I just read...

...this press release regarding the recent sonar near Haro Strait...

...and this article about sonar causing temporary deafness in dolphins...

...and this blog from the Marine Mammal Center, reporting a dead orca calf near Monterey Bay...

...which reminds me of the recent death of T44, a known transient orca. I wonder how that necropsy is going? It's quite rare to get a chance to study a transient in such detail. It wouldn't be surprising to discover that T44 was chock-full of PCBs, DDTs, and other toxins. I wonder how that will compare with the levels of toxins found in other transients and residents?

Orcas on Hydrophones? Nope, Just Sonar.

Last night, on both Lime Kiln and Orcasound hydrophones, listeners were surprised to hear some peculiar sounds. Not the sounds of orcas, or the regular shipping traffic, but the sounds of human voices and mid-frequency sonar pings. I'm listening to the recordings made by Scott Veirs of Beam Reach now and it is quite clear that these sounds are not a part of the natural environment.

Jeanne Hyde of The Whale Museum contacted the Bellingham Coast Guard and confirmed that the Navy was doing exercises in Haro Strait. Scott Veirs recorded the sounds and created spectrograms of the human voices and sonar.

To listen to the recordings, go to the Lime Kiln or Orcasound hydrophone sites, scroll down through the archived sounds, and click on one of the most recent recordings with the words "voice" and "sonar" in the title.

Edited to add @ 4:15 pm: This story has now been covered by the San Juan Journal. Also, could the human voices be spies? Some folks, commenting Christopher Dunagan's blog, think that a numbers station could have been in use.

Whale Farming on NPR

NPR airs a few comments from listeners about a previously aired story regarding whale farming. Apparently, one of the "farmers," Mr. Summers, had been teaching the whales to sing in harmony. He says, "In achieving three-part harmony in whale song, I think we we have tied nature's most wondrous sound to a great barber shop tradition." A NPR listener, however, had this to say: "Having studied music at college, I want Mr. Summers to know that what he calls three-part harmony is not. Two of the whales are plainly singing the same note. That may be clever, but it's not barber shop." Well, Mr. Summers wasn't having any of that, and he replied, "It wasn't that the whales couldn't sing in harmony, they were just too busy expressing their individuality. They weren't so tied to the group."

Touché, Mr. Summers, touché.

All joking aside, BBC News published a story about the possibility of a whale farm off the coast of Japan. That was in 2002, though, and I haven't heard anything about it since.

Are We Listening?

The bioacoustics research program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a snazzy site that's all about listening for right whales in an effort to protect them from ship strikes. Once the buoys detect the sound of a whale -- including rights, humpacks and fins -- the recordings get sent back to Cornell where software and researchers identify the sound. If the sound is indeed a whale, ships in the area are notified and encouraged to slow their speed to avoid an unfortunate situation.

It's important for us to listen to the whales, especially if it helps us to understand them and avoid unnecessary injury and/or death. It's too bad, then, that this project is facing a budget shortfall and has had to pull the buoys that record the sounds. Hopefully this is not the end of the program. Only time will tell if the future will bring additional funding.

I wonder if we will see an increase in ship strikes now that the buoys have been lifted?