Posted on: Friday, September 3, 2004

EDITORIAL
Navy must reduce sonar whale danger

The Navy does its credibility — and its case for the use of powerful underwater sound signals to detect submarines — no favors by its public statements regarding the bizarre behavior of a pod of whales off Kaua'i last month.

The pod of 200 melon-headed whales, normally denizens of deep waters 15 or more miles offshore, appeared in the shallows of Hanalei Bay.

Marine mammal experts on the scene said the whales were behaving strangely and ultimately left a dead infant behind as they were coaxed out of the bay by beachgoers.

The Navy originally said no sonar equipment was in use at the time, but now has conceded that two ships were indeed using sonar. The Navy insists now, however, that the two ships were too far away to have affected the whales.

"Every time the Navy changes its story, it reduces its credibility on this issue," said Cara Horowitz, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has sued the Navy over a related sonar issue.

The jury is still out over whether sonar is directly responsible for whale strandings, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But the Navy's ready assertion that such incidents are entirely coincidental of its sonar use is getting increasingly difficult to sustain.

Sixteen whales beached themselves in the Bahamas last summer, shortly after the Navy conducted active sonar exercises in the vicinity. Seven died.

Navy officials at first said there was no connection between that exercise and the stranding, but later acknowledged that the loud sound from the sonar had caused the animals to flee ashore.

Another incident occurred off the coast of Washington state last year, where harbor porpoises unexpectedly came ashore after a sonar exercise. Whales also beached themselves following earlier naval sonar exercises in Greece, California and the Canary Islands.

Some environmentalists, recognizing — as we do — the Navy's need to detect silent-running submarines, propose such techniques as a gradual ramping up of the sound to allow whales to swim out of range before it peaks.

"The Navy would be better off," suggests Horowitz, "spending more time developing common-sense ways to protect whales from sonar and less time denying a connection that is unfortunately being repeatedly shown."

That seems sensible.