NOAA Fisheries has released its latest annual estimate of the beluga population in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, and the numbers are sobering.  Their 2011 estimate, 286 animals, is the second-lowest found in the 18 years of surveys, and is 20% lower than last year’s count.  However, NOAA officials stress that year-to-year counts are approximate, with differences in observing conditions and beluga distributions accounting for an error range of plus or minus as many as a hundred animals; long-range trends are more reliable indicators.  Officials say they did not see a large enough number of dead whales this year to suggest that there was indeed a 20% decline.

“Only three dead belugas were reported this year, which indicates that large numbers of mortalities did not occur in 2011,” said Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director Doug DeMaster (over the past ten years, an average of 10 whales a year have been found dead). “While NOAA remains concerned that this population is not showing signs of recovery, at this time we do not believe this estimate represents a marked decrease in the population.”  Indeed, twice before, the counts showed even larger declines, with later years suggesting that actual numbers were not so dire; the previous low count, 278, occurred one year after a count of 366, and two years later, counts were back up to 375. However, since then, counts have been at least 10% lower than that high.  This is especially worrisome, in that this genetically-distinct population of belugas has been listed as endangered, and NOAA designated much of Cook Inlet as critical habitat. (Many other beluga populations remain in other areas, including the western and northern coasts of Alaska, and northern and northeast Canada).

On the longer term, NOAA notes that there appears to be a continuing gradual decline in Cook Inlet beluga numbers, estimated at about 1% per year.  This population of belugas experienced a population crash in the 1980’s (from 1300 down to around 300) which is widely blamed on over-harvesting by native subsistence hunters, but has not recovered since the hunting was limited.  Pollution, limited salmon runs, and noise are all considered likely factors in the population’s struggle to survive.

Cook Inlet is a large waterway, leading from the southern Alaska coast inland to Anchorage and Wasilla; a major port expansion is underway, as well as oil and gas exploration and development.  For more on the backstory here, see these previous AEInews post from 2008-2011.

Several new R&D projects are underway by providers of ocean technology, each of which either aims to reduce the harmful behavioral impacts on marine creatures, or may limit harmful impacts as a byproduct of their innovations.

My good friend Michael Stocker already wrote up a solid blog post  that summarizes three such projects, with links to source material and more information. Head on over to his Ocean Conservation Research blog to hear more about sonar signals modeled on sperm whale clicks (likely to be far less distressing for whales and dolphins that today’s grating signals), continuous low frequency sonar (which could reduce the source level), and airguns with less stray noise outside of the frequencies used to probe the seabottom.

Over the past week, a mass stranding of Cuvier’s beaked whales has taken place along the shoreline of Corfu (a Greek island) and southern Italy. The first whales came ashore on November 30, halfway through an Italian Navy exercise taking place in waters on both sides of Italy, including the 130-mile wide Ionian Sea, which separates the two stranding sites. At least one of the Italian ships is known to be equipped with mid-frequency active sonar.

While it’s become common media sport to mention sonar in conjunction with any whale strandings, to the point that once I read the coverage, I rarely see any real evidence, this case is different.  Most strikingly, rescuers in two separate locations during the initial strandings report hearing a “whistling” noise at 10-15 second intervals; it’s quite likely that this sound was what drove the animals ashore. While rare, this is not the first time that humans above the water have heard underwater sound transmissions during stranding events.

On November 30, three or four Cuvier’s beaked whales stranded on Corfu, while two (a female and calf) came ashore across the Ionian Sea in italy. Some were helped back to sea by bystanders, and some died; two of the Corfu whales were collected and necropsies were done, with one being fresh enough for detailed observations.  On December 6 and 7, a total of four more Cuvier’s washed ashore in the same area of Corfu; these were all dead, and decomposed to the point that researchers believe they died at about the same time as the initial strandings took place. According to Alexandros Frantzis, a longtime beaked whale researcher, “It is reasonable to think that there are more animals in the pelagic waters of the Ionian Sea, which may never reach the coasts. The local and apparently small Ionian population unit has suffered three stranding events coinciding in time and space with use of military sonar in the past (plus one in east Sicily earlier this year). There should be little doubt (if any) that the cumulative damage at the population level is high.”

Marine mammal scientists in the region share Frantzis’ alarm about the vulnerability of this population of beaked whales. Both Guiseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara and Natacha Aguilar de Soto have sent urgent letters to officials at ACCOBAMS, a multinational binding agreement between most European and several North African and Middle Eastern countries aimed at coordinating cetacean conservation efforts in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. They ask ACCOBAMS to take the lead in investigating the circumstances of this stranding event, and stress the need to avoid further such incidents in this highly vulnerable population. di Sciara, a former chair of the ACCOBAMS Scientific Committee, notes agreements already made, and asks what steps have been taken to assure compliance and follow-through. In her letter, Aguilar de Soto notes that in the Canary Islands, after several such strandings, active sonar use was banned within 50 miles of the islands, and no further strandings have taken place; she note that similar policies may be necessary “in known important areas of distribution of beaked whales in the Mediterranean, to guarantee the sustainability of the populations.”

