War of the Whales: A True Story

by Joshua Horwitz

  Chapter 18: The Killer Turned Tame

  1. After the Puget Sound orca captures ended in 1976, SeaWorld and its director of collections, Don Goldsberry, moved on to Iceland. Between 1976 and 1989, Iceland proved the best source for SeaWorld and other marine parks wanting to capture or buy new orcas.

  2. In 2009, 13 million people took whale-watching tours in 119 countries worldwide, generating ticket fees and tourism expenditures of more than $2.1 billion during 2008. More than 3,000 whale-watching operations around the world now employ an estimated 13,200 people, according to a study commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). See A. M. Cisneros-Montemayor et al., “The Global Potential for Whale Watching,” Marine Policy (2010), doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2010.05.005.

  Meanwhile, watching whales in captive settings is also big business. SeaWorld, which owns ten amusement parks in the United States, including five in Florida, was sold to the Blackstone Group for $2.5 billion in 2009. In 2012 SeaWorld had profits of $77 million on total revenues of $1.4 billion. See Jason Garcia, “SeaWorld Entertainment’s Profit Soars on Increases in Revenue, Attendance,” Orlando Sentinel, March 26, 2013.

  Chapter 20: The Dolphins That Joined the Navy

  1. According to documents uncovered at the Lilly archive at Stanford University by Princeton historian D. Graham Burnette, John Lilly was consulting with his former CalTech classmate and director of China Lake, Bill McLean, about deploying dolphins as battle space assets even before Lilly published Man and Dolphin. McLean brought Lilly out to NOTS to brief his engineers, and he continued to maintain contact with Lilly as the Navy developed its own marine mammal research facility.

  2. Since confirming dolphin echolocation in the 1950s, the Navy had been systematically studying whether other marine mammals and nonmammals possessed parallel abilities. Seals and sea lions, for instance, were suspected of echolocating until exhaustive studies revealed that they could track miniature submarines—and, presumably, fish—from 130 feet away by using their hypersensitive whiskers to follow the wakes left by objects moving through the water.

  3. Journalists and authors David Helvarg and Steve Chapple have individually reported interviews with trainers and CIA operatives who claim direct knowledge of dolphin dark ops, including Michael Greenwood, a Navy and CIA dolphin specialists who gave 150 pages of closed-door testimony before the Church Committee Senate hearings into extralegal CIA operations. For more on this, see pages 68–75 of David Helvarg’s Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness (Sierra Club Books, 2006).

  4. Engineer Whitlow Au and experimental psychologist Paul Nachtigall led the Navy’s Hawaii-based dolphin research program. Whitlow W. L. Au, The Sonar of Dolphins (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993); Paul E. Nachtigall and Patrick W. B. Moore, Animal Sonar: Processes and Performance (New York: Plenum, 1988).

  5. In fact, one of the Navy’s Hawaii-based biosonar researchers, an experimental psychologist named Herb Roitblat, translated the neural networks of dolphin colonies into a new kind of internet search engine. He left the Navy, patented his invention, and built a start-up around his algorithm, which he called DolphinSearch.

  6. The Soviets’ militarized dolphin program, based in Sevastopol, Crimea, was quickly decommissioned at the end of the Cold War. In 2000 the BBC and other news outlets reported that Russia sold its trained marine mammals to Iran: “In total, 27 animals, including walruses, sea lions, seals, and a white beluga whale, were loaded with the dolphins into a Russian transport aircraft for the journey from Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula, in the Black Sea, to the Persian Gulf.” See “Iran Buys Kamikaze Dolphins,” BBC News, March 8, 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/670551.stm.

  In 2004 Doug Cartlidge, a dolphin expert with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society of London, visited the site of the former Soviet Dolphin Division, the care of which had been transferred to the Ukrainian navy. He reported that the Ukrainians were now in the business of capturing and training dolphins and other marine mammals for sale and export to various Middle Eastern countries. Anecdotal reports suggest that the Soviets’ dolphin program paralleled that of the US Navy, and there are rumored accounts of similarly bizarre programs of kamikaze whales. See: www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?73415-quot-warrior-dolphins-quot.

