War of the Whales: A True Story

by Joshua Horwitz

  Tougher to take was the one-line email Bob Gisiner sent to him and cc’ d to Gentry: “Norris would be ashamed of you.” Ken Norris, who had died in 1998, was a revered teacher and mentor to a generation of young researchers, including Gisiner, Gentry, and Balcomb.1 He was a father figure to all of them at Santa Cruz. Gisiner knew precisely where to insert the blade.

  The next day brought a volley of slurs and smears that friends forwarded to him. Emails between staff at Fisheries and ONR called Balcomb “a grandstander” and not a “real” scientist but merely a photographer. Somebody suggested that he had it in for the Navy because his research had never received funding from ONR.

  Balcomb tried not to take it personally. He’ d expected this kind of response when he called out the Navy. But his professional reputation was all he had to bolster the credibility of his field research. He didn’t have a PhD or any academic affiliations. In addition to bearing witness to the Bahamas stranding, he was 25 years into his orca survey in Puget Sound, and getting closer every year to winning them threatened-species status and the protections that came with that recognition. If his objectivity was called into question over the stand he’ d taken on the Bahamas stranding, the orcas would pay the price.

  Meanwhile, he wasn’t getting any support on the home front. The day he got back to Sandy Point, Diane was busy cleaning up the house after the Earthlings, who had left that morning. She asked how the press conference went but offered no sympathy or support.

  He knew something was off kilter when the phone calls began. Unlike his other wives, Diane rarely spoke on the phone for longer than a few minutes.

  Until that week in May.

  Each night after dinner, the phone would ring. Diane would jump up to grab the cordless extension and disappear onto the back deck, sliding the glass door closed behind her. The calls would go on for a long time. When Ken asked her who she was talking to, she answered, “No one.”

  When he pressed her, Diane explained that it was a woman from the recently departed Earthling group who had fallen hard for the whales and the island life. Her name was Pam. She worked in Los Angeles as an electrical engineer, and she wanted to change her life. She was thinking about moving to Abaco and joining their research team. She had money, so she wouldn’t need a stipend.

  They had seen this happen before. One-weekers would have a road-to-Damascus moment out on the water with the whales and feel as though they couldn’t return to their life on the mainland. Back in the late 1970s, a woman showed up to volunteer at Smugglers Cove. She’ d come all the way from Holland, where she worked as a medical doctor and professor of informatics. She fell in love with the orcas that summer, returned every summer thereafter, and over the years became a senior member of their survey team.

  Still, it wasn’t like Diane to get so wrapped up in an Earthling’s midlife crisis. One night after watching her animated silhouette on the back porch during a marathon conversation, Ken confronted her. Did she and this woman have something going on? He wanted to know. Some kind of girl crush?

  “Relax,” she responded. “They’re all incoming calls, so I’m not running up a big phone bill. I’m just trying to help Pam make some important life decisions.”

  It was time to close up the house at Sandy Point and move camp to Smugglers Cove for the summer. Dave Ellifrit had flown out ahead of them to field the first wave of summer interns. Those few days at the end of each season—in May in the Bahamas and in October in Smugglers Cove—were the only times they had alone together in the two houses. Ordinarily, Ken looked forward to it as a romantic interlude, like parents whose kids had gone off to summer camp. He and Diane could stay up late at night, make love on the beach, or simply sit on the deck together and stare out at the sea.

  This year it didn’t feel romantic. And it felt wrong somehow to be leaving the island when so few whales had returned to the canyon and there were still so many unanswered questions. But with the hurricane season starting up in June, they didn’t have a choice. They pulled the boats out of the water and towed them up to the Yamaha dealer for summer storage. They stowed the linens, locked up the desktop computers, and secured all their files and photographs in waterproof filing cabinets set well up off the floor. Finally, they shuttered all the windows to protect the house against storms. In the morning they would drive up to Marsh Harbour, leave the car and the truck in a friend’s garage, and catch the flight to the mainland.

