My agents and trusted friends of twenty years, Gail Ross and Howard Yoon, brought their patented blend of professionalism and passion to this project. The Ross Yoon Agency is the gold standard for excellence and integrity in literary management. Nobody does it better. Anna Sproul, Jennifer Manguera, and Dara Kaye are talented members of the Ross Yoon Agency whom I also count as friends.
I’m pleased to acknowledge the sponsorship of the Ocean Foundation, which enables people like me to dive deeply into important marine topics without going broke in the process. My thanks to its president, Mark Spalding, and board member Angel Braestrup for helping me build bridges to funders. I am grateful for the grant support I received from the Pacific Life Foundation, the Hawley Family Foundation, and Furthermore, a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.
Every author depends on his writer friends for tough-love responses to manuscript drafts, early and late. I’m particularly thankful to Elsa Walsh for giving me detailed and incisive notes when I sorely needed a fresh perspective. I’m fortunate to have a family rich in talented writers. Tony Horwitz, Elinor Horwitz, and Geraldine Brooks waited patiently until I asked them to read, and then gave me their corrective best. So did my wife, Ericka Markman, who read my first complete draft and gave me detailed notes during what was supposed to be a vacation in the South of France. Peter Glusker is like family, which is why I felt free to ask him to read my first draft. Howie Garrett made several key corrections to my final draft. And to coach and counselor David Pellegrini, thanks for all the solid swing tips along the way.
Two friends deserve special mention for their editorial contributions. Kenneth Wapner is a talented writer and editor who volunteered for the hand-to-hand combat of whipping this manuscript, and this author, into shape. His contributions were invaluable. Stephen Mills, another seasoned veteran of the writing wars, served heroically in the trenches. I trust these guys with my life, and with my darkest writer’s fears.
I want to thank Tanya, Julia, and Charlotte for sharing their father with this whale of a book for so long. Encountering the gray whales of Laguna San Ignacio alongside Tanya, and then with Julia, were the best of times for this dad. Charlotte, you’re next.
Finally, my heartfelt gratitude to Ericka, who believed in me enough to say, “Go write it,” when I first fell hard for this story but lacked the confidence to tell it. Throughout the long and winding passage to publication, she never stinted in her support for me—or in her tireless attention to the daily needs of our daughters—despite having recently launched her own business. She’s a spectacular woman who amazes and humbles me every day.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© CAROLYN MILLSTEIN
Joshua Horwitz is the founder and publisher of Living Planet Books, which specializes in works by thought leaders in science, medicine, and psychology. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and three daughters.
For more information go to: www.warofthewhales.com
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ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
ENDPAPER MAPS
Paula Robbins, Mapping Specialists
FACEPLATES
Parts 1, 2, and 3, depicting Globicepharus of Risso, the Hyperdoon, and Great Northern Rorqual: steel engravings by William H. Lizars from Sir William Jardine’s 1937 The Natural History of the Ordinary Cetacea of Whales.
Part 4, of White Beluga: from William Scoresby Jr.’s 1820 book An account of the Arctic regions with a history and description of the northern whale-fishery.
CHAPTER HEAD ILLUSTRATIONS
F. Wenderoth Saunders, from Ivan T. Sanderson’s Follow the Whale (New York: Bramhall House, 1956).
IN-TEXT GRAPHICS
Page 156
Pidwirny, M. (2006). “Surface and Subsurface Ocean Currents: Ocean Current Map.” Fundamentals of Physical Geography, 2nd Edition. Public domain. U.S. government publication. http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8q_1.html.
Page 159
From “The Heard Island Feasibility Test,” Walter H. Munk, et al., Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 96, No. 4, October 1994.
Page 322
Sourced from GlobalSecurity.org and US Department of the Navy
PHOTO INSERT
1, 5, 7, 10, 11, 26, 27, 37, 38: Photo by Ken Balcomb
2: Photo by Charlotte Dunn
3, 40, 41, 42: Photo by Joshua Horwitz
4: Photo by John Calambokidis, Cascadia Research
6, 8: Photo by Diane Claridge
9: Photo by Bahamas Marine Mammal Survey
12: Courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
13: Courtesy of WHOI Computerized Scanning and Imaging Facility, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
14: Photo by Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution
15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 43: Courtesy of Ken Balcomb
18: Photo by Robert S. Balcomb
29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34: Courtesy of Joel Reynolds
35: Photo by Vidal Martin of SECAC
36: Photo by permission of Prof. Antonio Fernández (Institute Animal Health), University Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain
39: Photo by Michael J. Elderman, provided by UC Riverside
AUTHOR’S NOTES ON SOURCES AND INTERVIEWS
Much of the information in this book derives from interviews with more than 100 individuals, as well as from oral histories (most significantly from the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, in College Park, Maryland), from memoirs, and unpublished articles, ship logs, and personal papers.
