War of the Whales: A True Story
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CONTENTS
Cast of Characters
A Note About Acronyms
Prologue
PART ONE: STRANDED
1. The Day the Whales Came Ashore
2. Castaways
3. Taking Heads
4. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Beachcomber
5. In the Silent Service
6. The Stranding Goes Viral
7. “Unusual Mortality Event”
PART TWO: ACOUSTIC STORM
8. The Lone Rangers of the Environment
9. Joel Reynolds Among the Friendlies
10. The Whale Coroner Arrives
11. Depth Charges
12. Beachside Necropsy
13. Cease and Desist
14. Acoustic Storm
15. The Sonar That Came In from the Cold
16. Heads That Tell Tales
PART THREE: THE RELUCTANT WHISTLE-BLOWER
17. A Mind in the Water
18. The Killer Turned Tame
19. A Call to Conscience
20. The Dolphins That Joined the Navy
21. Mr. Balcomb Goes to Washington
22. The Mermaid That Got Away
23. In the Valley of the Whales
PART FOUR: WHALES V. NAVY
24. God and Country v. the Whales
25. “It Is So Ordered”
26. Counterattack
27. The Admirals Take Charge
28. The Highest Court in the Land
29. Endgame
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Illustration Credits
Author’s Notes on Sources and Interviews
Recommended Reading and Resources
Endnotes
Index
For Kenny and Stephen, foxhole buddies forever
and
To Ericka, who dazzled from day one
CAST OF CHARACTERS*
THE MARINE MAMMAL SCIENTISTS
Ken Balcomb
Beaked whale and killer-whale researcher in the Bahamas and San Juan Islands, Washington, respectively.
Diane Claridge
Dolphin and beaked whale researcher; wife and research partner of Ken Balcomb.
Darlene Ketten
Whale and human hearing expert; forensic pathologist, Harvard Medical School and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Roger Payne
First cetologist to decode and promote humpback whale song and conservation.
Chris Clark
Director, Bioacoustics Research Program, Cornell University Lab of Ornithology; protégé of Roger Payne.
Hal Whitehead
Beaked whale and sperm whale researcher; professor, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Lindy Weilgart
Whale researcher; Hal Whitehead’s wife and research partner.
Peter Tyack
Dolphin and whale behavioral researcher, Woods Hole Oceano-graphic Institution.
Jim Mead
Curator of marine mammals, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
John Lilly
Neuroscientist who studied and popularized dolphin communication.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS
Joel Reynolds
Senior attorney, director of Los Angeles office of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC); founder and director, Marine Mammal Protection Project.
Michael Jasny
Policy advocate, NRDC. Later, director, Marine Mammal Protection Project.
Andrew Wetzler
Staff attorney, NRDC.
Naomi Rose
Director of marine mammal programs, Humane Society of the United States.
Ben White
Animal rights activist, Animal Welfare Institute.
THE UNIFORMED NAVY
Admiral Richard Pittenger
Director of Antisubmarine Warfare for the Chief of Naval Operations; Oceanographer of the Navy; later Vice President for Marine Operations, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Admiral Paul Gaffney II
Chief of Naval Research, Office of Naval Research.
Commander Robin Pirie
Former submarine commander; Undersecretary of Navy.
Admiral Robert Natter
Commander, US Atlantic Fleet.
Admiral William Fallon
Commander, US Second Fleet.
Admiral Larry Baucom
Head of N-45, Navy Office of Environmental Readiness.
Admiral Peter Daly
Aide to Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Mullen.
THE CIVILIAN NAVY
Bob Gisiner
Manager, Marine Bioacoustics Program, Office of Naval Research, Washington, DC.
Frank Stone
Head civilian at N-45, Navy Office of Environmental Readiness.
Sam Ridgway
Veterinarian; head of Navy Marine Mammal Research Program, San Diego.
Richard Danzig
Secretary of the Navy during Clinton administration.
Steven Honigman
General Counsel of the Navy during Clinton administration.
NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE (FISHERIES)
Roger Gentry
Head of acoustic research; Office of Protected Resources.
Teri Rowles
Director, Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, Washington, DC.
Ruth Ewing
Veterinarian at Southeast Fisheries Science Center, a first responder to the Bahamas strandings.
THE WHALES
Beaked Whales of Great Bahama Canyon
More than 20 species of beaked whales dwell in deep-water canyons and coastal shelves around the world. They are the deepest-diving air-breathing creatures in the ocean and are rarely seen on the surface.
Pacific Gray Whales of Baja, Mexico
These “friendly” baleen whales (whales that filter feed through brushlike baleen, in lieu of teeth) migrate farther than any other mammal: 6,000 miles from Baja, where they give birth in winter, to their summer feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, above the Arctic Circle.