You can read the letters of Drs. di Sciara and Aguilar de Soto after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Statoil has submitted an application for an offshore lease 12-15 miles from the coast of Maine for a pilot floating offshore wind farm project.  Statoil, a Norwegian company, installed a single floating turbine in Norwegian waters in 2009, but has decided to move toward a larger installation in Scotland or Maine (or perhaps both). The initial lease area covers 22 square miles, but after fine-tuning their siting plan, the final wind farm area is likely to be 2-4 square miles in size.  It’s unclear from the lease request how many turbines would be installed during the pilot phase, or in a full build-out.

Local fishermen have expressed some concerns that the site may overlap with important shrimp and groundfishing areas, both of which have been hard hit financially in recent years.  Statoil promises to work with them to minimize the impacts of its project.

Floating offshore wind farms hold lots of promise for long-term increases in wind energy generation, thanks to being relatively close to urban markets, far enough from shore to be unseen and unheard, and minimizing habit disturbance during construction. The higher cost of construction and maintenance may be balanced by a much higher capacity factor (offshore winds blow much more steadily and strongly than onshore winds), and the growing size of offshore turbines. This is a leading edge for the technology, which is not expected to fully mature for 5-10 years.  The State of Maine has committed to working to solve the engineering challenges of far-offshore wind, rather than tackle the social challenges of near-shore construction.

UPDATE, 5/30/12: Project delays (see local news coverage): Statoil has put its plans for a four-turbine test project on hold until at least 2014, and the State of Maine initial one-third scale test turbine will be put off by one year, to 2013, by permitting delays.

Over the past few years, new and relatively inexpensive new hydrophone systems have allowed biologists to place autonomous recorders in far more locations, collecting vast amounts of acoustic data that can help them to understand the population dynamics of marine mammals, as well as to monitor interactions and effects of human noise on marine mammal communication.  They’re also looking forward to learning more about individual and pod communication patterns.

But this flood of new data hits a bottleneck when it needs to be assessed by human listeners.  There are several robust automated call detection programs available, but even these must be checked by humans, who can hear similarities in calls or see patterns in the sonograms that present the complex calls as pictures of the frequency patterns.

To the rescue comes a new crowdsourcing project from Scientific American and Zooniverse, WhaleFM.  Individuals from around the world are invited to join the research teams from Woods Hole and the University of St. Andrews by matching new recordings of orcas and pilot whales with  known calls or call types (often associated with particular behaviors). While orca society is moderately well-understood, with many call types already identified, this aspect of pilot whale research is at an earlier stage, and users will help to decide which Pilot Whale calls match, and help in discovering whether the same call is make by one individual, one group, or across broad areas. For more on the project, check the link above, or this blog post from Scientific American.

For the first time, an onshore wind farm has triggered calls for caution from marine mammal protection organizations.  The 2500-acre, 56-turbine wind farm will be built along a steep shoreline that funnels nutrient-rich waters from Antarctica to the surface, spawning a dense aggregation of phytoplankton and krill. Along the coast of Isla Grande de Chiloé, blue whales and right whales gather from January to April to feast on this abundance; blues come as close as 400m to shore, and rights have been seen only 5m offshore.

Environmentalists, including local organizations like Santiago’s Centro de Conservación Cetacea, and international voices such as the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society have raised dual concerns, regarding construction of a new port to bring construction materials to the site, vastly increasing ocean noise from ship engines in this relatively acoustically pristine area, and possible disturbance or even displacement of animals due to noise from pile driving during construction and airborne wind turbine noise during operations. Even the International Whaling Commission’s scientific committee has called for “the urgent development of an environmental impact assessment in this region and to reconsider locating the wind farm towers further away from coastline.”

The importance of the feeding ground to southern hemisphere blue whales, combined with having 40% of the turbines right along the shore, raise the question of whether the ongoing blade noise will keep whales at a distance; there is some evidence that airplane overflights cause whales to move away, and the sound levels of the turbines will be similar to a small plane. Whether whales might be able to move a small distance away and still find enough krill is the big question. Chile’s environmental authorities approved the project in August after requiring a simple environmental declaration, rather than a detailed impact study; the Chilean Supreme Court is hearing a lawsuit from opposing groups, and will make a decision in the next few months.

National Geographic News has a good, detailed article on these questions.

IBM is collaborating with The Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland to measure the noise output from a wave energy installation of the west coast of Ireland, which is one of the world’s most promising areas for wave power development.  The acoustic data will be collected in real-time, and will will produce one of the largest continuous collections of underwater acoustic data ever captured. This data will be made available to marine researchers and regulatory agencies to further advance knowledge of natural and man-made underwater sound, and help develop standards and reporting, benefitting marine environmental agencies as well as industries including renewable energy, shipping, and offshore oil and gas.

