Fed Investigator Deletes References To Sonar In NC Mass Whale Stranding

[hatrack]

Documents released under a court order show that a government investigator studying the stranding of 37 whales on the North Carolina coast last year changed her draft report to eliminate all references to the possibility that naval sonar may have played a role in driving the whales ashore. The issue of sonar's effects on whales is a sensitive topic for the U.S. Navy. It has clashed with environmentalists in several court suits seeking to limit use of the technology because of its possible effects on marine mammals and other sea creatures.

The January 2005 stranding occurred shortly after naval maneuvers in the area -- which is off North Carolina and in the region where the Pentagon wants to build a controversial underwater sonar training range. In her initial April 2005 preliminary report on the deaths, Teri Rowles, coordinator of the National Marine Fisheries Service's stranding response program, described injuries to seven of the whales that "may be indicative" of damage related to the loud blasts of sound from active sonar. She also noted that one of the injuries -- air bubbles in the liver of a pilot whale -- had been reported in mass strandings in the Bahamas and Canary Islands associated with sonar activity.

That report was made public this week after a federal judge in New York ordered its release to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group, which had sued the agency over its refusal to release information on the whales' stranding on North Carolina's Outer Banks. But before it was released by NRDC, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released an updated report -- by Rowles and others -- that did not mention sonar. In a cover letter to that report, NOAA officials said the initial draft that mentioned sonar "contains early information that was later found to be inaccurate."

EDIT

The Navy has also acknowledged that sonar can harm whales. A Navy-NOAA investigation found that sonar from Navy ships was the most plausible explanation for the stranding of 17 whales in the Bahamas in 2000. The report found that sonar-induced damage to the ears of some animals may have disoriented them and caused them to swim onto the shore. Researchers are also studying the ears of some animals that stranded in North Carolina, but Rowles said those results will not be known for some time. The final report, she said, is scheduled to be released in March.

EDIT/END

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/19/AR2006011902990.html

[Wilms]

1. They can render whales deaf, but not us blind.

hatrack,

Thank you for the posts you share here.

Wilms

[Vogon_Glory]

2. Team Shrub Voodoo Science Strikes Again eom

[Odin2005]

3. Disgraceful.

These morons deserve to have speakers glued to thier ears with noise blaring untill THEY go as insane as the poor whales got before they beached themselves.

:puke: