The U.S. Navy recently awarded a grant to the University of the Virgin Islands to study the environmental impact of submarine missile launches on marine mammals. Navy sources aren't willing to discuss it, but knowledgeable local and off-island marine experts believe such launches — conducted as testing with dummy warheads — or other underwater naval operations could hold the key to why a number of whales have stranded in the Virgin Islands and the Bahamas in recent months.
In one case, even the Navy's own attempt to gather data on two Virgin Islands strandings was thrwarted. A Harvard University researcher called to investigate the cause of the strandings, one each on St. Thomas and St. John, last fall says the evidence needed to make the determination was destroyed.
According to Tony Mannucci, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, the Navy asked Darlene Ketten, a specialist in sound-related ear injuries, to determine whether the two goosebeak whales that beached themselves in October did so because of the effects of sonar experiments being conducted at the time near the Virgin Islands.
Ketten, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, said she needed to perform a soft tissue examination of the animals' ears. But this proved impossible, because by the time she was able to locate and examine the animals' remains, there was nothing left but the skulls.
Ear damage can have major impact
Why so much concern about the ears of whales? The answers vary, depending on who is being asked.
Ear injuries can cause mammals — including humans — to lose their equilibrium and become disoriented. They can also cause excruciating pain. According to Paul Jobsis, a biology faculty member who will be involved in the UVI research, whales "don't have eardrums like we do and wouldn't have a ruptured eardrum from sonar effects, most likely." But, he said, those whales that have teeth "use sonar to navigate and to find their food. If they did have ear damage, it could prevent them from finding food or communicating with each other."
As to what could cause the whales to beach, "Nobody really knows for sure," Jobsis said.
Navy officials say their concern is rooted in their "stewardship of the sea." Some local scientists contend that underwater Navy activity has impacted on humans, and one researcher suspects it may at least once have disrupted the breeding activities of a local endangered species.
The latter half of 1999 was an eventful time for stranded whales in the Virgin Islands. Last last summer, British Virgin Islands authorities reported the stranding of at least five pilot whales there. A few weeks later, four whales were stranded in the U.S. Virgins. Two that were beached on St. Croix were rescued and released alive at sea. The other two — one each on St. Thomas and St. John — perished.
The Marine Mammal Stranding Network, which operates out of San Juan, investigates reports of marine mammals in distress throughout the Caribbean. Investigators looking into the cause of such events travel to far corners of the world in search of evidence. But when Ketten arrived in the territory in January, she said, the evidence she needed to see was long gone.
According to Ketten, the problem wasn't related to her arriving three months after the incident. "It wouldn't have mattered when I went," she said, "because the people who were in charge of them buried the bodies right away" at sea.
She says the only evidence of ear trauma that she found was in a report prepared by stranding network scientists indicating that one of the two whales was deaf and may have been so for some time.
David Nellis of the Planning and Natural Resources Department's Division of Fish and Wildlife says one of his agents was on the scene when the bodies of the two whales were towed out to sea. He said he believes that investigators checking for ear damage would have had to begin their work within three or four days of the animals' death, before significant decay set in.
Navy won't comment on operations
Lt. Bill Speaks, a Navy public information officer, declined to comment on what sort of naval operations might have been under way in the vicinity of the Virgin Islands at the time of the strandings. He said, however, "the Navy does care" about the effects its activities "have on the environment."
Trained observers have reported signs of sonar effects on or in the water at the time of the strandings. Rick Nemeth, a UVI research faculty member, said he and a group of students diving near St. John's Lameshur Bay at the time of the October stranding when they heard an underwater sound so loud it forced them to lift their heads from the water.
Nellis, who was doing some diving at the time, said, "There was definitely a lot of submarine activity. We didn't know where they were, but you could hear it. The sound from their three-note sonar had to be pretty intense" for those under the water to hear it, he said, adding that the sound he detected was one he had heard for the first time about 10 years earlier.
Neither the Navy's Speaks nor NOAA acoustics specialist Roger Gentry would comment on the accounts of the two local scientists. Gentry said whales are among the creatures most sensitive to extreme underwater sounds, but certain types of fish, turtles and humans also can hear sound frequencies underwater. The effects of those frequencies are not known, he said. Stephanie Dorezas, an information officer for NOAA's Fisheries Service, said in an April interview that because of their possible effects on humans, the Navy does not conduct underwater sonar experiments close to shore.
A former Fish and Wildlife employee, Rafe Boulon, now working with the National Park Service Biosphere Research Center, recalled an incident 12 years ago while he was observing nesting leatherback turtles on St. Croix.
"On Sandy Point, at the peak of the leatherback nesting season, we had a period of four to six days when we didn't have a single turtle nest," he said. "It was at the peak of the season when we normally would have had eight to 10 nests a night." At the time, he said, the Navy was conducting operations on the western end of the island.
