Active sonar, the transmission equipment used on some ships to assist with navigation, may
be detrimental to the health and livelihood of some marine animals. Research has recently
shown that beaked and blue whales are sensitive to mid-frequency active sonar and move rapidly
away from the source of the sonar, a response that disrupts their feeding and can cause
mass strandings. Some marine animals, such as whales and dolphins, use echolocation or
"biosonar" systems to locate predators and prey. It is conjectured that active sonar
transmitters could confuse these animals and interfere with basic biological functions
such as feeding and mating. Study has shown whales experience decompression sickness,
a disease that forces nitrogen into gas bubbles in the tissues and is caused by rapid and
prolonged surfacing. Although whales were originally thought to be immune to this disease,
sonar has been implicated in causing behavioral changes that can lead to decompression sickness.
History The SOFAR channel, or deep sound channel,
is a horizontal layer of water in the ocean centered around the depth at which the speed
of sound is at a minimum. The SOFAR channel acts as a waveguide for sound, and low frequency
sound waves within the channel may travel thousands of miles before dissipating. This
phenomenon is an important factor in submarine warfare. The deep sound channel was discovered
and described independently by Dr. Maurice Ewing, and Leonid Brekhovskikh in the 1940s.
Despite the use of the SOFAR channel in naval applications, the idea that animals might
make use of this channel was not proposed until 1971. Roger Payne and Douglas Webb calculated
that before ship traffic noise permeated the oceans, tones emitted by fin whales could
have traveled as far as four thousand miles and still be heard against the normal background
noise of the sea. Payne and Webb further determined that, on a quiet day in the pre–ship-propeller
oceans, fin whale tones would only have fallen to the level of background noise after traveling
thirteen thousand miles, that is, more than the diameter of the Earth.
Early confusion between fin whales and military sonar
Before extensive research on whale vocalizations was completed, the low-frequency pulses emitted
by some species of whales were often not correctly attributed to them. Dr Payne wrote: "Before
it was shown that fin whales were the cause [of powerful sounds], no one could take seriously
the idea that such regular, loud, low, and relatively pure frequency tones were coming
from within the ocean, let alone from whales." This unknown sound was popularly known by
navy acousticians as the Jezebel Monster. Some researchers believed that these sounds
could be attributed to geophysical vibrations or an unknown Russian military program, and
it wasn't until biologists William Schevill and William A. Watkins proved that whales
possessed the biological capacity to emit sounds that the unknown sounds were correctly
attributed. Low frequency sonar
The electromagnetic spectrum has rigid definitions for "super low frequency", "extremely low
frequency", "low frequency" and "medium frequency". Acoustics does not have a similar standard.
The terms "low" and "mid" have roughly-defined historical meanings in sonar, because not
many frequencies have been used over the decades. However, as more experimental sonars have
been introduced, the terms have become muddled. American low frequency sonar was originally
introduced to the general public in a June 1961 Time magazine article, New A.S.W. Artemis,
the low-frequency sonar used at the time, could fill a whole ocean with searching sound
and spot anything sizable that was moving in the water. Artemis grew out of a 1951 suggestion
by Harvard physicist Frederick V. Hunt, who convinced Navy anti-submarine experts that
submarines could be detected at great distances only by unheard-of volumes of low-pitched
sound. At the time, an entire Artemis system was envisioned to form a sort of underwater
DEW line to warn the U.S. of hostile submarines. Giant, unattended transducers, powered by
cables from land, would be lowered to considerable depths where sound travels best. The Time
magazine article was published during the maiden voyage of the Soviet submarine K-19,
which was the first Soviet submarine equipped with ballistic missiles. Four days later the
submarine would have the accident that gave it its nickname. The impact on marine mammals
by this system was certainly not a consideration. Artemis never became an operational system.
Low-frequency sonar was revived in the early 1980s for military and research applications.
The idea that the sound could interfere with whale biologics became widely discussed outside
of research circles when Scripps Institute of Oceanography borrowed and modified a military
sonar for the Heard Island Feasibility Test conducted in January and February 1991. The
sonar modified for the test was an early version of SURTASS deployed in the MV Cory Chouest.
As a result of this test a "Committee on Low-Frequency Sound and Marine Mammals" was organized by
the National Research Council. Their findings were published in 1994, in Low-Frequency Sound
and Marine Mammals: Current Knowledge and Research Needs.
