'Lethal Sound' Seen
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Music, whales and statistics bring family and friends together. Pictured above are brothers Chris Reynolds (left), UC Davis music professor, and Joel Reynolds (center). Frank Samaniego (right) is a UC Davis statistics professor who provided expert testimony early in Joel Reynolds's environmental law career.
Music professor Pablo Ortiz observes daughter Camila's reaction to the seminar. Sitting next to her is Joel's nephew, Gabriel, and behind, Chris Reynolds, listening intently.
Several members of the audience plugged their ears to lessen the impact of the demonstration of what sonar might sound like to a marine mammal.
Deb Niemeier (left), director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment, and Holly Doremus (right), Professor of Law, UC Davis Law School, welcome Reynolds (center) to the campus.
'Lethal Sound' Heard
Joel Reynolds has a favorite whale call--it is the call of the Beluga whale and sounds similar to a bird. According to Reynolds, the humpback whales have sold the most records with their songs. For distance, the call of Blue whales is extraordinary. As the world’s largest mammals, their deep, low frequency bark emitted on the coast of California can be heard all the way to Hawaii. Whale researchers believe that Blue males use their low, booming calls to communicate with potential mates.
"The ocean is an acoustic environment that carries sound five times faster than air," explained Reynolds at a UC Davis seminar October 2. The concern is that acoustic pollution interferes with whale communications by masking their calls with noise from shipping lanes and other intrusive sources. Whales emit sound for navigation, among other reasons. Three Blue whales washed ashore in Southern California this year after colliding with ships. "Consider driving your car at night and the lights go out," said Reynolds, "that is what it is like for whales when their own sonar is blocked by disruptive interference."
A major source of the most harmful and intrusive acoustic pollution is from Navy sonar used during training exercises for detection of submarines. Another intrusive sound is from air cannons used for mapping subsurface typography in oil exploration. As senior attorney at the National Resources Defense Council--the nation's most successful litigating NGO for environmental protection--Reynolds has been protecting fish and marine mammals from the Navy since 1994 when he blocked 285 underwater test explosions near the Channel Islands. Since then he filed five more lawsuits against the Navy and negotiated with them to ban the use of low frequency active sonar in 99% of the world's oceans. Low frequency active sonar is the most harmful since it travels hundreds of miles. High frequency sonar is least harmful, however its short range makes it less useful. The Navy now uses "mid-frequency" sonar, which is harmful to many mammals.
This year Reynolds filed two more lawsuits and won an injunction that prevented the US Navy's use of mid-frequency sonar for detecting submarines in 14 exercises near the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. In August, the Navy took the decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit where a stay of the temporary injunction was granted on the basis of an exemption for national security. The next hearing is scheduled for November. Why does the Navy insist on doing their war games in protected areas frequented by whales? Reynolds believes it is a matter of convenience, since their war games can be staged from naval bases in San Diego and on San Clemente Island, and because the coastal topography suits their needs.
The science of marine acoustics is still in the early stages of discovery. Most of the physical evidence of harm caused by exposure to high intensity sonar has been collected from necropsies on beached whales. One study examined the hemorrhaging remains of beaked whales after NATO war games off the Canary Islands in 2002. (There are 14 nations now using sonar for defense.) These results were published in the journal Nature in 2003, and established that these beached whales experienced gas bubble growth in their livers. Videos and other publications document a range of sonar aversion behaviors by mammals and fish.
Reynolds also protects mammals from other threats. He sued Scripps Institute of Oceanography to prevent them from operating a low frequency underwater sound source for research in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and he sued Mitsubishi Corporation for attempting to develop the Whale Sanctuary of El Vizcaino, a world heritage site for grey whales, into a salt processing facility.
The 80 people who attended Reynolds's presentation, sponsored by the John Muir Institute of the Environment and the UC Davis School of Law, were exposed first-hand to whale calls and samples of acoustic pollution that whales are often subjected to. Several people put their hands to their ears to block the screeching sonar and air cannons blasted through the speaker system.
"We have the best environmental laws in the world and the current administration is doing their best to undo them. When you think about protection and what people will care about in 500 years, they won't care about red states or blue states, they will care about the health of the planet and the world we left them to raise their children in," said Reynolds. "Under this administration, NRDC spends too much time just trying to preserve our current level of protection." If national security was the issue, Reynolds said he wouldn’t contest the use of sonar, but he believes that whales should not have to die for practice, when practice could be done in a way that causes less harm.
Reynolds's young nephew summed it up when he approached the lectern with a pen in his hand to ask the last question of the evening, "Did you say Mitsubishi was a bad company? Why is my Dad using a pen with their name on it?" His dad is Chris Reynolds, professor of music, UC Davis. Among the Reynolds family, sound has many profound implications.