A list of individuals I interviewed, either by phone or in person, begins on page 390 of this section. Key sources were interviewed multiple times, and many of the interviews were tape-recorded to ensure accuracy. Every effort has been made to report group meetings accurately, based on interviews with multiple participants.
In addition, I drew information from a range of books, articles in newspapers, magazines, and peer-reviewed science and law journals; investigative reports by the US Navy and the National Marine Fisheries Service; proceedings of marine mammal science conferences, transcripts of legal proceedings, and published court decisions. Many of these sources are cited in the endnotes. Others are listed below, by chapter.
I reported many of the scenes in the book from locations in Southern California; Hawaii; the San Juan Islands of Washington State; Baja, Mexico; the Bahamas; and Woods Hole, Massachusetts; as well as from marine mammal science conferences in the United States and abroad.
SOURCES
Part One: Stranded
Chapters 1, 2, and 3
The narration of the March 15, 2000, mass stranding and subsequent specimen collection is drawn from eyewitness and newspaper accounts; from photographs and videotape recorded by members of the Bahamas Marine Mammal Survey who documented the event; from postings on the MARMAM marine mammal Listserv; from on-site reporting on Abaco Island in the Bahamas; from peer-reviewed journal articles; and from the Navy and National Marine Fisheries Service joint interim report released on December 21, 2001. The most precise linear narrative of the stranding and its aftermath is Balcomb and Claridge’s peer-reviewed and published report: K. C. Balcomb and D. E. Claridge, “A mass Stranding of Cetaceans Caused by Naval Sonar in the Bahamas,” Bahamas Journal of Science 8, no. 2 (May 2001): 4–6.
Key interview subjects included Ken Balcomb, Diane Claridge, Dave Ellifrit, and Bob Gisiner.
Information in these chapters regarding beaked whale evolution and echolocation was drawn from documents cited in the endnotes and from interviews with Jim Mead of the Smithsonian Institution and Darlene Ketten of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7
Information about Ken Balcomb’s childhood, early research career, Navy tours, and work aboard the Regina Maris is drawn largely from interviews with Ken Balcomb, three of his four wives, i
ncluding Diane Claridge, childhood friends, and his half brother Howie Garrett, as well as protégé researchers Dave Ellifrit and John Durban.
Much of the background information about the Navy’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) comes from interviews with naval historian Gary Weir, as well as from his book An Ocean in Common: American Naval Officers, Scientists, and the Ocean Environment (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2001), and his article “The American Sound Surveillance System: Using the Ocean to Hunt Soviet Submarines, 1950–1961,” International Journal of Naval History 5, no. 2 (August 2006).
Information about the early response to the stranding by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and the Navy Office of Environmental Readiness (N-45) is drawn from interviews with multiple individuals, including: at ONR, Bob Gisiner, Jim MacEachern, and Admiral Paul Gaffney; at NMFS, Roger Gentry, Blair Mase, Bill Hogarth, Teri Rowles, Janet Whaley, and Laurie Allen; at N-45, Admiral Larry Baucom, Frank Stone, and Marc Laverdiere.
Part Two: Acoustic Storm
Chapters 8 and 9
The information about NRDC, its first response to the Bahamas stranding, and its campaign to save the whale nursery in Laguna San Ignacio in Baja, Mexico, comes primarily from interviews with individuals at NRDC, including Michael Jasny, Andrew Wetzler, John Adams, Stephen Mills, Joel Reynolds, and Jacob Scherr.
Other information about the Baja whale campaign and gray whales was drawn from various news reports and articles, and from Dick Russell, Eye of the Whale: Epic Passage from Baja to Siberia (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
Information about Joel Reynolds’ childhood and early legal career—in these chapters and in chapter 11—was drawn from interviews with Joel Reynolds, his five siblings and two former wives, and colleagues.
Chapter 10
The information in this chapter comes primarily from articles and interviews with Darlene Ketten, and interviews with Ken Balcomb, Charlie Potter, and Diane Claridge.
Chapter 11
The information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with Steve Honigman, Joel Reynolds, Lindy Weilgart, Hal Whitehead, Sam Ridgway, and John Hall.
Chapter 12
Information in this chapter comes primarily from videotape of the beachside necropsy and interviews with Ken Balcomb, Darlene Ketten, Roger Gentry, and Larry Baucom.
Chapter 13
Information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with Richard Danzig, Robert Pirie, Admiral Dick Pittenger, Admiral Bill Fallon, Admiral Bob Natter, Admiral Paul Gaffney, Darlene Ketten, and Jim MacEachern.
Chapter 14
Information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with Admiral Dick Pittenger, Walter Munk, Mel Briscoe, Robert Frosch, Fred Saalfeld, Chris Clark, Lindy Weilgart, Hal Whitehead, Craig Dorman, Steven Ramberg, Dan Costa, Bob Gisiner, Sylvia Earle, John Adams, Peter Tyack, Katy Payne, Joel Reynolds, Annie Notthoff, Susan Jordan, Naomi Oreskes, and Naomi Rose.