“Underwater noise is a global environmental issue that has to be addressed if we are to take advantage of the huge potential of ocean energy,” said European Union Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.  “This project is a great example of collaboration among global companies, industry experts and government agencies, and will help us make real progress toward practical and sustainable ocean energy systems.  I’m delighted to see Ireland playing a lead role in this area, which has great importance for meeting the EU’s energy challenges.”

Here’s a great fifteen-minute radio feature from Voice of America that digs into the issue of shipping noise and its effects on ocean life.  It features Michael Jasny of NRDC, recordings of shipping noise off Vancouver Island, NOAA’s Michael Bahtiarian on their quiet research ships, and Kathy Metcalf of the Chamber of Shipping of America.

Give a listen!

(transcript also included at that page link)

A drilling rig is up and running in Cook Inlet, along the southern Alaska coast.  The rig, which will remain in the Inlet for 8 or more years, drilling numerous wells during the short summer seasons, expects to complete this first oil and gas well by the end of October, well before ice develops.  Local environmental groups pressed the Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA to not allow the rig into the inlet, citing concerns that oil and gas development activity will negatively impact a recently-designated 3000-square mile critical habitat for the critically endangered local beluga whale population.  In addition to possible impacts of a spill, noise from drilling in a central concern.  The permits allowing drilling require the company to maintain beluga observation crews, and to reduce the speed (and thus noise) of the drill when belugas are nearby, and shut down operations if they come very close.

Cook Inlet is over a hundred miles long, with Anchorage at its inner end; this is also the section of the Inlet that is now designated as critical habitat.  The first drilling operation is in the central part of the critical habitat, between Kenai and Tyonek on the map below.For more on the situation, see the two links above, which go to fairly detailed articles in the local media, and see these two previous AEI posts about the Cook Inlet belugas.

For the second of a planned five summers, a team of researchers is spending a couple weeks in waters off southern California, attaching suction-cup acoustic tags to whales, then playing sounds underwater to see how they respond to different sounds and intensities. Another two weeks of field work will occur in late September. As Brandon Southall notes on his SEAblog, which provides excellent coverage of the trip, the team is “interested in testing the differences in responses of marine mammals in the various kinds of habitats in which they live and are exposed to human sounds.” After several years of study, the research is moving beyond simply getting one or two examples of any given species, toward the development of a wide array of examples of each species, in different circumstances (at least for the easier-to-tag species). The study is known as a Behavioral Response Study (BRS), which used to be called Controlled Exposure Experiments (CEE), with the CEE term still in use as the name of each individual playback to a tagged animal. This year’s southern California version goes by the name of SOCAL-11. The acoustic tags used in the study allow researchers to record the actual sounds heard by the animals (including of course their own foraging and communication vocalizations), while also tracking their swimming speed and dive patterns.

It’s always easier to find and approach the large whales, such as blue and fin whales, so the team tends to focus on these species when waves are higher; in light seas, they are largely seeking the harder-to-locate, and much harder to approach beaked whales, as well as Risso’s dolphins. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find if you follow the study on the SEAblog (the picture above is the animal he’s so enthused about):

Rissos dolphins are among our focal species for SOCAL-11 experiments.  We conducted one CEE on this species last year in SOCAL-10 and have been hoping for more this year.  This species has also proven somewhat difficult to tag in the past and our tags on last year were for just a few hours, so to get a nine hour deployment spanning several different behavioral modes was pretty exciting.  The tag came off late into the evening, but quite close to our anchorage and we made a beautiful late night ride in very calm seas and a red-yellow moon out to safely retrieve it.

In addition to increasing the data set of carefully measured behavioral responses to sound, the researchers are testing two leading-edge technologies: a next-generation acoustic tag, and a towed hydrophone system deployed from a sailboat that’s being used to try to find animals for possible tagging by hearing them from afar.  Plus, associated research is underway, including a study of the prey and oceanographic conditions around tagged animals, which aims to learn something about how the ocean conditions relate to where the prey is, and thus where the whales are, as well as to see whether behavior in response to sound is different when prey is present or not.

You can learn more about the SOCAL BRS study, including powerpoints describing last year’s findings, at the SOCAL-BRS web page.  Or, get more current updates by following the study on the SEAblog, or on the SOCAL-11 Facebook page (which includes some videos):

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Behavioral-Response-Studies-of-Marine-Mammals/153316228012219

This post is an AEI lay summary of the following paper:

McCarthy, Moretti, Thomas, DiMarzio, Morrisey, Jarvis, Ward, Izzi, Dilley.  Changes in spatial and temporal distribution and vocal behavior of Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) during multiship exercises with mid-frequency sonar.  Marine Mammal Science, Volume 27, Issue 3, July 2011.

