Sonar report watered down

More than three dozen whales beached themselves on the Outer Banks in North Carolina within a few hours in January 2005, lying on their sides until they died. At the time, the Navy was offshore testing sonar.

A year later, environmental groups say the government's investigation of the whales' deaths smacks of a whitewash.This week the government released two versions of the report, one of which is watered down.A National Marine Fisheries Service official who helped write both reports called the drawn-out necropsy and the revised report part of the scientific process.

"Only after we bring together all the data can we say which (factors) are the cause of death," said Teri Rowles, director of the marine mammal stranding response program.

The tests took place at the site of a proposed 600-square-mile Undersea Warfare Training Range on the continental shelf off North Carolina, less than 200 miles from the Charleston jetties.

A draft environmental impact statement, which would help decide what the Navy can do at the site, says the range would have little or no impact on whales or other marine creatures.But if sonar blasts injure marine mammals or fish, the range could disturb offshore populations from the endangered right whale to dolphins and game fish.

The dispute comes as public interest is raised in marine mammals and the man-made threats to them. The 37 whales stranded last year were mostly pilot whales, which have a history of beaching themselves in groups. That stranding followed another stranding of 17 whales off the Bahamas in 2000. The fisheries service report on the Bahamas incident characterized Navy sonar as "the most plausible source of this acoustic or impulse trauma."

The original Januaury 15, 2005, report on the Outer Banks stranding said trauma in at least some of the whales was similar to other cases where damage was caused by sonar. The revised report does not say that, and a news release about it called the original report inaccurate. Rowles said further study of the whale tissue couldn't confirm the trauma was caused before the whales beached and died.

A final necropsy report awaits additional tests, including a 14-month process to remove calcium from bones in the ears in order to slice specimens and examine them under the microscope.An information packet about sonar accompanying the Navy's environmental impact statement draft online said, "There have been a handful of incidents where the use of Navy sonar coincided in time and space with the stranding of marine mammals. A conclusive 'cause and effect' relationship has not been established for any of the incidents, but Navy research is under way to determine whether or not a causal link exists."

Rowles said the final necropsy report should be completed by March.