  It was late when Diane climbed into the big claw-footed bathtub for a hot soak. Ken grabbed two cold Kaliks from the fridge, tuned the kitchen radio to a funky mix of calypso and reggae on Radio Abaco, and joined her in the tub. They sat facing each other, their legs intertwined. Ken leaned his head back against the tub’s rim and held the cool beer bottle against his forehead. Finally, he thought, a moment of peace and stillness.

  Then Diane dropped the depth charge: “I’m not going to Smugglers Cove with you.”

  Ken opened his eyes and stared up at the flaking paint on the ceiling rafters.

  “Once we get to Miami, I’m heading to LA. To visit Pam.”

  “Why?” was all he could manage. He sat up straight to face her.

  “Ken.” She moved her foot away from his on the floor of the tub. “It’s been really good. It’s been great. But it’s over. The marriage is over.”

  A wave of vertigo knocked him sideways. It felt like being in a fighter jet during a sharp turn when the g-force knocks the crystals in your inner ear loose, and your balance goes haywire.

  “I may stay in LA for a while,” she explained. “I don’t know for how long.”

  Balcomb held up his hand to stop her from talking, as if it couldn’t be true unless she said it out loud. He couldn’t bear to hear anything else, at least not until the dizziness and nausea passed. He drew up his knees and tucked his head. As soon as he got his balance back, his shoulders began to shake, and he felt himself sobbing. Diane didn’t move to comfort him. Sitting in the tub with his heart cracked in half, Ken looked up to see Diane’s face composed in a mask of resolve.

  • • •

  Smugglers Cove without Diane was agony. Everywhere he looked, he saw reminders of happier times: their barefoot wedding on the beach, dancing in the moonlight on the deck, kayaking together through the glassy waters just after dawn, alongside a pod of majestic orcas.

  Diane called to tell him that she and Pam were heading off to hike in Joshua Tree National Park. Then no word for ten days. When she finally checked in, she was back at Pam’s house in LA. She was planning to stay there. She couldn’t say for how long. She only said that she was happy.

  Diane didn’t have a cell phone, so the only way to reach her was to call Pam’s house. Ken couldn’t bear to hear Pam’s voice, so he tried not to call. He began writing letters: his “I hope it’s not too late” letters. He’ d never been the kind of guy to tell people he loved them. Even Diane, whom he’ d loved more than anyone in his life. Now he let it all pour out. He apologized for not being a better partner, for making decisions without consulting her. He promised to let her steer the boat if only she’ d come back to him.

  After two weeks of unanswered letters, Ken drove the Volkswagen minibus onto the Friday Harbor ferry, disembarked on the mainland north of Seattle, and headed south for the 1,200-mile drive to LA. He drove in silence, rehearsing the speech he planned to make when he got there, stopping only twice for a few hours’ sleep at roadside rest stops.

  He’ d only passed through Los Angeles before on his way to Baja, so he had to buy a map to find his way to the gated community on the west side of town where Pam lived. When he called up from the gatehouse, Diane sounded shocked and unhappy that he’ d come. After some negotiation, she agreed to meet him at a tea shop a few blocks away on Wilshire Boulevard. When she showed up an hour later, she was stiff and aloof, refusing to eat or even order a cup of tea. She repeated that she was happy. Their marriage was over, and there wasn’t anything else to talk about. When he pressed her t
o meet him again, she said she’ d come only with Pam. She agreed to meet him the next day on the Venice boardwalk.

  That scene was even worse than the tea shop. How was he supposed to win her back in the middle of the Venice boardwalk freak show? There was a nonstop parade of tattooed fortune-tellers and Rasta vendors stinking of weed, and every manner of roller skating nut job. They talked standing next to a phone card kiosk because Diane refused to sit down in a restaurant or even walk with him on the beach. Pam stood back a few paces, pretending to peruse a rack of sunglasses and exchanging intense glances with Diane every few minutes. Ken stammered through the speech he’ d rehearsed all night, determined to try to connect with her somehow. But Diane wouldn’t budge. She handed Ken a list she’ d compiled of the personal effects she’ d left the past season at Smugglers Cove. She asked Balcomb to ship them back to her, either here in LA or care of her sister in the Bahamas. Suddenly, incredibly, there was nothing left to say, except good-bye.