"Some of the controversy," UVI's Jobsis said, "is that there are several naval strategic systems that use underwater sound" — in addition to the missile launchings — that could have an effect on marine animals. "What they call low-frequency active sonar is one," he said. "This uses sound in the same range as many odontocetes." The term refers to the smaller whales, up to and including sperm whales, that have teeth, as opposed to the larger species, called mysticetes, that have strips of finger nail-like extensions called baleen in their mouths to strain their intake of food.
17 whales, dolphins stranded in the Bahamas
The latest reported mass stranding of whales, involving 17 mammals, both whales and dolphins, occurred in the Bahamas in March. According to UVI's Jobsis, there were "several different species that beached at the same time, which is very unusual." The strandings, which occurred at various locations in the island chain, triggered an intensive response from military and civilian agencies, including the Navy, NOAA, the Smithsonian Institution, the Bahamian government and researchers from several universities.
Cmdr. Joe Navratil of the Atlantic Fleet public relations office said the Navy's response to the Bahamas incident was part of a "thorough review of all naval activities" to determine if any of them "could have had an effect on these strandings."
The Navy is interested in whale strandings as part of its wider interest "in any possible adverse effects its activities could have on the environment," Speaks said, and it spends nearly $7 millio
n a year "on research to minimize its impact on the environment. Because there were Navy activities in the vicinity of the recent marine mammal strandings in the Bahamas, we are working with the National Marine and Fisheries Service (NMFS) to find out the cause."
Dorezas said the Navy notified NMFS about its operations in the Bahamas in mid-March and that Ketten and two other experts were flown to the stranding scene, where they was able to collect the tissues needed for study. Two of the 17 animals stranded were found to have blood in their ears, meaning they had fresh ear injuries.
Speaks was asked whether the Navy routinely notifies any particular agencies about its underwater testing. By law, he said, all federal agencies are required to conduct an internal assessment of activities which could have an adverse effect on the environment when carried out within U.S. waters. "Those agencies are empowered to make the determination themselves of the possibility of any adverse effects," he said. "If they deem necessary, they consult with the relevant environmental agency."
If the environmental agency requests it, Speaks added, the acting agency must conduct an environmental impact study, which can take several months and includes public comment periods. Although the activities in the Bahamas were outside of U.S. territorial waters, the internal assessment was still required under an executive order, he said.
Some environmental groups "have tried to establish a relationship between naval activities and whale strandings," Navratil acknowledged. But in early April, the Navy's Atlantic Fleet commander, Adm. Paul Gaffney, issued a statement saying the Navy did not believe the advanced warfare experiments it had been carrying out in mid-March had caused the Bahamas incidents.
Biological, chemical effects to be studied
In April, UVI announced that it has been awarded an $84,893 grant from the Navy's Strategic Systems Program to study the environmental impact of Trident missile launches from submarines on marine mammals. Biology faculty member James Battey, who helped draft the proposal for the contract, said the data to be collected "will help the federal government make decisions on regulations concerning Trident missile launches."
A UVI release about the grant stated that Navy submarines launch their missiles using an explosive gas device that creates pressure, and that the underwater explosion releases a combustion chemical and sound waves into the water. In their study, the UVI researchers will use theoretical models to assess the potential effects of the underwater blasts. The study is intended to evaluate the potential chemical and biological impact of the missile launches on marine mammals.
"The launch pressure wave will be compared to other known underwater sound sources" with regard to the "potentially negative effects on marine mammals and turtles in the launch area," UVI marine research specialist Kevin Brown said. An example of another sound source would be a large vessel's propeller noise, he said.
The grant is for a year of work beginning June 1. For the research UVI will be conducting, Battey said, "we will be having mailed-in material." The research, he said, "will be modeling what could be the impact on such marine mammals of the energy released."
Brown said the UVI researchers won't get to hear what the missile-launch explosion sounds like since, for security reasons, "the Navy does not release the sound of that, because it could then be fingerprinted."
Similar research elsewhere to date has shown "a lot of potential impact on mammals," Battey said. For the UVI project, he added, naval officials "do want some work done on the sites where they are doing launchings, and none of them are in the Caribbean."
He said it is his understanding that at present there "are no subs in the area." Certainly, he added, "submarines go through here. Without specific knowledge, with Rosie Roads [the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station on Puerto Rico's east end] so near by, it would not seem beyond the realm of possibility — but I don't know anything about it."
According to Speaks, the Navy has no "ongoing investigation" into whale strandings. "We have responded to specific events, such as the October 1999 strandings in the Virgin Islands and the Bahamas events of 15 March," he said, "because there were Navy activities conducted in the vicinity of those events. Although we have no information that would lead us to conclude that our activities were the cause of those events, we are continuing to work with NMFS to find out the cause."