Orcas (also known as Killer Whales) of Puget Sound, Washington
The largest of the dolphin family, killer whales are the top predator in the ocean, preying on salmon, sea lions, other whales, and even great white sharks. The Puget Sound resident community feeds on Chinook salmon.
Dolphins of California and Florida
Highly social, easily trained, and among the smallest cetaceans, various species of dolphins were the first marine mammals to be captured, displayed, studied, and trained—both in marine parks and in the Navy Marine Mammal Program.
* * *
* The job titles and descriptors in the Cast of Characters refer to their positions at the time they were participants in the narrative.
A NOTE ABOUT ACRONYMS
US Navy and government agencies are fond of using acronyms to denote programs, weapons systems, and departments. To spare readers the struggle of decoding this alphabet soup, I have tried to avoid acronyms in general, and in certain cases have substituted contractions, specifically:
National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is referred to as “Fisheries.”
Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate (ATOC) is shortened to “Acoustic Thermometry.”
Littoral Warfare Advanced Development (LWAD) is shortened to “Littoral Warfare.”
In a few instances, where the long form is cumbersome, I have employed the commonly used acronym after the first use:
ONR for Office of Naval Research
AUTEC for Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center
NRDC for Natural Resources Defense Council
LFA sonar for Low Frequency Active sonar
PROLOGUE
Perhaps the war of the whales was inevitable. Perhaps the two most successful hunters on the planet were destined to collide. Humans had dominated life on land for 150 centuries, while whales had held dominion over the world’s oceans for 40 million years.
Following the mass extinction of dinosaurs and enormous seafaring reptiles, the cetacean ancestors of whales and dolphins abandoned life on land and returned to the oceans that first spawned them. It proved to be a hugely successful reverse migration. Diversifying into dozens of species, whales dominated marine habitats throughout the world’s waterways. Hunting alone or in small family groupings, in pods of a dozen or herds a thousand strong, whales owed their success to a weapon that set them apart from every other marine predator: biosonar, using beams of sound to hunt and navigate in the dark ocean depths.
Small wonder, then, that whales ruled the oceans for tens of millions of years—until another highly social, intelligent, and adaptive terrestrial mammal dipped its toes into the water.
Homo sapiens arrived at the 11th hour of animal evolution, a mere 160,000 years ago. Compared to cetaceans, humans evolved rapidly, adapting to the rigors of life on Earth through a deft combination of social cooperation, cunning, and organized aggression. Five thousand years ago, humans began stalking the largest animals on the planet—first from canoes, then under sail, and eventually aboard floating factory ships that slaughtered and processed whale populations from the South Pacific to the Arctic Ocean.
As they rose to top predator on land and at sea, humans turned their technological zeal to weapons of war, spurring an arms race without end. In the twentieth century, submarine weaponry evolved from primitive torpedoes to intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads. Like their cetacean counterparts, submariners lived and died by their ability to navigate and hunt acoustically in the black depths of the oceans.
In the early hours of March 15, 2000, the paths of the world’s most powerful navy and the ocean’s most mysterious species of whales were about to converge. Though on the calm surface of the Great Bahama Canyon, nothing hinted at anything amiss. It was just another morning in paradise, the day the whales came ashore.
PART ONE
STRANDED
I have met with a story which, although authenticated by undoubted evidence, looks very like a fable.
—Pliny the Younger, Letters (on hearing reports of a boy riding on the back of a dolphin in the first century AD)
1
The Day the Whales Came Ashore
DAY 1: MARCH 15, 2000, 7:45 A.M.
Sandy Point, Abaco Island, the Bahamas
Powered by his second cup of coffee, Ken Balcomb was motoring through his orientation speech for the Earthwatch Institute volunteers who had flown in the night before. The workday started early at Sandy Point, and Balcomb was eager to finish his spiel and head out onto the water before the sun got high and hot.
“Take as many pictures as you like,” he told them, “but leave the marine life in the ocean. Conches in the Bahamas are listed as a threatened species, so you can’t take their shells home as souvenirs.”
After a breakfast of sliced papaya and peanut butter sandwiches, a dozen volunteers sprawled across the worn couches of the modest beachfront house that Balcomb rented with his wife and research partner, Diane Claridge. Here, on the underpopulated southwestern tip of Abaco, far from the posh resorts on the tiny Out Islands elsewhere in the Bahamas, the only tourist activity was bonefishing in the clear, bright shallows of the continental shelf. What the tourists rarely glimpsed, and what the volunteers had come to see, were the reclusive Cuvier’s and Blainville’s beaked whales of the Great Bahama Canyon.