Information about the Jasons, the military think tank of academic physicists, is drawn largely from Ann Finkbeiner’s book The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite (New York: Viking, 2006).
Chapter 15
Information in this chapter comes from articles cited in the endnotes and from interviews with Joel Reynolds, Steve Honigman, John Hall, Michael Jasny, Andrew Wetzler, Hal Whitehead, Peter Tyack, Dan Costa, and Chris Clark.
W. John Richardson et al., Marine Mammals and Noise (San Diego: Academic Press, 1995).
Michael Jasny et al., Sounding the Depths II: The Rising Toll of Sonar, Shipping and Industrial Ocean Noise on Marine Life (New York: Natural Resources Defense Council, 2005).
Chapter 16
Information in this chapter comes primarily from videotape recorded by Ken Balcomb, Darlene Ketten’s notes and articles, and interviews with Darlene Ketten, Ken Balcomb, and Diane Claridge.
Part Three: The Reluctant Whistle-Blower
Chapter 17
The information in this chapter is drawn largely from multiple sources, including D. Graham Burnette’s The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2012); Gregg Mitman’s Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); and several books by John Lilly, among them Man and Dolphin (New York: Doubleday, 1961), The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence (New York: Doubleday, 1969), John Lilly, So Far . . . (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1989), and The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography (Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, 1996).
Chapter 18
The information in this chapter is drawn from multiple news articles and books, as well as interviews with Ken Balcomb. In 1997 PBS’ Frontline produced an excellent investigative documentary titled A Whale of a Business about SeaWorld and the history of captive orcas in the Pacific Northwest, which remains one of the best sources on the subject. Other sources for this chapter include Burnette’s Sounding of the Whale and David Rothenberg’s Thousand Mile Song: Whale Music in a Sea of Sound (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
Chapter 19
In addition to the books cited from chapter 18, the information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with Ken Balcomb and articles by and about Ben White.
Chapter 20
The information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with John Hall, and from books such as David Helvarg’s Blue Frontier: Saving America’s Living Seas (New York: W. H. Freeman, 2001), Forrest G. Wood’s Marine Mammals and Man: The Navy’s Porpoises and Sea Lions (Washington, DC: R. B. Luce, 1973), Whitlow Au’s The Sonar of Dolphins (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993), and Paul Nachtigall and Patrick Moore’s Animal Sonar: Processes and Performance (New York: Plenum, 1988).
Chapter 21
The information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with Ken Balcomb, Joel Reynolds, Jim Mead, Roger Gentry, Charlie Potter, Sam Ridgway, and Jim MacEachern.
Chapter 22
The information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with Ken Balcomb, Mel Briscoe, Roger Gentry, and Diane Claridge, and from research by Peter Tyack and Mark Johnson of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution into the diving and sound responses of beaked whales in the Bahamas.
Chapter 23
The information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with Ken Balcomb, Roger Gentry, Michael Stocker, David Fromm, and several former Navy fleet commanders, as well as from the Navy and NMFS’ interim report on the Bahamas stranding, released in December 2001.
Part Four: Whales v. Navy
Chapters 24 and 25
The information in this chapter comes primarily from court transcripts and interviews with Joel Reynolds, Ken Balcomb, Michael Jasny, Andrew Wetzler, and Joe Johnson.
Chapter 26
The information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with members of the NRDC legal team.
Chapter 27
The information in this chapter comes primarily from interviews with Admiral Pete Daly, Craig Jensen, Jeff Luster, Joel Reynolds, Michael Jasny, and Dick Pittenger.
Chapter 28
The information in this chapter comes primarily from on-site reporting of the Supreme Court oral arguments, from court documents and transcripts, and from interviews with the legal teams on both sides.
Chapter 29
The information in this chapter comes primarily from law review articles and newspaper accounts, and from interviews with Joel Reynolds, Mitch Bernard, Dick Pittenger, Pete Daly, and Ken Balcomb.
INTERVIEWS
The author conducted one or more in-person or telephone interviews with the following individuals. Most have changed jobs and titles during the 20 years covered in this narrative. The job titles below refer to each person’s position at the time that he or she was an active participant in the narrative.
National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS/NOAA) Current or Former Officials
Roger Gentry
>
Head of acoustic research, Office of Protected Resources, NMFS.
Brandon Southall
Succeeded Roger Gentry as head of acoustic research, Office of Protected Resources, NMFS.
Penny Dalton
Assistant administrator for Fisheries, NOAA.
Bill Hogarth
Dalton’s successor as assistant administrator for Fisheries, NOAA.
Teri Rowles
National stranding coordinator.
War of the Whales: A True Story Page 41
