Comments mstocker has made

Response to the Navy

"I would like to clarify that the Navy does not engage in propaganda.... As a Public Affairs Officer for the Navy's Environmental Readiness Division, I provide facts when engaging with the media and members of the public."

First off, I would like to thank Ms. Moriarty for taking the time to engage in this discussion. Few organizations have the resources to follow the press on these issues, so I am glad to know that the Navy is keeping informed on the public discussion of their work. Discussions such as these will ultimately result in coming to resolutions on the issue.

I know that it is difficult to be accused of issuing "propaganda" though what constitutes propaganda is of course a matter of framing. For the 15 years I have been engaged in the ocean noise pollution issue it has been a strict matter of policy and personal integrity to accept the framing of the Navy and other ocean noise generators at face value and not question their perspective. This piece was the first time that I chose to put that position aside because I have noticed an increasing degree of "soft-pedaling" from the Navy on the issue. I have also noticed a high degree of coordination amongst the various Navy representatives speaking about it.

Ms. Moriarty has provided a good summary of the current Navy position - with the same compliment of "mitigating" and distracting elements that have been popping up with some regularity in the last six months in the public and trade press. While it may not be too useful to refute each of Ms. Moriarty's "facts" blow-by-blow, I will comment on some of her positions:

"(1) The Sonar Ping: Sonar pings are typically one second long and are repeated twice per minute. Over the course of one minute, ship and animal movement at sea would make it very unlikely that a marine mammal would be exposed to even two sonar pings.  Per the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), 215 decibels is the threshold for physical injury to marine mammals. It is extremely difficult for a marine mammal to reach that threshold - the marine mammal would have to be nearly touching a ship's sonar dome to receive that level of sonar sound.  Common sense would dictate that a whale or dolphin would move away from the ship long before that happens."

A ping is not necessarily a one second long event, and they do not necessarily repeat just twice per minute. In the January 2001 Environmental Impact Statement for the Low Frequency Active Sonar Towed Array System, (SURTASS-LFA), a "ping" could last as long as 120 seconds. The typical ranging sonar "ping" is much shorter in duration as the Navy claims, but this is a characteristic of one type ranging and navigation sonar only, and as I indicated in my piece (with examples) that the newer communication sonars are not as tidy. Perhaps the Navy does not call these communication sonars "pings" - but semantics aside, the exposures to various and often overlapping sonars in a naval exercise (or action) would expose animals to much more noise than just the simple ranging signals.

Getting into the exposure levels and impacts is probably a bit academic for the purpose of this discussion; suffice it to say that there are many factors (and many opinions) about what constitutes a damaging exposure.

"(2) Whale Strandings: With the Bahamas and similar incidents in mind, sonar has been implicated in the stranding of about 50 marine mammals worldwide from 1996 to 2006, an average of about five strandings per year.  Compare that number with the 3,600 marine mammal strandings per year on U.S. shores.  In most cases, the cause of the stranding is unknown, but common causes have included disease, parasite infestation, harmful algal blooms, injuries due to ship strikes or fishery entanglements, pollution exposure, trauma, and starvation.... Furthermore, more than 600,000 marine mammals are killed each year by commercial fishing interests   Common sense would dictate that marine mammals have bigger problems than Navy sonar."

There are quite a few studies that equate military activities with strandings that, depending on framing and "certainty" bring the "50 marine mammals worldwide" to question. (e.g.: the reports on Hanalei Bay Melon Headed Whale "embayment,"  the Haro Strait USS Shoup event, Brownell IWC Report SC63/E7, etc). But the larger framing here is that while marine mammals are subject to quite a number of stresses and incidents that lead to mortality, these examples do not diminish the fact that marine mammals are dying as a result of military sonar - so citing mortalities as a consequence of "commercial fishing" is a distraction from the noise issue (not really propaganda, but...). Just because more people die of malaria than from auto accidents doesn't mean that we should stop using seatbelts.

"(3) Marine Mammal Protection: A marine mammal stranding that occurs during a major training exercise - regardless of whether it is attributed to active sonar - is bad for business.  That is why the Navy spends a lot of time and money to do everything reasonably possible to protect marine mammals, including stationing trained shipboard lookouts, reducing sonar levels to 25% of operating power if whales or dolphins are detected within the safety zone, and ceasing use of active sonar altogether if a marine mammal is detected within 200 meters."

These mitigations were a product of challenging and difficult court hearings involving the Navy and NRDC. There is no indication that the Navy would willingly comply with these mitigations if they had the choice. I suspect that we will see these mitigations challenged in court again by the Navy in the near future. That being said, I do not want to completely vilify the Navy here; it was Navy shore personnel that recently salvaged a dolphin that stranded on San Nicholas island during Navy maneuvers and sent it to a lab for a necropsy.

"(4) Marine Mammal Research: The Navy is a world leader in marine mammal research, and will spend approximately $19 million annually from FY07-09 on research....The Office of Naval Research (ONR), which administers the majority of the grants, encourages independent peer review of the science and does not attempt to control the research outcomes."

The Navy is sponsoring a majority of marine bio-acoustic work being done worldwide. This is all good and needed science, employing all of the best minds in the business. My only complaint here is that ONR chooses what - and more importantly, what not to sponsor. While I know that there is absolutely no meddling in the outcomes, there is an ONR research pedigree that has science following the funding, so the chances of our organization (for example) getting ONR funding is remote.

Finally, regarding the correlation of solar flares and strandings paper; I would like to read the original peer reviewed paper to confirm the correlations. Unfortunately the link given was in a public newspaper article that had a few oddities in it - such as the reference to the 2003 Canary Island beaked whale stranding - caused by a Navy sonar operations in the area.

info@OCR.org