For the past several years, ongoing research at the US Navy’s AUTEC training range in the Bahamas has been providing data that confirms what many had long suspected: that beaked whales move away from active sonar transmissions.  A recent paper published in Marine Mammal Science quantifies the changes in more detail than has occurred before.

Using recordings from the permanently-installed hydrophones lining the seafloor of AUTEC, the researchers charted the foraging vocalizations of Blainville’s beaked whales before, during, and after extended Naval training exercises (85 hours in 2007, 65 hours in 2008). In 2007, when activity was high prior to the exercises, animals returned to the range in somewhat lower numbers within 24 hours:

in 2008, when there was less activity prior to the exercises, very few animals returned in the first three days, but many were there shortly thereafter:

Among animals who continued foraging while sonars were nearby, they appeared to tolerate received levels ranging from 101 to 157db, which correlate to sonar transmisisons from ships 2-28km away.  A key question considered is whether the animals left the area, ceased vocalizing, or were masked by the exercise sounds. Because of the way that vocalizations increased first around the edges of the range, moving toward the center, the researchers are confident that the animals predominantly left the range; the decreased levels of vocalizations even around the edges imply that most animals moved more than 6km from the range (the limit of confidently knowing they’ll be heard by hydrophones along the perimeter).

The paper concludes by summarizing related ongoing research, including studies that aim to determine whether decreased foraging, especially directly after exercises, is due to fewer beaked whales in the area, or less preay (ie, was the prey moved off the range by the exercise activity and noise?).  The authors also note many as-yet unanswered questions that are triggered by their results, including whether the displaced animals continue feeding elsewhere during their absence from the range, and whether this particular population is more habituated to the sonar sounds, so that they either tolerate it better or are less apt to exhibit the presumably more dangerous behavioral responses that lead to strandings.

A very cool research program is underway in the Bahamas this summer.  In an attempt to understand whether exposure to ocean noise sources creates stress in whales, a team from the New England Aquarium is collecting fecal matter for stress hormone testing (the photo at left shows Roz Rolland surfacing after a successful collection dive).  Increased stress can lead to many secondary issues for any animal, including health impacts and reduced reproductive success. A series of blog posts from their two weeks on site is a fun read.  The work is continuing in the Bahamas, though this team has headed home.

Here also is an MSNBC article on the research.

Ongoing pressure from environmental groups has spurred the National Marine Fisheries Service to take a closer look at the effects of seismic surveys on whales in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Obama administration has announced that NMFS will prepare a Letter of Authorization, which will look more closely at the question of whether current seismic survey practices comply with the Marine Mammal Protection Act.  Up until now, Gulf oil exploration has only been monitored for effects on endangered species.

Meanwhile, the Department of Interior and a coalition of environmental groups are engaged in settlement talk in a separate lawsuit filed earlier this year, which challenged the first new exploration permits issued for the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon accident.

These legal challenges resemble the successful challenges to Navy sonar training exercises, which also called on the government to do more complete environmental impact studies of practices which were widespread and had been going on with minimal oversight for decades.  While the Navy did complete the EIS’s, it’s worth noting that they have not led to major changes in how sonar training takes place; environmental assessments often lead to determinations of “negligible impacts” on wildlife, and it’s common that the most protective alternatives considered in an EIS or EA process is not the one chosen as the final outcome.   Read the rest of this entry »

An article in Renewable Energy World this month provides a great overview of ongoing research funded by the DOE that is assessing environmental impacts of “Marine and Hydrokinetic” energy technologies.  These new “MHK” systems include anything that generates electricity from the movement of water without dams, including systems that tap waves, tides, currents, or ocean thermal gradients.  Much of the research looks at the ways these systems can change the physcial dyanamics of ocean ecosystems (e.g., reducing wave height by drawing energy from the waves, changes in sediment movement and salt/freshwater mixing, etc.).  Of special interest here, of course, are the five studies (out of of 21 currently underway) that are looking at possible noise impacts.

Two are looking at areas where tidal turbine systems are in use or planned (Cook Inlet in Alaska and Admiralty Inlet in Washington); the Alaska study is looking for signs that beluga abundance or behavior is altered near a tidal turbine, while the Washington study is assessing existing background ambient noise and the acoustic footprint of a new tidal turbine.  Other studies are testing an acoustic deterrence system to see if it keeps migrating gray whales out of a proposed wave energy park and developing an acoustic detections system that could spot marine life around MHK installations.

Looking at the bigger picture, several other DOE-funded efforts aim to integrate MHK planning and site choices into larger marine planning and conservation initiatives. Two of these are developing protocols and best practices for siting, taking into account environmental and navigational impacts, and another, being undertaken by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is working to incorporate siting of MHK projects into NOAA’s marine spatial planning efforts (essentially, ocean zoning, designed to minimize conflicts between various uses of the ocean).

