Not comforting: Navy funds studies of sonar's effects on marine mammals

It's a rare occasion indeed that I'm moved to write about a press release, but this one gave me pause: Navy Leads Research Funding on Effects of Sound on Marine Mammals.

You probably know that environmental groups and the Navy have had a series of high-profile jousts over the use of powerful, extremely loud sonar technologies -- which tend to scramble the brains of any nearby whales or other marine mammals -- during naval practice maneuvers. The courts have looked at the science repeatedly, and each time have found that the Navy can and should do more to protect wildlife during sonar training exercises. (The Navy has refused to accept these decisions, and this fall the Supreme Court will decide whether the courts or the executive branch should have say-so in the matter.)

Here's where the plot thickens. The Navy might seem to be simply doing the responsible thing in footing the bill for a lot of marine-mammal science relating to equipment it wants to use. But there have been signs that the service is in this game not so much to seek the truth as to shape a "truth" that's a convenient fit for its active-sonar plans -- that it is using its status as the dominant source of funding for marine science to influence the conclusions of research.

A year ago, Peter Canby gave OnEarth a disturbing report and podcast on the large shadow the U.S. Navy casts across marine mammal research. Canby wrote that while researching his article -- on the "ensonification" of the oceans, particularly with respect to military sonar and its effect on marine mammals -- he learned that there was growing concern among some scientists in the field "that the navy's dominant role in funding marine-mammal science has had a corrupting effect on the nature of the research being undertaken." Two scientists, Hal Whitehead and Linda Weigart, had published a paper in 1995 noting that:

the navy sponsored 70 percent of all marine-mammal research in the United States as well as 50 percent of all research world-wide, and that this had led to a "systematic unwillingness to publicly criticize defense-related projects within the U.S. marine-mammal research community." They likened this situation to "a special information session on lung cancer at a professional meeting of oncologists funded by the tobacco industry."

Canby then describes several incidents in which the Navy has aggressively fought scientific conclusions that tie whale strandings to the use of its sonar systems. Read the whole article here.

Meanwhile, the bad news about sonar and whales keeps streaming in. This week, a Cuvier's beaked whale was euthanized after repeatedly beaching itself on the sands of Hawaii's Molokai Island. Beaked whales seem to be particularly sensitive to military sonar. The day before the whale stranded, the Navy's massive RIMPAC exercises were underway in the area, and a local swimmer reported to the media that he'd heard what he believed were sonar soundings.

(p.s. -- the Navy's press release was written by a "Mass Communications Specialist 1st Class" -- that just has to be a job title at Minitrue, don't you think?)