Field Notes

• Does Sonar Hurt Whales?
• How Green Is Congress?
• R.I.P. for "The Next DDT"
• Syndey's Green Games
• The American Discovery Trail Opens

Noise Pollution
Not-So-Silent Seas

Last March 15, three beaked whales stranded themselves on a beach in the Bahamas, in front of a research facility run by the Bahamas Marine Mammal Research Station. The whales were among a total of 16 that ran aground along 60 miles of Bahamian coastline. Ken Balcomb, the center's director, and his team moved into action, videotaping the animals while struggling, cowboy-style, in small motorboats to herd them back into deeper waters. Balcomb's team and another team managed to save 4 of the 10 whales in their vicinity; the other 6 died.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) dispatched its own scientists to do necropsies on the whales that died. In addition, the heads of two of the whales were sent to the research labs of auditory specialist Darlene Ketten of Harvard University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Preliminary studies show that the whales probably beached themselves because of some intense underwater noise. A distant explosion and an underwater landslide were given as possible sources of the sound.  

But some researchers also suspect the U.S. Navy. The most powerful sound known in the area that day came from a line of U.S. warships passing through the Northeast and Northwest Providence channels. The sound of the ships' sonar, conducted by the deep channels, may have disoriented the whales, driving them into shallow water. "If you had a bunch of rafters going down the Grand Canyon and you set off a bomb," says Balcomb, "they would try to get out of the canyon."

If these preliminary findings prove correct, they would be the first scientific evidence that human-produced undersea noise can cause mass strandings. How marine mammals, sea turtles, and other animals experience sounds underwater is poorly understood. Even less is known about the 20 or so species of beaked whales, deep-diving animals rarely seen by humans. For its part, the Navy is spending $3 million a year studying the effects of sound on marine mammals--more than half the money spent worldwide on such research, the Navy says.
Last year the Natural Resources Defense Council released a report sounding the alarm about noise in the oceans: "As we have come to exploit the sea with unprecedented industry and scope, the noise has grown. Now entering the mix are supertankers and container ships, air guns and drilling rigs, pingers, ringers, loudspeakers of various types and functions, explosives, dredges, and active sonar systems--their consequences for marine life are uncertain but potentially significant and grave." 

--Wendy Williams

How Green Is My Congress?

The League of Conservation Voters rates the environmental records of all members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate based on key votes. The map below shows the voting averages for each state, with the House displayed in shades of green and the Senate given grades of A through F. Vermont's congressional delegation scored the best (House, 95 percent; Senate, 100 percent) and Idaho's delegation the worst. (House, 3 percent; Senate, 0 percent). --Josh Malbin

* Average LCV scores by state. Based on 1999 data from the League of Conservation Voters

For the past five years, farmers have routinely applied a new type of pesticide, dubbed "the next DDT" by scientists, on cotton fields across the South. But in March the Environmental Protection Agency warned the chemical's manufacturer that if it did not withdraw its application to continue using the pesticide, the agency would deny it. The pesticide, chlorfenapyr--better known under its U.S. trade name, Pirate--targets a pervasive cotton pest, the beet army worm. 

Pirate attacks insects' mitochondria, thereby disrupting their ATP cycle--the biological process by which nearly all living cells convert fuel to energy. BASF Corporation, which recently bought American Cyanamid, the chemical's developer, claims that this makes Pirate less dangerous than other pesticides, such as malathion, which attack insects' nervous systems. But lab tests mandated by the EPA show that mallards fed the amount of chlorfenapyr they would find in the wild had a much lower hatching rate.

Biologists estimate that 50 species of birds forage for insects in cotton fields and use materials from those fields for nesting. Moreover, many migrating species feed on insects in cotton fields to fuel up for demanding flights across the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean to their wintering grounds. Consuming chlorfenapyr may inhibit the birds' ability to put on the weight and store the energy necessary to enable them to fly those distances. "This is only the first win," says Kelly Tucker of the American Bird Conservancy. "We're going to continue watching chlorfenapyr like a hawk." 

--Wendy Williams

REPORTS

Going for the Gold, and Green

The throngs of people at the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, this September will doubtless be wearing breezy summer garb--in a spot where a decade ago they would have been well advised to wear HazMat suits. The Olympic Stadium stands on the site of a slaughterhouse where 20,000 cows were killed each day. And three unregulated dumps in the area received more than 10 million tons of domestic and industrial waste in the 1960s and 1970s, including 400 tons of dioxin-contaminated soil and waste. Packaging environmental cleanup with its Olympic bid helped Sydney win the Games. The country spent $80 million planting almost 2 million native trees and restoring 1,900 acres of land, including saltwater and freshwater marshes and mangrove wetlands. More than 160 species of birds now frequent the area, including the locally rare red-rumped parrot and the white-bellied sea eagle.

--Jeff Hull

From Sea to Shining Sea

Want to hike from California to Delaware? Start walking--on the American Discovery Trail. The 6,300-mile ADT, which officially opened to hikers, backpackers, and bicyclists on June 3, is the first coast-
to-coast, nonmotorized route across the country. Ten years in the planning, the ADT connects a series of existing trails in 15 states and the District of Columbia, and crosses a number of others, including the Appalachian and Continental Divide trails. Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware marks the easternmost point of the trail, and California's Point Reyes National Seashore is the westernmost. The route passes through 16 national forests, 14 national parks, 5 major urban areas, and dozens of small towns. "We're a new breed of trail," explains Chris Voell, executive director of the American Discovery Trail Society. "We incorporate rural back roads, urban greenways, and rugged wilderness." For more information, call 800-663-2387 or visit 
www.discoverytrail.org.

--Stephen J. Lyons