Deadly Sounds

by Ben White
International Marine Mammal Project

Those funny guys who dream up projects for the US Navy have come up with a real rip-snorter. They want to send four ships around the world to blast the oceans with some of the loudest sounds ever produced.

The rationale behind spending untold millions on this harebrained scheme is the fear that some unknown enemy might threaten our shores and carrier task forces with a super-quiet diesel-electric submarine. Problem is, the Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS) will do nothing to protect us but might well deafen and disorient much of the ocean's sea life [Summer '99 EIJ]. The US Navy has been secretly testing the LFAS for at least a decade - sometimes with deadly consequences. In 1998, Dr. Alexandros Frantzis of the University of Athens discovered an eerie correlation between the testing of the device off Greece and a subsequent mass-stranding of Cuvier's beaked whales.

Whales rely on sound for every facet of their lives, from finding food and mates, to traveling and communicating. Deep-diving cetaceans appear to be particularly at risk from these loud LFAS broadcasts that can travel hundreds of miles.

At a hearing in Washington several years ago, Bill Rossiter of Cetacean Society International asked the Navy if it had any idea what effect such intense sound was having on whales. The Navy merely cited one Cornell University study that concluded that the LFAS didn't bother whales in the slightest.

Confrontation off Kona
Fast-forward to the Kona coast of Hawai'i, March 1998. The vessel Cory Chouest is cruising back and forth about 15 miles off shore while a team of scientists fiddles with the LFAS. They locate a female humpback in an area used for calving and mating. After watching her for (at most) an hour to establish her "normal" behavior, the scientists hit her with a 125-decibel (Db) blast of sound from the LFAS array hanging beneath the ship. When they detect no obvious reaction, they ramp the array up to 135 Db - ten times louder (the decibel scale, like the Richter, is logarithmic). The LFAS eventually hits 155 Db before it is turned off.

One baby humpback, separated from his mother, is seen breaching hundreds of times over four hours before sinking out of sight. The Navy claims that this is normal.

The tests are disrupted when animal rights protesters organized by the Animal Welfare Institute plunge into the water alongside the Cory Chouest, forcing the Navy to turn off the boom-box. By the time the Navy calls off the experiment, all the whales have fled to quieter waters.

Six lawsuits were filed against the Navy, with the plaintiffs ranging from whale-watching businesses to a native Hawai'ian group that believes whales are sacred repositories of ancient knowledge. The latter argued that driving the whales away amounted to depriving native Hawai'ians of their religious freedom. All six suits were rejected.

The Navy's tests also targeted migrating gray whales and foraging blue and fin whales off the coast of California. The gray whales avoided the noisemaker in a neat divergence pattern, but none of this mattered to the Navy, which was out to prove that there was no effect, not to discover whether there was one.

The Navy did no analysis of whale distribution in the years before, during or after the test. It didn't follow any of the exposed whales to look for long-term damage. It intentionally failed to investigate the LFAS' effect on fish and other sea life.

Deafening but "non-serious"
The Navy's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the LFAS is based on the three tests and a particularly brutal experiment in which dolphins in a tank were subjected to sounds so loud that they were deafened.

The DEIS asserts that an LFAS piercing the world's oceans with ear-splitting sound for thousands of hours a year would have negligible impact on any creature. When actively deployed, however, the LFAS would not be limited to the 155 Db test level: It would routinely broadcast at about 240 Db - almost a trillion times louder!

The DEIS admitted that there could be a potential for "non-serious injury" should a whale or turtle swim within a kilometer of the device while in operation. (The Navy has promised to turn the LFAS off whenever these creatures stray too close.)

The Navy stated that its LFAS vessels would stay 12 nautical miles away from the coast and would avoid "critical areas." But since LFAS ships would spend most of the time in foreign waters blasting lands and waters that don't belong to the US, the project raises some troubling questions about sovereignty.

Full speed ahead
LFAS' real purpose may be to find enemy subs lying in wait for ballistic-missile-bearing US Trident submarines. In a time of "heightened tensions," the LFAS could be ordered deployed at full power without any environmental "mitigations." An LFAS ship could blast away in the middle of a right-whale migration without asking permission from anyone. So much for prudent controls.

There is one final problem with LFAS technology: It won't work. The LFAS is designed to send out a sound so loud that it can read the echo of an enemy sub hiding 30 miles away. Problem is, it will be like turning on a light in a dark room. The Navy's own subs also will be lit up and exposed to anyone able to read the echoes. If there were any enemy submarines lurking nearby, their first torpedoes would target our subs, the second wave would take out our carriers, and the third would obliterate the LFAS itself.

Undeterred by such details, the Navy sails on. It has applied to the NMFS for a "Letter of Authorization" (LOA) to forgive beforehand killing any animal anywhere in the world for the next five years. Even though the permit covers the entire planet and involves catastrophic effects possibly not realized for years, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) appears ready to rubber-stamp the LOA.

To deny the permit, the NMFS must determine that the number of sea animals killed by the LFAS would exceed the number in the "surplus" population. Long-term environmental devastation that leads to mortalities, or behavioral changes that tip a species into free fall, are not considered. The Navy remains intent on deploying the LFAS into every ocean ecosystem on Earth, even though its DEIS was widely pilloried as the worst impact statement ever seen. The only factor that may strengthen the NMFS' resolve is public outcry.

What You Can Do: Contact your elected representatives and the NMFS to express your concerns about the costs and risks of the Navy's LFAS.