  Chapter 22: The Mermaid That Got Away

  1. Kenneth Norris, Balcomb’s mentor at UC Santa Cruz, had a career path that was both unlikely and typical during the early days of the field. A zoologist specializing in desert reptiles, Norris was recruited in 1953 as the founding curator at Marineland of the Pacific, the country’s first West Coast oceanarium. At Marineland, Norris conducted some of the earliest research confirming biosonar in dolphins. In 1964, along with three UCLA fraternity brothers, he co-founded SeaWorld on 22 acres of San Diego’s Mission Bay. He then went on to become the first director of UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Coastal Marine Studies in 1972, a year before Balcomb’s arrival.

  2. Marc Kaufman, “Navy Tests Linked to Beaching Of Whales; Ear Bleeding Consistent With Intense Noise,” Washington Post, June 15, 2000, A03.

  Chapter 23: In the Valley of the Whales

  1. K. C. Balcomb and D. E. Claridge, “A Mass Stranding of Cetaceans Caused by Naval Sonar in the Bahamas,” Bahamas Journal of Science 8, no. 2 (May 2001): 4–6.

  2. US Department of Commerce and US Department of the Navy, Joint Interim Report: Bahamas Marine Mammal Stranding Event of March 15–16, 2000 (Washington, DC: US Department of Commerce, 2001).

  3. According to the Navy and NMFS Interim Report: “The necropsy on the spotted dolphin revealed the animal died with systemic debilitating disease. It was considered unrelated to the mass stranding event cluster.”

  4. M. P. Johnson and P. L. Tyack, “A Digital Acoustic Recording Tag for Measuring the Response of Wild Marine Mammals to Sound,” IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering 28, no. 1 (January 2003): 3–12.

  Chapter 24: God and Country v. the Whales

  1. The Humane Society of the United States, the League for Coastal Protection, and the Ocean Futures Society.

  Chapter 25: “It Is So Ordered”

  1. The two Department of Justice attorneys representing the Navy in the Low Frequency Active sonar case were Ann Navarro and Kristen Gustafson.

  2. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero served as mediator in the Northern District’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Program.

  3. Correspondence between Marine Mammal Research Program officer, Office of Naval Research, and operations manager for Navy sonar system, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (August 6–9, 2001); document AR24279 addendum in the administrative record filed in NRDC v. Evans (N.D. Cal. 2003), on file with NRDC.

  Here, with names and other identifying information omitted, is the complete dialogue:

  Operations Official (  forwarding public comments that the researchers had submitted to NMFS): [ONR official], is the Navy funding any [of these scientists’] research? Did they say anything to you on this issue?

  ONR Official: Yes, I fund their research. They did mention that they would be sending in comments on LFA, but I did not get a copy of what they sent. I gather the input was not entirely positive.

  Operations Official: [ONR official], their comments were in the attachment. Yes, they were negative and, in my opinion, out of the box. If they are funded by the Navy, the proper way to bitch is via the sponsor [you], and not a letter to NMFS. All of the data cited was run by your office, we are not perfect and [Marine Acoustics, the Navy’s contractor] has always tried to spin data, but I’ve tried to be objective. A letter from [these researchers] to NMFS is nothing more than an attempt to discredit the Navy and stop the deployment of LFA. Maybe I’m missing the big picture—what say you?