Finally, the DOE is leading international efforts at the International Energy Agency to come up with international standards and shared knowledge banks on environmental effects of MHK installations, as well as mitigation practices.

Check out the full article, replete with links and detailed charts of all the ongoing research!

Note: The image above is a rendering of ORPC’s TidGen tidal and current turbine, which is being shown off this week at the EnergyOcean International Conference in Portland, Maine.

Five environmental organizations have filed a legal petition asking NOAA to enforce speed limits in National Marine Sanctuaries off the California coast. If NOAA does not take action within a year, the groups say they may sue to under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. “Our marine sanctuaries should be a safe harbor for marine life, but instead whales in California are at constant risk of being run over by big ships,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Mandatory speed limits for ships traveling through our marine sanctuaries will save whales and clean our air.” Slower ship speeds also significantly reduce a ship’s noise, which could be a welcome relief in such a heavily trafficked area.

In the past decade, nearly 50 large whales off California have been struck by ships. Last year, at least six were killed in collisions. A key factor in the decision about lowering ship speeds is likely to be whether the loss of less than ten whales a year warrants the change (more whales may be struck and sink without being seen).  Along portions of the East Coast, federal authorities have imposed a 10-knot speed limit for ships 65 feet or longer for the past several years in order to protect the North Atlantic right whale, which is critically endangered, numbering only around 300 animals, so the loss of any individual is a blow to the population’s future.

The groups are advocating a similar mandatory speed limit of 10 knots (about 11 mph) for all ships larger than 65 feet while sailing through California’s four national marine sanctuaries, which stretch from the Marin Headlands north of San Francisco, 300 miles down the coast to the Channel Islands north of Los Angeles.  Ship speeds are now usually 13-25 knots. Since 2007, when four blue whales were struck by ships near the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA has issued seasonal bulletins urging a 10 knot speed limit from May-December, when the blues are most numerous; environmental groups say most ships ignore this voluntary advisory, while shipping groups say most ships do adhere to it.

The NY Times is hosting a field journal by Kate Stafford of the University of Washington, as she recounts her work as part of a team surveying for bowhead whales along Alaska’s north slope.  This recent post is a marvelous evocation of the soundscape of spring in those northern seas.  You should definitely go read the whole thing (there is an absolutely beautiful extended audio clip of a chorus of bearded seals, bowheads, and belugas, as well as shorter clips of each individually), but here are some teasers:

You can look across a vast expanse of ice, all white and blue and cold, and see nothing. The lead is choked with pack ice or sealed over with newly formed ice, and there is no movement or sound. With few birds, no whales and no bears, one might mistake the Arctic for a desert. But if you go down to the ice edge, pick a hole in the new ice deep enough to reach water and drop in a hydrophone (an underwater microphone), the cacophony is astonishing.

What I have come to enjoy just as much as listening is passing the headphones to someone who has never heard springtime in the Arctic. It is a rite of spring that would stun even Stravinsky.

Here in the Chukchi Sea the springtime soundscape is dominated, always, by the long trills of male bearded seals….Though we have seen only one or two bearded seals off Barrow, it is clear from the acoustic data that there are many of them trilling all at once and within only a few kilometers of the perch. (the photo, by Kate Stafford, is of one of the bearded seals that showed itself)

The low frequencies used by bowhead whales overlap the acoustic bandwidth in which large ships and oil and gas exploration produce sound. These manmade sources of noise are likely to increase background noise levels as summer sea ice continues to decline and shipping routes cross the Arctic during ice-free summers. It is possible that this increase in noise will affect bowhead whales in particular by causing them to change the frequencies they use to communicate or the duration of the calls they produce, or by restricting the ranges over which they communicate.

Regular readers will know that I’m excited by the potentials for far-offshore floating wind turbines.  Less construction noise, less disturbance of the seafloor, more construction can take place on land rather than at sea (meaning less loud boat activity)…..it all adds up to much less noise impact in our coastal ocean environment, which is very sensitive to new noise.  Not only that, but the winds are stronger farther out.

Renewable Energy World has a great current overview of where the R&D is at today for floating turbines, with summaries of each of the leading designs being tested, and assessment of the likely timeframe (the cautious among them still say we’re a decade away; some are more bullish).  Some of the commenters throw in the bonus idea that these installations could add wave energy generators as one way to address the higher costs the floating technologies.

IMAGE: Developed by Norwegian energy company Statoil ASA, Hywind is the world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine.  Located around ten kilometers off the southwest coast of Norway, the structure itself is a steel cylinder, similar to a spar buoy, filled with a ballast of water and rocks, which extends 100 meters beneath the sea’s surface.  Attached to the seabed by a three-point mooring spread, it can be employed at ocean depths of 120 to 700 meters.
Photo: Trude Refsahl / Statoil

A study just published is a tentative first step toward knowing where beaked whales may be foraging, and so perhaps avoiding exposing them to mid-frequency active sonar without having to see or hear them first.