  The drive back north felt like a one-car funeral procession. He’ d spent most of his 14 years with Diane disbelieving his good luck at having this young superwoman in his life. Now that his luck had run out, he had nothing left to fight for, except the whales.

  • • •

  After a week back at Smugglers Cove without Diane, with no hope of reeling her back into his life, Balcomb was emotionally spent. He tried to lose himself in the daily drill of tracking orcas in the strait. The best he could manage was to wake up early, stay out on the water all day, and hope that none of the interns asked him when Diane was planning to arrive for the summer survey.

  Balcomb was actually relieved at the prospect of returning to Washington, DC, for a Fisheries investigative meeting. He wasn’t invited, and they clearly didn’t want him there. But the agency couldn’t keep him from attending, since he had relevant evidence to present. He tried to convince Roger Gentry to cover his airfare and lodging, but Gentry told him that if he wanted to attend, he’ d have to travel on his own dime. Balcomb estimated the trip would cost him at least $600, which ordinarily would have been a deal breaker. But he’ d heard that the day after its own investigative session, Fisheries was expecting to be briefed by the Navy. He still hoped to find a way to get invited to—or crash—that briefing.

  When Balcomb showed up at the Fisheries meeting in Silver Spring, he felt like the pariah in the fifth-grade lunchroom. Darlene Ketten refused to acknowledge him. Gentry gave him a curt nod, nothing more. Janet Whaley, the assistant head of the Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, began the meeting by admonishing everyone in attendance to keep the proceedings confidential. “Whatever is said in this room stays in this room. This is an investigation, not a press event. Understood?” She slowly pivoted her gaze around the conference table until each attendee had nodded assent. She glared straight across the table at Balcomb, her hands folded, her mouth set in a tight smile.

  Ketten presented her preliminary forensic findings on the ears and heads she’ d examined. She reported on the beachside necropsy, the CT scans, and the eventual dissection at Woods Hole. She referred to evidence of a pressure event, the presence of subarachnoid hemorrhages in the cranium, and blood in the ear canal. But she insisted on citing the cause of death as “dehydration and cardiac collapse” subsequent to stranding. The word “sonar” was never mentioned. Any conclusions about what caused the strandings, she cautioned, would have to await the slow decalcification of the outer ear bones. It would take months before the hard bone dissolved away in the weak acid solution and allowed her to obtain thin slices of the inner ear for direct examination.

  Next, Ruth Ewing described her findings from examination of the organ specimens that Balcomb had harvested from the whale in Cross Harbor. Her report reinforced Balcomb’s belief that she’ d made a critical pathology error. She’ d embedded the organ specimens in paraffin, which was by-the-book histology. But paraffin dissolves all the fat tissue, which is where you’ d look for nitrogen bubbles from the bends.

  Balcomb presented his testimony about the events on the ground on March 15 and 16, including warships he and others observed in the channel in the days following. Then he submitted into evidence his videotape of the strandings. As to cause of death, he noted that if you stampede a herd of buffalo over a cliff, what kills them is the impact of the fall. But the cause of death is whatever drove them off the cliff. Some of the stranded whales he examined had died from shark attacks. But in ten years of field study, he’ d never seen a healthy beaked whale venture into shark-infested waters outside the canyon. To figure out what caused the whale deaths, he insisted, they first needed to discover what happened inside the canyon that would have sent the whales fleeing to the beach.

  Balcomb submitted one other piece of evidence: a document that contradicted the notion that the Navy had no prior knowledge of the presence of beaked whales in Providence Channel. Six months earlier, at the Maui marine mammal conference, Balcomb had befriended a biologist from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, the naval intelligence agency that administered the submarine test range at AUTEC. The biologist was in charge of the environmental planning and biological analysis division. As part of AUTEC’s internal environmental review in 1997, he conducted a comprehensive assessment of marine mammals in the Bahamas, including data from Balcomb and Claridge’s ongoing Bahamas Marine Mammal Survey. The assessment included protocols for avoiding harm to marine life during testing on the range, including specific allowable decibel thresholds by species, including beaked whales.