  ONR Official: I told them as much in a pretty scorching phone call. I think they had some inkling that they might be about to take our money and make themselves look good to the enviros, too, but I can’t prove that. The main driver was [an envir
onmental group]. All through this process, [the researchers] had ignored the LFA issue, not responded to requests for comments, in the Federal Register, etc. Then one day [an environmentalist] calls them and asks them if they had read the EIS. [The lead researcher] said, “No,” and [the environmentalist] said, “I’ll mail you a copy, and please send your comments to [NMFS] right away.” Scientists are like that; they’ll review anything they’re asked to review and give their honest, sometimes harsh critique, without knowing any of the politics or circumstances. It’s the way you do things in peer review of a colleague’s paper, and they just apply the process to everything they read. If we had asked them to review it earlier, we probably could have absorbed his criticism [on this particular issue] and thus defused any further criticism, but that’s water under the bridge now. I also reminded [the lead researcher] that he was using data that he published after the EIS was written, and data that was not yet published; and I told him it was unfair to expect Navy to use information that he had not provided at the time the EIS was written. I got a sheepish apology for his not providing input earlier (even though we had not asked him directly for it), and for holding the EIS to his changing understanding of the problem as his research has progressed. But I don’t know what good that does us.

  Chapter 26: Counterattack

  1. Marc Kaufman, “Whale Stranding in N.C. Followed Navy Sonar Use,” Washington Post, January 28, 2005, A03.

  2. Brian Kelly and Lukas Velush, “Report on Porpoise Deaths Splits Navy, Whale Groups,” Herald (of Everett, Washington), February 10, 2004, www.heraldnet.com/article/20040210/NEWS01/402100704.

  3. Assessment of Acoustic Exposures on Marine Mammals in Conjunction with USS Shoup Active Sonar Transmissions in the Eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca and Haro Strait, Washington, May 5, 2003 (Silver Spring, MD: National Marine Fisheries Service, January 2005).

  4. Hert Levine et al., Active Sonar Waveform (McLean, VA: JASON, the Mitre Corporation, June 2004), 1 (JSR-03-200).

  Chapter 27: The Admirals Take Charge

  1. The Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), the world’s largest international naval warfare exercise, is held biennially during June and July in Honolulu. It is hosted by the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, which invites allied military forces from the Pacific Rim nations to participate.

  2. The RIMPAC lawsuit was brought by NRDC in conjunction with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Cetacean Society International, and the Ocean Futures Society, as well as OFS founder and director Jean-Michel Cousteau.

  3. Judge Cooper heard both the California and Hawaii midfrequency cases. The first case was filed in the Central District of California. The RIMPAC case, in Hawaii, was filed as a related case, also in the Central District, and it went to Cooper as related.

  Chapter 28: The Highest Court in the Land

  1. Among the four other environmental cases decided by the US Supreme Court during its 2008 term, the court ruled against environmentalists in each case, including limiting corporate liability in toxic spills, making it easier to dump mining waste in Alaska, and allowing the EPA to use a cost-benefit analysis to evaluate allowable marine life kills at cooling structures at power plants. The US Supreme Court, going back to the Rehnquist court, has been particularly unfriendly to cases brought under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), ruling against the environmentalists in 15 straight cases. See also Marcia Coyle, “High Court Losses Stun Environmentalists,” National Law Journal (June 29, 2009).

  Chapter 29: Endgame

  1. Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 129 S. Ct. 365, 378 (2008), www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1239.pdf.

  2. 555 U.S. ____ (2008), 1, J. Ginsburg, dissenting, supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/555/07-1239/dissent.html.

  3. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times all reported positive accounts that reflected NRDC’s “soft-landing” analysis. However, the Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial on November 13, 2008, “The Greens Get Harpooned: The Supremes Save the Navy from the Whales,” spared no mixed metaphor in gleefully skewering both “green activists” and “liberal judges”:

  The Supreme Court opened its fall term auspiciously yesterday by sinking the environmental Pequod known as NRDC v. Winter . . .

  If the bureaucratic distinction between an “Environmental Impact Statement” and an “Environmental Assessment” sounds like a flimsy excuse for second-guessing the judgment of admirals in wartime—well, this case was never really about the welfare of Baby Humpback. Instead, green activists and liberal judges were looking to assert their dominance in matters of war and peace . . .

  We are very close to making judges co-Secretaries of Defense—and next time they may want to do more than save the whales.