The study, briefly described in this press release, found that beaked whales were more numerous in an area of their known habitat where salinity and temperature conditions increased the abundance of their prey.  Yup, that’s right:: they found that beaked whales congregate in areas where there are more fish they like to eat!!  Ain’t science great?

Seriously, though, such studies are important to ocean planners, as they provide the necessary causal data that can later (once the results are replicated elsewhere) be used to craft operational measures meant to protect beaked whales from harm.  These whales, which surface for only a few minutes at a time between 90-minute foraging dives, are notoriously hard to see, and not much easier to listen for, making it difficult to be sure whether they are nearby before a Navy ship begins sonar exercises.  The Navy has been reluctant to set aside potential habitat as “no-go” zones for their training, since even in possible habitat, there is no way to really know that animals are present.  Studies such as this one are small steps along the way toward getting solid enough data to know, more specifically, where whales may be more likely to congregate. Previous studies on harbor porpoises and bottlenose dolphins have shown how modeling habitat can be a powerful tool to inform spatially adaptive management of ocean predators.

A ten-year study in the western Pacific has documented the ways that new humpback whale songs move through several distinct populations over the course of a breeding season. “Our findings reveal cultural change on a vast scale,” said Ellen Garland, a graduate student at The University of Queensland. Multiple songs moved like “cultural ripples from one population to another, causing all males to change their song to a new version.” This is the first time that such broad-scale and population-wide cultural exchange has been documented in any species other than humans, she added. (Ed. note: researchers have also suggested that cultural patterns are passed among sperm whale populations)

Once a new song emerges, all the males seem to rapidly change their tune. Those songs generally rise to the “top of the chart” in the course of one breeding season and typically take over by the end of it. “We think this male quest for song novelty is in the hope of being that little bit different and perhaps more attractive to the opposite sex,” she said. “This is then countered by the urge to sing the same tune, by the need to conform.”

More, including whale song audio, here.

Related story: Acoustic recorders reveal new humpback breeding areas in central Pacific.

New research indicates that squid and their relatives are injured by exposure to low frequency noise similar to the “acoustic smog” created by widespread shipping and localized seismic surveys.  This is the first study to show physiological damage caused by noise in animals who do not have ears or hearing organs. The study exposed squid, cuttlefish, and octopuses to two hours of low frequency sound in a variety of frequencies from 40 to 400Hz; the fish were in a tank, and could not move away from the noise.  According to a report in New Scientist, the researchers “were astonished by extensive damage to the statocyst, a bulbous organ in the head of cephalopods that senses gravity and motion, enabling them to balance in the water and direct where and how fast they swim. Without this organ, cephalopods are practically powerless to move, are unable to hunt, and will become easy prey themselves.”  In 2001 and 2003, giant squid were found beached in an area where seismic surveys were taking place; though the injuries observed then could not be tied to acoustic trauma, the new research suggests that such damage can be caused by sound exposure.

The New Scientist article continues:

Post-mortems showed that the linings of statocysts from cephalopods not exposed to sound retained the fine hairs that sway as the animals move through water, and are essential to the animals’ balance and orientation. Statocysts from the exposed animals, by contrast, had lost huge patches of hair, leaving holes in the membranes of the organ’s cells. The insides of the cells had pushed their way through the holes, and mitochondria – the power plants of cells – had suffered extensive damage. By killing and examining the animals at intervals up to four days after the single sound exposure, the team showed that the damage got worse with time, long after the sound had been turned off.

The sounds used in the study were of moderate intensity: SPLs of 157dB re 1uPa, with peaks at 175dB, roughly equivalent to the sound of a large ship at 100 yards or a seismic survey at 500-1000 yards. (By comparison, injury is not presumed to take place in marine mammals unless sound is 180-210db). Similar studies in fish, using caged animals, have sometimes found similar hair damage to hearing organs, but only at much higher sound levles, and, in many cases even high levels of sound did not cause such injury.

Michel André, lead researcher, notes in a statement that “If the relatively low intensity, short exposure used in our study can cause such severe acoustic trauma, then the impact of continuous, high intensity noise pollution in the oceans could be considerable…This is the first study indicating a severe impact on invertebrates, an extended group of marine species that are not known to rely on sound for living. It left us with several questions: Is noise pollution capable of impacting the entire web of ocean life? What other effects is noise having on marine life, beyond damage to auditory reception systems? And just how widespread and invasive is sound pollution in the marine environment?”

UPDATE, 4/15: While this study has been widely praised as an important step in understanding possible noise impacts on a new family of ocean creatures, there are some caveats being put forward as well.  Michael Stocker of Ocean Conservation Research notes in a letter to his network that it is as yet unclear whether the impacts are more related to “particle motion” or “pressure gradient” aspects of acoustical energy, so “it could be that the closeness of the lab signals may have different impacts than equally loud exposures generated from further distances.”  T. Aran Mooney, who agrees it’s a “good first step,” suggests that more information is needed about how the noise exposure was measured.  And of course, these results will need to be replicated and expanded upon, as always.

