House supports ocean
mammal noise research

$2.2 million in funds would aid
UH studies of harm from sounds

The defense spending bill passed last week by the U.S. House contains $2.2 million for expansion of University of Hawaii research on hearing of whales and dolphins.

"There's a big concern about hearing of animals in the ocean, especially loud sounds placed in the water," said Paul Nachtigall, director of the Marine Mammal Research Program at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology on Coconut Island.

"We want to know what we can to do ameliorate that problem, but the difficulty is of 85 species of whales and dolphins, we only know what 11 species hear."

Announcing Hawaii projects in the defense budget, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, senior member of the Armed Services Committee, pointed out that fatal whale strandings have been caused in recent years by loud sounds emitted into the ocean.

"Unfortunately, while there is significant public concern for marine mammal hearing and physiology, there is a relative paucity of reliable information on the effects of sound on whales and dolphins," he said.

Navy systems such as the Low Frequency Active Sonar have been restricted by courts because of potential effects of the sound on marine mammals, he said.

But research has been slowed by requirements to comply with the Marine Mammal Protection Act, he said.

Environmental groups have strongly opposed Navy use of low-frequency sonar systems because of questions about harm to whales and other ocean animals.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave the Navy in 2002 a five-year exemption to federal rules protecting marine mammals from incidental injury but required the Navy to investigate effects of low-frequency sonar on whale behavior. A federal court ruling in August 2003 resulted in geographical limits to Navy use of the system.

Abercrombie said a series of reports from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences call for establishment of a center for objective research on effects of sound on marine mammal hearing and physiology.

He said the UH Marine Mammal Research Program has taken the first step to meet the council's needs and would not require additional buildings.

UH researchers are allowed by agreement to use a support facility across from Coconut Island at Marine Corps Base Kaneohe for boats and offices, a hospital and rehabilitation quarters. All stranded animals are housed there.

Nachtigall has been working on the marine mammal hearing program with Alexandre Supin of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Supin is a visiting professor at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology twice a year.

Nachtigall said Supin, "a great electrophysicist," developed a method of looking at brain wave patterns of dolphins as sound is presented, and the two have advanced it.

They began collaborating about four years ago after a workshop entitled "How Do You Test the Hearing of a Great Whale?" at which Supin demonstrated his technique.

Nachtigall said they have been working on a way to study hearing of the 74 species of whales and dolphins for which they have no hearing measurements.

"We really need to know what they hear to study the effect of sound on them," he said, explaining one way is to get baseline measurements of what they hear and determine the effects of loud sound.

Many times when animals are fatally stranded, the only way to know if they had trauma from sound is if a necropsy shows blood in the ear, he said. But measurements of hearing are more sophisticated than that, he said.

He said he and Supin have developed a method of testing hearing of sperm whales "and hopefully great big ones as well" by looking at brain wave patterns.