For the past 15 years, the Earthwatch volunteer program had provided the sole financial support for the decadelong photo-identification survey of the beaked whales here in the Bahamas and of the killer whales in the Pacific Northwest. The Earthlings, as Ken and Diane called them, traveled from across the United States and around the world to assist their survey and to catch a fleeting glance of the deepest-diving creatures in the ocean: the beaked whales that lived inside the underwater canyon offshore from Sandy Point. For the most part, they were altruistic tourists, from teenagers to golden-agers, looking for a useful vacation from the winter doldrums up north. At Sandy Point, they could learn a little about whales, lend a hand in a righteous eco-science project, and enjoy the Bahamian sunshine.
Earthwatch volunteers set out to observe beaked whales off of Abaco Island.
Occasionally, one of the volunteers got hooked on the research and never went home. While still a teenager in landlocked Missouri, Dave Ellifrit had seen Balcomb’s photos of killer whales in a magazine. That summer, he showed up at Smugglers Cove on San Juan Island, off the coast of Washington, to help with the annual survey. Ellifrit was immediately at home with the open-boat work, despite the pale complexion that came with his bright red hair. Fifteen years later, he was still working for room and board as a year-round researcher—at Smugglers Cove in the summer and at Sandy Point in the winter. Balcomb and Claridge had more or less adopted the young man, mentoring him in whale research and helping pay his way through an environmental science program at Evergreen State College in Washington.
While Balcomb finished briefing the Earthlings on the details of photo identification and log entries, Ellifrit was on the beach readying the motorboats for the day’s survey. “Don’t be disappointed if you don’t see any beaked whales your first day out,” Balcomb explained to the volunteers. “They range all over the canyon and surface only about once an hour, rarely in the same place twice. So unless you get lucky, you won’t be grabbing any photos at first.”
Diane Claridge on the lookout for marine mammals in the Great Bahamas Canyon, where she and Ken Balcomb studied the beaked whale population from 1991–2000, and where she continues to conduct research.
Balcomb explained the differences between the Cuvier’s and Blainville’s beaked whales that he and Claridge had catalogued over the past decade. Some of the more studious Earthlings took notes. Others were busy applying an extra layer of sunblock, which was fine with Balcomb. He didn’t want to spend his evening nursing sunburned volunteers.
Ken Balcomb on his porch in Smugglers Cove, San Juan Island, Washington. He has conducted an annual summer survey of the resident orca community since 1976.
Balcomb had the weather-beaten look of someone who’ d spent most of his six decades on the water, and about ten minutes focused on his wardrobe. Every morning, he pulled on whatever free promotional T-shirt he’ d fished out of the pile in his closet and stepped into a nondescript pair of sun-bleached shorts and the flip-flops he’ d stepped out of the night before. He wore his hair shaggy or cropped short, depending on how recently Diane had taken the shears to him, topped off by whatever baseball cap the last group of Earthlings had left behind. Balcomb’s face was mostly covered by a thick salt-and-pepper beard, and his bright, constantly watchful eyes had the reverse-raccoon look that comes from wearing sunglasses 12 months a year.
Even standing in the living room, he kept his legs planted in the wide stance of a man accustomed to life on boats, flexed just enough to absorb any unexpected pitch or roll. “There are only a few dozen whales in the whole canyon, and some weeks we only see a handful of them,” he continued. “But there’s lots of other marine life out there if you keep your eyes peeled.”
A college-aged young woman raised her hand. “What do we do about the sharks?”
“The sharks are nothing to worry about unles
s there’s blood in the water,” Balcomb said with a smile. “So any of you women . . .” Claridge winced in anticipation of an off-color punch line she’ d heard too many times. Balcomb liked to tease his beautiful Bahamian wife about her British reserve, and he couldn’t resist trying to bring a blush to her pale, almost Nordic face. “. . . if it’s your time of month, you might want to stay in the boat, because—”
The screen door banged open. Everyone looked up to see Dave Ellifrit, out of breath and wide eyed. When his eyes found Balcomb’s, he said, almost matter-of-factly, “There’s a whale on the beach.”
Claridge grabbed the camcorder off the kitchen counter and raced out the door. Balcomb jogged down the beach behind her, slowing to a walk as he reached the water’s edge.
The whale lay helpless in three feet of water, its spindle-shaped body lodged in the sand, while its tail fluke splashed listlessly in the shallows.
Balcomb couldn’t believe how close to the house the animal had stranded: less than 100 feet up the beach. It was a Cuvier’s—and it was alive. A live Cuvier’s beaked whale! How was that possible? His mind raced to fix on a reference point. The last beaked whale to strand alive in these waters had come ashore decades ago, back in the early 1950s, on the north side of the island.