Judge: Stop Whale-Harming Research

A federal judge ordered the National Science Foundation on Monday to stop firing sound blasts into the Gulf of California because it harms whales.

Magistrate Judge James Larson sided with conservationists who said sound blasts used to map the ocean floor have disrupted marine life in the ocean between Baja California and mainland Mexico.

Larson ordered such aspects of a $1.6 million research project undertaken by the foundation to end immediately.

The Center for Biological Diversity asked the court last week to stop the research, saying two dead whales found on the Mexican coast last month likely beached themselves because of noise from air guns aboard the government vessel.

Government lawyers argued environmentalists had proven no connection between the beached whales and noise from the air guns. James Coda, assistant U.S. attorney for Northern California, said the government may appeal.

A mass stranding of 15 beaked whales happened Sept. 24-25 in Spain's Canary Islands, where naval maneuvers were taking place. One of the biologists who found the dead whales in Mexico said preliminary tests had linked the Spanish beaching to underwater noise from the maneuvers.

"When we heard they were using high-intensity sounds offshore (for the mapping), I think all our heads clicked onto the possibility that this could have been caused by the research," the biologist, Jay Barlow, a National Marine Fisheries Service scientist in San Diego, said Tuesday.

He said some scientists suspect intense underwater sounds like a warship's sonar may confuse beaked whales, which emit sound waves to search for food.

The National Science Foundation owns the vessel from which the researchers are sending out the sound signals, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University is operating the ship.

Lamont-Doherty officials said they have taken additional steps to limit the impact of the work, including reducing the intensity of the sound signals, restricting the research area, limiting operations to daylight, and enlisting Mexican researchers to monitor marine mammal activity.

Mexican President Vicente Fox has declared all of his nation's waters a preserve for whales. Of the 81 known species of whales, 39 are found in Mexican waters, and some breed off the Baja California peninsula.