploy LFA before preparing the legally required environmental impact statement. The threat of legal action forced the Navy to prepare one. Not surprisingly, the resulting document is designed to justify deployment rather than illuminate the truth.
For example, the document does not even discuss the reports filed in 1998 by whale watch boat captains, a helicopter tour pilot and shore observers that the humpback whales left the LFA test area off Hawai'i as soon as the test broadcasts began.
The document claims there is no credible evidence that LFA broadcasts harmed any humans in the water. That claim ignores the admission by the scientists conducting the Hawai'i test program that they exposed a snorkeler to a 125-decibel broadcast. That exposure left the snorkeler in a condition her doctor described as similar to a trauma patient in a hospital.
While acknowledging that independent observers saw an isolated baby humpback whale breaching and tale slapping hundreds of times over many hours during the broadcast period, the document denies any LFA responsibility for this very rare case of separation. The separated dolphin calf and separated melon-headed whale calf appearing during and immediately after the tests do not warrant any concern in the document.
At one point, the document argues that studies of four whale species — blue, fin, gray and humpback whales — are sufficient to reach conclusions about all marine mammals and that these species are indicators for all the remaining whale species.
When a comment to the draft environmental impact statement directs attention to evidence that gray whales avoid very low levels of sound, the document adopts the exact opposite position and claims that gray whales are unique and that their experiences cannot be applied to any other species.
These deliberate omissions and contradictions are only a tiny sample of the abundant evidence available that the Navy is not interested in the truth about the threat LFA poses to marine life. The bureaucratic momentum created by huge financial investments and careers built around this technology are pushing the Navy to deploy this system over the whales' dead bodies.
In March 2000, various species of beaked whales stranded in the Bahamas, with at least seven dead. The investigation of this event concluded that it was highly likely the mid-range sonar used by a passing naval fleet caused serious physical injury to the whales. A marine biologist who has studied beaked whales in the Bahamas for years recently reported that all beaked whales studied to date have disappeared from the Bahamas.
The mid-range sonar that may have killed the whales in the Bahamas is already deployed, with an obviously inadequate assessment of its environmental impact. For the Navy to now decide to deploy low-frequency active sonar as well appears to be an admission that killing whales is not a problem for the Navy.
The National Marine Fisheries Service will hold a hearing in Honolulu tomorrow to take public testimony on whether to permit the Navy to deploy LFA. The hearing will be from 1-5 p.m. in the Waikiki Marriott Beach Hotel, 2552 Kalakaua. For the love of whales, you are urged to attend.
Lanny Sinkin is a Hilo attorney who has filed lawsuits on behalf of the environmental organizations challenging the Navy's plan to deploy LFA systems.
