Navy Admits to Killing Whales,
but LFAS Steams Ahead

Two studies released in mid-December provide twin smoking guns linking the killing of whales to the use of active sonar devices by the US Navy. The first was a belated admission jointly issued by the Navy and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). The agencies admit that the most plausible source of the "acoustic or impulse trauma" that caused a mass stranding of whales and dolphins in the Bahamas on March 15-16 of 2001 was the Navy testing of mid-range frequency sonar used to find submarines.

The second study was funded by the Office of Navy Research and published by Hauser, Howard and Ridgeway in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. It explores the formation of bubbles by sound waves in the supersaturated blood of deep-diving mammals. Three elements of the study are critical in our battle to stop the deployment of Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS):

          1) Once a sound source causes the formation of bubbles in the blood (a phenomenon in human divers called the bends) they can continue to grow on their own.

          2) Bubbles can start growing at relatively low levels of sound (under 150 decibels-ten million times less than the source level of LFAS).

          3) The mechanism that causes the bubbles to grow is independent of the frequency of the sound (giving the lie to the Navy argument that even though the Bahamas stranding was most likely caused by the mid-frequency sound they generated, that the low frequency LFAS is totally different and benign).

We are still awaiting a decision by NMFS on whether it is going to ignore all evidence and grant a "small take authorization" to the Navy to kill dolphins, whales, and other marine species by deploying LFAS, with a source level of 240 decibels, in over eighty percent of the world's oceans.

Capture/Recapture Study Kills Dolphins

After two months at sea, a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) research cruise that had been opposed by its own scientists returned to port in San Diego. A NMFS vessel accompanied a contracted Mexican tuna boat to intentionally harass the dwindling populations of spinner and spotted dolphins to see if the creatures are indeed stressed by being chased and netted repeatedly by boats pursuing tuna. Fifteen hundred dolphins were caught in 27 sets of the net. Some were then subjected to having transmitters bloodily bolted through their dorsal fins.

The idea was to capture dolphins repeatedly and to take blood with each capture in order to see if the stress hormones known to be present in blood would increase with each capture. But only five dolphins were caught more than once. By the time the nets were hung to dry, two dolphins were killed outright and one calf was missing and presumed dead.

As an article explained in the Fall 2001 AWI Quarterly, AWI had presented a benign alternative to this expensive, highly invasive and useless study with the help of Dr. Al Myrick, the leading NMFS expert on stress in dolphins for more than ten years. The senior NMFS scientists that we met with agreed that the planned capture/recapture study was unnecessarily invasive and would yield little new information. But they were forced to carry out the study at the insistence of Congressmen Gilchrest (R-MD) and Cunningham (R-CA) and the efforts of Ocean Conservancy's Nina Young.

The study was mandated as part of the International Dolphin Conservation Act of 1997 (dubbed the "Dolphin Death Act") that attempted to drop the trade embargo on dolphin-caught tuna. More than seven million dolphins have died in the tuna fishery in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Evidence enough, one would think, that the technique causes stress.

Mexican Tuna Super-Seiner
Busted with 10.5 Tons of Cocaine

The drug-tainted Mexican tuna industry, which has killed tens of thousands of dolphins in defiance of US and European bans on dolphin-deadly tuna, was embarrassed once again last December when the US Coast Guard captured a giant Mexican super-seiner that was smuggling 10.5 tons of cocaine in the eastern Pacific.

The 180-foot Macel was boarded off the southwest coast of Mexico on December 21, 2001 after being under surveillance for several weeks by US Navy and Coast Guard ships patrolling the region for gangsters running cocaine and heroin from Colombia to Mexico, which is the major way-station for narcotics on the way to the US and Europe.

A total of 10.5 tons of pure cocaine, with a street value of $500 million, was found hidden in special compartments under tons of yellow fin tuna. The cocaine, ship, and 19-man crew were turned over to the Mexican Navy.

Colombian and Mexican drug cartels bought up most of the Latin American tuna fleets in the 1980's and early 1990's to smuggle their contraband and to launder billions of narco-dollars. (For the detailed report, "Dolphins Die for Tuna/Cocaine Connection," see the Spring 1999 AWI Quarterly.)

The Mexican government has failed to seize the major tuna fleets and canneries that are owned by the murderous Tijuana Cartel in partnership with powerful politicians. Even Colombia's infamous Cali Cartel is a partner in major Mexican tuna companies. And the US government has steadfastly refused to acknowledge that Mexico's tuna industry is a front for drug trafficking. Instead, the Departments of State and Commerce have been actively assisting the Mexican government and tuna industry to overturn the US dolphin-safe standard for imported tuna.