  Balcomb pushed the report across the table to Janet Whaley. “If the Navy group at AUTEC knew all about the beaked whales in Providence Channel,” he wondered aloud, “why weren’t they mentioned in the Environmental Assessment the fleet conducted before the sonar exercises?”

  The most compelling new evidence presented that morning came from the tapes at AUTEC that Balcomb had urged Gisiner to track down the first day of the stranding. Now, ten weeks later, he finally found out what they recorded. There were two hydrophone arrays recording in the vicinity of Abaco that day. One was east of the Bahamas: an old SOSUS array moored in the deep sound channel. Originally installed in the 1960s to track Soviet submarines as they transited the Atlantic, this array was currently being deployed by geological surveys to monitor underwater earthquakes and other seismic activity in the North Atlantic. Although numerous earthquakes had been detected from around the Atlantic the week of the stranding, there were no unusual sources of low-frequency acoustic energy emanating from the Bahamas region—meaning, the tissue damage observed in the beaked whales couldn’t have resulted from an explosion or geological event.

  The other hydrophone array was located 100 miles south of the strandings, a mile deep on the floor of the AUTEC range. A storm tracker named John Proni from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration happened to be recording in the AUTEC range the morning of March 15. There were no submarine tests being conducted on the range from March 15 to March 18, which was why Proni had access to the arrays those days. On the morning of March 15, he recorded bursts of 135- to 150-decibel sound waves at between 3.5 and 6 kilohertz.

  Using the basic algorithm he’ d learned in Fleet Sonar School, Balcomb quickly calculated that the sound level 100 miles to the north, where the whales stranded, would have been about 230 decibels! When he looked around the table, he saw Roger Gentry working his own equations on a pad.

  After the meeting adjourned, Balcomb hurried to catch up with Gentry in the hallway. “Did you get the same sound source level as I did?” he asked. “Two hundred thirty decibels must mean 53-Charlie,” Balcomb said, referring to the nickname for the ANSQ-53c active sonar mounted on the hulls of most Navy destroyers.

  Gentry looked around to see who might be watching him. He was unhappy to be having a conversation with Balcomb that might be construed as friendly. “I’m just a civilian, Ken. I know bioacoustics, not Navy hardware.”

  Balcomb asked him what he knew about the me
eting scheduled the next morning between Fisheries and the Navy. Gentry confirmed that, yes, the Navy was scheduled to brief Fisheries, and, yes, Gentry was attending. But even if he wanted to help Balcomb get inside the room—which he didn’t—there was no way the Navy would give him a seat at that meeting. Not after the press conference. Not after giving his videotape to 60 Minutes.

  • • •

  The next morning, Balcomb was already boarding his flight back to Seattle by the time the large Navy team filed into the conference room at Fisheries headquarters. The whole crew showed up: the admirals from Atlantic Fleet Command, the scientists from ONR, the acousticians from the Naval Research Lab, and the leadership from the Office of Environmental Readiness and the Navy Secretary’s office. They all brought their lawyers.

  In addition to Gisiner from ONR, there were marine mammal specialists from Woods Hole, Florida, and California. The gray eminence among them was Sam Ridgway, who still directed the dolphin training center in Point Loma, San Diego. In the four decades since he was recruited to Point Mugu as the Navy’s first veterinarian and dolphin trainer, Ridgway had continued to plumb the mysteries of dolphin anatomy, echolocation, and hearing. By 2000, he was the Navy’s longest-serving cetologist, and virtually the last of the first generation of cetacean investigators that included John Lilly, Bill Schevill, Bill Watkins, and Ken Norris.

  Ridgway’s research into the impact of noise, including sonar, on dolphins and other small whales had established a 180 decibel “safety” threshold for temporary hearing loss. The Navy and ONR had adopted this threshold for their Environmental Assessments, but many non-Navy scientists criticized 180 decibels as much too loud a threshold for safety, since hearing loss was the most extreme consequence of noise, and whales had been shown to change their migration paths and other important behaviors when subjected to just 120 decibels.