NOTE: Apologies for my boring post title.  I thought it was pretty decent – clear, explanatory – until this one showed up in by Google News ocean noise feed, covering the same story: “Ocean Noise Pollution Blowing Holes in Squids’ Heads.” I bow before the page-click-attracting Master over at Discovery News…

Two new studies on seismic survey impacts have been released by the Joint Industry Program (JIP) Sound and Marine Life research program, funded by oil and gas companies.

The first looked at the effectiveness of “soft start” ramp up of seismic survey airguns at night and at times of poor visibility.  This has become standard procedure, but there have been some concerns that if marine mammals were very close to the ship, even the low sound levels at the start of the ramp up could be loud enough to cause hearing damage.  Based on two different modeling approaches, the study found “no instances…in which the threshold levels for hearing injury for cetaceans were reached during the initial stages of the soft-start sequence. This suggests that the animals are not at significantly greater risk of harm when a soft start is initiated in low visibility conditions.”  Link to pdf of report at the website of the International Association of OIl and Gas Producers.

The second study aimed to address “the rarely-charted relationship between oil Exploration and Production (E&P) activities and trends in cetacean stocks.”  The study cites case studies involving populations of sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico, humpback whales, blue whales and fin whales off the coast of California, northern bottlenose whales off Nova Scotia and harbour porpoises and minke whales off the east coast of the UK. The study, published in Aquatic Mammals,  provided new insights into the worldwide distribution of E&P activity in relation to marine mammal populations and has also revealed striking data gaps in our understanding of cetacean population numbers and trends. While the report’s review of seven stocks “found signs of an increase in numbers in one population (Californian humpback whales),” for the remaining six, “population trends could not be assessed due to the high variability in the abundance estimates.”  Link to pdf of this report.

In essence, there is not enough data to really tell us whether ongoing oil and gas activity has reduced stocks over the long term.  As usual in the many cases where ocean noise and population studies come up against this paucity of solid data, the researchers recommend that someone should fund of future studies ‘that provide more comprehensive data on cetacean stocks.”

JIP research page
Main JIP website

OGP publications page
OGP main page

Conservation Magazine highlights a fascinating new study:

A loud motor boat can be annoying. If you are a hermit crab, however, the sound could be deadly. Last year, researchers discovered that playing boat noise distracted the crabs, preventing them from paying attention to potential predators. It’s just one example of how human-created sounds can interfere with “biologically important decisions about food selection, mate selection, and predator detection,” a new review of animal “attention” finds.

The paper reviewed a wide range of research studying attention in many animals, and found that human noise can have either pros or cons for conservation; in some instances, we could use noise to disrupt animals causing habitat disruptions.  Overall, “we need studies that aim to better understand the population consequences of distraction on wildlife populations,” the authors conclude.

The latest in a series of studies looking at responses of beaked whales to Naval mid-frequency active sonar has provided some new details that reinforce our understanding that this family of deep-diving whales is extremely sensitive to noise intrusions.  The study, which took place on a US Navy training range in the Bahamas which is outfitted with seafloor recorders, found that beaked whales react to sonar signals below 142dB, and that they move an average of 16km away as soon as sonar operations begin, not returning until 2 to 3 days later.

It’s long been known that beaked whales tend to leave the range when exercises are taking place, but this study was the first time that some whales were tagged, to track exactly how far they went and how long they stayed away.

“Results… indicate that the animals prematurely stop vocalisations during a deep foraging dive when exposed to sonar. They then ascend slowly and move away from the source, but they do resume foraging dives once they are farther away,” said David Moretti, Principal Investigator for the US Navy.

“It was clear that these whales moved quickly out of the way of the [navy] sonars. We now think that, in some unusual circumstances, they are just unable to get out of the way and this ends up with the animals stranding and dying,” said Professor Ian Boyd, chief scientist on the research project. However, Boyd added “There is a tendency to blame the Navy for every stranding event and that is ridiculous.”

“Perhaps the most significant result from our experiments is the extreme sensitivity of these animals to disturbance,” said Boyd. “I am also worried that the general levels of sound that humans make in the ocean from all sorts of sources like ships, oil and gas exploration and renewable energy may be a much more serious problem for beaked whales and some other sensitive species.”

See good coverage from BBC and the Daily Mail, and read or download the research paper at PloS ONE.

Down East magazine, a Maine institution, has published a series of stories on wind power in Maine, with enough detail to be valuable to people in any rural state who are trying to find the proper balance on wind development.  The series includes in-depth articles on the University of Maine’s leadership in developing floating far-offshore wind farms and on controversy surrounding the potential for many ridgetop wind farms in the relatively wild mountains of western Maine, and an editorial noting the quick and fearful reactions of many communities to just the thought of a new wind farm.