  Epilogue

  1. Diane E. Claridge, “Population Ecology of Blainville’s Beaked Whales (Mesoplodon Densirostris)” (doctoral thesis, University of St. Andrews, May 2013), http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3741. Claridge’s study compared the abundance and age composition of Blainville’s beaked whales on and off a Navy range in the Bahamas. This was the first study to compare the population demographics of beaked whales regularly exposed to Navy sonar to ones rarely exposed. The study revealed a substantially lower abundance of beaked whales on the range where MFA sonar was used regularly than at the control site, where sonar was limited. Of particular concern, the study found a lower female-to-calf ratio—in other words, fewer baby whales per adult female—at the site with military sonar. After ruling out several other factors, the author concludes that the “apparent low reproductive rates and recruitment through births on the Navy range,” together with impacts that have been observed on beaked whale foraging, present cause for concern.

  2. Padraic Flanagan, “Navy Sonar ‘Did Cause Mass Dolphin Deaths’ Say Scientists Who Blame War Games Exercise off Cornish Coast for Strandings,” Daily Mail, May 4, 2013, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2319611/Navy-sonar-did-cause-mass-dolphin-deaths-say-scientists-blame-war-games-exercise-Cornish-coast-strandings.html.

  3. “Scientific Committee of ACCOBAMS Statement of Concern About Atypical Mass Strandings of Beaked Whales in the Ionian Sea,” Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans of the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and Contiguous Atlantic Area, February 13, 2012, www.accobams.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1118:atypical-mass-strandings-in-the-ionian-sea&catid=3:accobams-news&Itemid=68.

  4. Leonard Bernstein, “Sea-Map Sonar Linked to Whale Stranding off Madagascar,” Guardian, October 15, 2013, www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/15/stranded-whales-sonar-underwater.

  INDEX

  Note: Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

  Abaco Island:

  initial reports of whale strandings, 5–6, 18, 98, 130

  Navy tests on north side of, 130, 132

  search for stranded whales, 25, 28

  whale strandings along shore of, 265

  see also Bahamas

  ABC, Wide World of Sports, 228

  Acoustical Society of America, 178

  “acoustic smog,” 179

  Acoustic Thermometry, 164–69, 170, 171–72, 173, 175–76, 373n14

  acoustic tomography, 156–57, 158–64

  acoustic trauma, evidence of, 72, 128–29, 191–92, 261–62, 293

  Adams, John, and NRDC, 81, 83, 167, 168

  Adams, Lytle, 376n3

  Adderly, Les, 23, 32, 66, 184, 185

  Aden, USS Cole bombed in, 271

  Ahab (orca), 237–38

  Alaska:

  beaked whale stranded in (2004), 308

  Pebble Mine, 349–50

  algae blooms, 71

  Alito, Samuel, 332, 338–39

  Al Qaeda, 271

  “A Mass Stranding of Cetaceans Caused by Naval Sonar in the Bahamas” (Balcomb and Claridge), 270

  Amchitka Island, bomb tests at, 227

  American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), 49

  Anderson, Norah, 366n5

&n
bsp; Andros Island, Navy testing near, 15, 19, 110, 140

  animal rights movement, 198, 222–24, 242, 377n10

  animals, and warfare, 199–200, 238–39, 242–43, 364–65n2, 376n3

  Animal Welfare Institute, 176, 222

  Anspach, Bill, 25, 28, 29, 32–33

  Arctic:

  melting ice cap of, 160

  Navy research in, 155

  submarine battlespace in, 160

  Arctic Right Whale (Balaena mysticetus), 2

  Aridjis, Homero, 93

  Aristotle, Historia Animalium, 68, 201, 375n2

  Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Bethesda, 105

  Associated Press, 130–31, 133

  Atlantic spotted dolphins, 21, 22–23, 187

  Atomic Energy Commission, 368n1

  AUTEC (Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center):

  tapes of, 19, 58, 107

  testing range of, 110, 140

  Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), dolphin drones, 241–42, 243

  Azzolini, Marta, 363n1

  Bahamas:

  beaked whale research in, 4, 63–64, 131, 262, 284, 313