Chapter Two :Whale Strandings

Devon woke up in the little town of Hobart, Tasmania, she shortly found herself walking along the beach. It was Tuesday November. 28th 2004 the beach was crawling with scientists and wildlife officials pouring over several of the 169 whales and dolphins lying dead on several different beaches around Australia and New Zealand over the past three days. Authorities and volunteers worked through Monday night to save dozens of whales and dolphins after their standings.

Devon went over to the worker whom was coordinating the cleanup effort. And asked how many whales, the response came back…there were 96 long-finned pilot whales and bottle-nosed dolphins had died after the first beaching on Sunday at King Island, midway between the Australian mainland and the southern island state of Tasmania. This Tasmanian wildlife officer Shane Hunniford said another 19 long-finned pilot whales had died in a separate beaching on Monday on Maria Island, 60 km (37 miles) east of the Tasmanian capital were she was staying in Hobart. He told her there were 43 whales, which had beached themselves on Maria Island, but officials had managed to save 24 that were still alive.

Across the Tasman Sea in New Zealand, a mass grave was dug on a beach at Opoutere, 100 km (62 miles) east of Auckland on the North Island, for 53 dead pilot whales. Officials there said 73 whales had become stranded there on Sunday, but 20 were saved. Of those 20, more were expected to die because many were too weak to follow the others out to sea.

“Some of them had suffered pretty significantly on the beach. “New Zealand conservation department manager Hohn Gaukrodger told reporters, as Devon stood close by and listened.

Devon had been sent to investigate and report back to her government about her findings that linked Sonar Tests to Whale Strandings. Since released to the media on May 1, 2001, by Earthwatch’s supported scientist Ken Balcomb revealed the physical damage sustained by whales that died in the Bahamas following Navy sonar tests.

http://www.earthwatch.org/pubaffairs/news/balcomb.html

Her boss her uncle wanted to know if these sonar testing was the cause of these present strandings. The U.S. Navy’s new sonar system that uses extremely loud, low-frequency sounds to locate submarines over wide areas of ocean. That system, many researchers and environmental advocates contend, has the potential to interfere with or even kill sound-sensitive whales and dolphins. The whole issue came to a head on March 15, 2000, when 17 cetaceans of 4 species stranded themselves in the Bahamas right after the Navy conducted a low-level sonar test antisubmarine warfare Gap Exercise in the area. Although the sonar used was “ normal standard” and operating a midrange frequencies. (3.5-7 kHz, 235 dB), an ocean duct 125-150 meters deep may have contributed to the sound traveling much farther and at higher intensity than anticipated. The unusually large number of whales stranded and the timing of their strandings have been taken by people to be evidence of a correlation between the sonar and whale deaths.
Two of those people are Earthwatch researchers Kenneth Balcomb and Diane Claridge, who have been working on a cetacean census in the Bahamas with Earthwatch teams since 1992 on their project Bahamas Whales and Dolphins. They were the scientists who documented most of the 16 stranded whales and a dolphin, assisted in rescue efforts to return some of the whales to sea, and collected data that may prove vital in the controversy over experimental, low-frequency sonar tests the navy has been conducting. An astonishing 14 of the 17 stranded cetaceans were beaked whales, which are uncommon and rarely strand because they are deep divers of the open ocean. In the Bahamas study, Blainville's (dense)-beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) are sighted more frequently than Cuvier's beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris). Moreover, six of the seven stranded animals known to have died were beaked whales, all but one of them Cuvier's beaked whales. All six beaked whales that died showed evidence of pressure trauma, which the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Navy consider is "highly likely”, linked to the sonar tests. High-decibel sonar tests in other parts of the world have also coincided with stranded whales, but the Bahamas' whales showed the first clear sign of internal damage that might have been linked to the tests. And the stranded whales may only have been the tip of the iceberg. This year's Earthwatch teams have sighted no Cuvier's beaked whales.