Long-range transmission does not require high power. All frequencies of sound lose an average
of 65dB in the first few seconds before the sound waves strike the ocean bottom. After
that the acoustic energy in mid or high-frequency sound is converted into heat, primarily by
the epsom salt dissolved in sea water. Very little of low frequency acoustic energy is
not converted into heat, so the signal can be detected for long ranges. Fewer than five
of the transducers from the low frequency active array were used in the Heard Island
Feasibility Test, and the sound was detected on the opposite side of the Earth. The transducers
were temporarily altered for this test to transmit sound at 50 hertz, which is lower
than their normal operating frequency. A year after the Heard Island Feasibility
Test a new low-frequency active sonar was installed in the Cory Chouest with 18 transducers
instead of 10. An environmental impact statement was prepared for that system.
Mid frequency sonar The term mid frequency sonar is usually used
to refer to sonars that project sound in the 3 to 4 kilohertz range. Ever since the launch
of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) on 17 January 1955 the US Navy knew it was only a matter
of time until the other naval powers had their own nuclear submarines. The mid-frequency
sonar was developed for anti-submarine warfare against these future boats. The standard post-WWII
active sonars had an insufficient range against this new threat. Active sonar went from a
piece of equipment attached to a ship, to a piece of equipment that was central to the
design of a ship. They are described in the same 1961 Time magazine article by the quote
"the latest shipboard sonar weighs 30 tons and consumes 1,600 times as much power as
the standard postwar sonar". A modern system produced by Lockheed Martin since the early
1980s is the AN/SQQ-89. On June 13, 2001, Lockheed Martin announced that it had delivered
its 100th AN/SQQ-89 undersea warfare system to the U.S. Navy.
There was anecdotal evidence that mid-frequency sonar could have adverse effects on whales
dating back to the days of whaling. The following story is recounted in a book published in
1995: In 1996 twelve Cuvier's beaked whales beached
themselves alive along the coast of Greece while NATO was testing an active sonar with
combined low and mid-range frequency transducers, according to a paper published in the journal
Nature in 1998. The author established for the first time the link between atypical mass
strandings of whales and the use of military sonar by concluding that although pure coincidence
cannot be excluded there was better than a 99.3% likelihood that sonar testing caused
that stranding. He noted that the whales were spread along 38.2 kilometres of coast and
were separated by a mean distance of 3.5 km. This spread in time and location was atypical,
as usually whales mass strand at the same place and at the same time.
At the time that Dr. Frantzis wrote the article he was unaware of several important factors.
The time correlation was much tighter than he knew. He knew about the test from a notice
to mariners which only published that the test would occur over a five-day period within
a large area of the ocean. In fact the first time the sonar was turned on was the morning
of 12 May 1996, and six whales stranded that afternoon. The next day the sonar was turned
on again and another six whales stranded that afternoon. Without knowing the coordinates
of the ships he would not have realized that the ship was only about 10–15 miles offshore.
The sonar being used in the test was an experimental research and development sonar, which was
considerably smaller and less powerful than an operational sonar on board a deployed naval
vessel. Dr Frantzis believed that wide distribution of the stranded whales indicated that the
cause has a large synchronous spatial extent and a sudden onset. Knowing that the sound
source level was fairly low @ 3 kHz which is low compared to an operational sonar) would
have made the damage mechanism even more puzzling. The experimental sonar used in the test, Towed
Vertically Directive Source which had the dual 600 Hz and 3 kHz transducers, had been
used for the first time in the Mediterranean Sea south of Sicily the year before in June
1995. Previous activated towed array sonar research using different sources on board
the same ship included participation in NATO exercises "Dragon Hammer '92" and "Resolute
Response '94". Since the source level of this experimental
sonar was only 226 dB @ 3 kHz re. 1 meter, at only 100 meters the received level would
drop by 40 dB. A NATO panel investigated the above stranding and concluded the whales were
exposed to 150-160 dB re 1 μPa of low and mid-range frequency sonar. This level is about
66 dB less than the threshold for hearing damage specified by a panel of marine mammal
experts. The idea that a relatively low power sonar
could cause a mass stranding of such a large number of whales was very unexpected by the
scientific community. Most research had been focused on the possibility of masking signals,
interference with mating calls, and similar biological functions. Deep diving marine mammals
were species of concern, but very little definitive information was known. In 1995 a comprehensive
book on the relation between marine mammals and noise had been published, and it did not
even mention strandings. In 2013, research showed beaked whales were
highly sensitive to mid-frequency active sonar. Blue whales have also been shown to flee from
the source of mid-frequency sonar, while naval use of mid- and high- frequency side-scan
sonar may have caused a mass stranding of dolphins in 2008.
