Navy sonar suspected in dolphin’s death
Published 9:43 pm Thursday, February 21, 2008
A rare dolphin died on the beach of the Navy’s San Nicolas Island, about 60 miles west of Los Angeles, in late January during the final days of Navy exercises using a type of sonar that has been linked to fatal injuries in whales and dolphins.
The right whale dolphin washed up on the north end of San Nicolas Island just as the Everett-based aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its supporting warships were wrapping up war games to certify they were prepared to meet threats of all kinds, including submarine attacks, before shipping out to the Persian Gulf in March.
Although researchers have yet to determine a cause of death, a dissection of the right whale dolphin’s head revealed blood and other fluid in the ears and ear canals. The same symptoms were found in deep-diving whales that washed ashore in the Canary Islands and the Bahamas after military sonar exercises.
Unlike the mass strandings of whales on the Canary Islands in 2002 and the Bahamas in 2000, only one dolphin washed ashore Jan. 29 on San Nicolas. That occurred just as the Navy’s Third Fleet in San Diego was wrapping up sonar training that has become the focus of a federal court fight and elicited an effort by President Bush to intervene.
Teri Rowles, lead veterinarian with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, cautioned against jumping to conclusions until a panel of expert radiologists could review magnetic resonance images of the dolphin’s head and a federal pathologist could scrutinize tissues for diseases as well as for air and fat bubbles associated with sonar-related injuries.
“At this point, we cannot rule in or rule out sonar or any other kind of intense noise,” said Rowles, head of the nation’s Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program. “This one is perplexing at this point.”
The dolphin death comes at a delicate time for the Navy, which has appealed a federal court order imposing extra safeguards to protect whales from possible harm caused by midfrequency active sonar.
“During the last 40 years, there has been no documented incidents of harm, injury or death of marine mammals resulting from exposure to (midfrequency active) sonar” in Southern California waters, the Navy stated in its 77-page appeal filed last week.
Lawyers for the Navy argue that a federal court order has no scientific basis to require the Navy to shut down sonar when marine mammals are spotted within 2,200 yards and to avoid areas along the coast and between some of California’s Channel Islands that are known for their abundance of marine mammals. These and other court-imposed conditions, Navy officials said, hamper the ability to train sailors to use sonar to detect quiet-running diesel-electric submarines now operated by Iran, China, North Korea and other potentially hostile nations.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has promised to rule on the Navy’s latest appeal by March 3, so the Navy will have time to petition the Supreme Court before its next two rounds of sonar testing, scheduled to begin in March.