In the article detailing facts about Maine’s current wind power sites and proposals (which reads as generally supportive of wind development), the short section on noise impacts, noting both the moderate noise levels and big impact reported by some neighbors, was followed by a surprisingly blunt recommendation about setbacks: “Half a mile, at minimum. But most agree that a mile is more advisable, as virtually no complaints have been lodged by neighbors this far from a wind turbine.”

The wildlands article makes the case for protecting Maine’s highest ridgetops (over 2700 feet) from development, and focusing on smaller-scale, distributed alternative energy generation, including solar as well as wind, built closer to existing power infrastructure.

The article on the future of floating offshore wind is especially inspiring.  The UMaine team plans to test three 1/3-scale turbines in 2012, with comprehensive environmental monitoring, including subsea impacts, and follow that with a full-scale 3-5MW turbine by 2014, the first “stepping stone” multi-turbine 25MW wind farm 20-50 miles offshore by 2016, and expansion to 500MW or more by 2020.   Here’s an excerpt:

“This is a one thousand-megawatt farm covering an eight-square-mile area,” says Habib Dagher, the man who created this vision and is now leading a team of engineers, environmental scientists, government policymakers, and offshore construction and energy industry leaders called the DeepCwind Consortium who hope to make it, the world’s first floating wind farm, a reality. “In the Gulf of Maine, that’s like an outhouse in the corner of a football field.”

Make that three outhouses. DeepCwind’s goal is to have three such wind farms bobbing twenty to fifty miles off the Maine coast and generating enough energy to power three million homes by 2030. It’s a breathtaking idea, and still it doesn’t fill the frame that has been drawn by Habib Dagher. He envisions Mainers converting to electricity to heat their homes and power their cars (the cost makes no sense now, he concedes, but it will in two decades, given the price increases predicted for fossil fuels) and the state becoming the Silicon Valley of offshore energy. Towers, blades, and other components will be manufactured right here, using technologies and materials pioneered by the University of Maine’s AEWC Advanced Structures and Composites Center, which he founded and directs.

For the first time, decades of oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico is being challenged in court, on the grounds that the noise of seismic surveys used to pinpoint oil reservoirs has a negative impact on the region’s endangered sperm whales.  A consortium of environmental groups, including the NRDC, CBD, and Sierra Club filed a formal notice of intent to sue, because 10 new oil exploration and development project have been approved in recent months without obtaining permits required by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act. “Seismic surveys have a vast environmental footprint, disrupting feeding and breeding of wildlife over great distances,” said Michael Jasny, a senior policy analyst at NRDC. “It is intolerable to think that the same species threatened by the Gulf spill will have to contend with the industry’s constant pounding, without any serious attempt to mitigate the harm.”

This legal challenge is similar to those mounted against Navy mid-frequency active sonar training, in that they are designed to assure that the behavioral impacts of seismic survey noise are considered, and that Incidental Harassment Authorizations are issued, with conditions meant to avoid any injury of animals, and minimize behavioral changes. The MMPA and ESA clearly require careful assessment and permitting of any activity that may negatively affect marine mammals or endangered species.

What is unclear, though, is how (if at all) oil and gas exploration activities might change after going through these proper legal challenges.  The US Navy now prepares full Environmental Impact Statements for all of its active sonar training areas, and receive IHAs from NOAA, but this legal compliance has not reduced their training activities or succeeded in putting any biologically rich areas off limits–in effect, NOAA has issued the permits after long official assessments that the activities have no significant impacts.  LIkewise, the oil and gas industry does have procedures in place to reduce sound output when animals are (very) close, and research into the behavioral effects of noise exposure at greater distances (lower sound levels) is ambiguous, though concerning.  See this earlier post about AEI’s work in this area, assessing research about behavioral impacts of moderate noise, including seismic.

The rhetoric from the litigants is surprisingly personal, implying that Gulf of Mexico exploration activity is being ramped up by this administration.  “Under Salazar’s watch, the Department of the Interior has treated the Gulf of Mexico as a sacrifice zone where laws are disregarded and wildlife protection takes a backseat to oil-company profits,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity.  (See press release) What is unstated, and may in fact be more to the point, is that the Gulf has been a sacrifice zone for decades.  The fact is that these animal populations in this truly industrialized sea have been living with seismic exploration, drilling, and lots of ship traffic for many many years; some populations, including sperm whales, appear stable. While some may suggest this reinforces NOAA’s current stance that the activities do not cause any significant impact on wildlife, and others (including AEI) say it’s clearly long past time to consider the cumulative and long-term impacts of this activity on marine life, the villain is not Ken Salazar.  It’s our continuing addiction to oil, pushing us to search in ever deeper and more hazardous waters to fill our boundless needs.