Acoustically induced bubble formation There was anecdotal evidence from whalers
that sonar could panic whales and cause them to surface more frequently making them vulnerable
to harpooning. It has also been theorized that military sonar may induce whales to panic
and surface too rapidly leading to a form of decompression sickness. In general trauma
caused by rapid changes of pressure is known as barotrauma. The idea of acoustically enhanced
bubble formation was first raised by a paper published in The Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America in 1996 and again Nature in 2003. It reported acute gas-bubble lesions
in whales that beached shortly after the start of a military exercise off the Canary Islands
in September 2002. In the Bahamas in 2000, a sonar trial by the
United States Navy of transmitters in the frequency range 3–8 kHz at a source level
of 223–235 decibels re 1 μPa was associated with the beaching of seventeen whales, seven
of which were found dead. Environmental groups claimed that some of the beached whales were
bleeding from the eyes and ears, which they considered an indication of acoustically-induced
trauma. The groups allege that the resulting disorientation may have led to the stranding.
Naval sonar-linked incidents Court cases
Since mid-frequency sonar has been correlated with mass cetacean strandings throughout the
world's oceans, it has been singled out by some environmentalists as a focus for activism.
A lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council in Santa Monica, California on 20
October 2005 contended that the U.S. Navy has conducted sonar exercises in violation
of several environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Marine
Mammal Protection Act, and the Endangered Species Act. Mid-frequency sonar is by far
the most common type of active sonar in use by the world's navies, and has been widely
deployed since the 1960s. On November 13, 2007, a United States appeals
court restored a ban on the U.S. Navy's use of submarine-hunting sonar in training missions
off Southern California until it adopted better safeguards for whales, dolphins and other
marine mammals. On 16 January 2008, President George W. Bush exempted the US Navy from the
law and argued that naval exercises are crucial to national security. On 4 February 2008,
a Federal judge ruled that despite President Bush's decision to exempt it, the Navy must
follow environmental laws placing strict limits on mid-frequency sonar. In a 36-page decision,
U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote that the Navy is not "exempted from
compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act" and the court injunction creating
a 12-nautical-mile no-sonar zone off Southern California. On 29 February 2008, a three-judge
federal appeals court panel upheld the lower court order requiring the Navy to take precautions
during sonar training to minimize harm to marine life. In Winter v. Natural Resources
Defense Council. the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the circuit court ruling in a 5:4 decision
on 12 November 2008. Mitigation methods
Environmental impacts of the operation of active sonar are required to be carried out
by US law. Procedures for minimising the impact of sonar are developed in each case where
there is significant impact. The impact of underwater sound can be reduced
by limiting the sound exposure received by an animal. The maximum sound exposure level
recommended by Southall et al. for cetaceans is 215 dB re 1 μPa2 s for hearing damage.
Maximum sound pressure level for behavioural effects is dependent on context.
A great deal of the legal and media conflict on this issue has to do with questions of
who determines what type of mitigation is sufficient. Coastal commissions, for example,
were originally thought to only have legal responsibility for beachfront property, and
state waters. Because active sonar is instrumental to ship defense, mitigation measures that
may seem sensible to a civilian agency without any military or scientific background can
have disastrous effects on training and readiness. Navies therefore often define their own mitigation
requirements. Examples of mitigation measures include:
not operating at nighttime not operating at specific areas of the ocean
that are considered sensitive slow ramp-up of intensity of signal to give
whales a warning air cover to search for mammals
not operating when a mammal is known to be within a certain range
onboard observers from civilian groups using fish-finders to look for whales in the
vicinity large margins of safety for exposure levels
not operating when dolphins are bow-riding operations at less than full power
paid teams of veterans to investigate strandings after sonar operation.
See also Animal echolocation
Further reading Joshua Horwitz. War of the Whales: A True
Story. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1451645019. Notes
References
External links Research by Antonella Servidio in a German
TV Documentary by Volker Barth Studying Sonar's Effects on Marine Mammals
Blog Post on the Smithsonian Ocean Portal