Group Seeks to Halt Audio Blasting of Whales by Navy

Environmentalists went to federal court on Tuesday to try to stop a Navy ship from blasting high-volume sounds at humpback whales, arguing that the research program could harm or even kill the endangered animals.

In testing set to begin today, the Navy hopes to study how the whales react to low-frequency, high-volume noise and then use that data in an environmental impact statement for a new sonar program designed to detect quiet submarines.

But Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, representing several environmental groups, sued to block the program, saying it would expose whales to sounds so loud that courtship and reproductive activity in the whales’ essential habitat could be disrupted.

In a sworn statement, one researcher who has studied humpbacks in Hawaiian waters went even further: “Blasting humpbacks with sound of this intensity could kill them,” said Marsha L. Green, president of the Ocean Mammal Institute. “To use endangered whales as military sonar targets is a crime against nature.”

The program would focus on male humpbacks off the Kona Coast of the island of Hawaii, a few miles from the border of the newly dedicated Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. The whales spend winters here calving and raising their young before heading to feeding grounds in Alaska in the spring.

The Navy ship plans to locate a singing humpback whale a few miles away and send seven-second pulses of low-frequency sounds toward it while gradually approaching the animal. Scientists would watch for subtle differences in the whale’s behavior and record its vocalizations. The information would be used to determine whether the sonar program could be used in all oceans and what mitigation measures might be needed to protect marine life, according to program manager Joseph Johnson.

“We don’t know at what levels and durations we affect animals,” Johnson said. “If we don’t know, it’s hard to design the program and mitigation measures. It’s sort of a chicken-and-egg thing.”

Transmissions would halt if an animal is observed in acute distress or modifies its behavior significantly. Although noise would not be directed toward any mother-calf pairs in the vicinity, a shore-based research team would also monitor them.

The noise level at the source could reach as high as 215 decibels, Johnson said, but sound is muffled in water and would disperse by the time it reaches the whale. A smaller boat near the whale would ensure that the sounds reaching the animal never exceed 155 decibels, he said. Johnson noted that humpback whales’ vocalizations can exceed 170 decibels.

Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff, however, called the sounds “incredibly loud” and claimed that above water, 215 decibels is 1,000 times louder than a jet engine.

The Navy has completed an environmental assessment, which found that the research program would have no significant impact.

But Achitoff argued that the program should be halted until a full environmental impact statement is complete.