Ears Wide Open

Hawaii Sonar Exercise Likely Contributor to July 2004 Whale Incident - In July 2004, during the annual RIMPAC exercises off the Hawaiian island of Kauai, 150 deepwater melon-headed whales suddenly appeared in a shallow bay; one young whale died on shore while the rest were herded back to sea by volunteers. A NOAA Fisheries report on the incident found "no significant weather, natural oceanographic event or known biological factors that would explain the animals' movement into the bay nor the group's continued presence in the bay." While the presence of predators cannot be ruled out, the Naval exercises, including repeated use of mid-frequency active sonar, is the most likely cause. Official sonar training and tracking exercises in the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) warning area did not commence until about an hour after the whales appeared in the bay, and were thus initially ruled out as a possible trigger for the movement into the Bay. However, the six naval surface vessels transiting to the operational area on the day before intermittently transmitted active sonar for about 9 hours total as they approached from the south. "Sound propagation models suggest that sonar transmissions were likely detectable over a large area around Kaua'i for many hours on the day prior to the stranding, as well as within Hanalei Bay when the animals were there," said Brandon Southall, NOAA Fisheries Service's Acoustics Program Director. In response to this finding, NOAA has asked the Navy to make some operational changes during this summer's RIMPAC exercise, scheduled for late June. The Navy has agreed to lower the power of the sonar and to avoid most canyon areas where deep-diving whales may be affected, even at ranges of several kilometers. NOAA Fisheries is accepting public comment on its 2005 RIMPAC permit through May 24. Sources: Science Daily, NOAA Press Release 4/28/06 [READ ARTICLE] AP, 4/28/06 [READ ARTICLE] NOAA Executive Summary of report, 4/28/06 [READ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY]
Related: See AEI Special Report: Active Sonars for more on this topic. In April, sonar was linked to a European stranding, while a NOAA Fisheries study indicated that whales stranded in January 2004 off the coast of North Carolina during Naval exercises did not show the typical signs of acoustic trauma.

Vanishing Songs Collected on British Library CD - Some of Britain's most celebrated songs, they have inspired poets, musicians and writers as diverse as Robert Burns, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Arthur Conan Doyle and even Shane McGowan - yet few people have ever heard them. These influential tunes are rarely heard today because they are sung by some of Britain's rarest birds and animals. But you can now listen to them on a new CD put together from the sound archives of the British Library. The track list of Vanishing Wildlife is made up of many sounds that were once common in the countryside but which have are now all but gone. It includes the song of the woodlark, which is celebrated in poems by both Burns and Hopkins as well as in music by Messiaen. In his 1795 poem Address to the Woodlark, Burns describes the bird's song as "soothing, fond complaining." The creatures at that time were abundant enough for Burns's audience to have known what he was writing about. But since his day, the numbers of the birds have fallen dramatically, with the disappearance of heath land. Richard Ranft, who helped put the CD together, said there was a danger that without urgent conservation measures, more calls on the disk would be lost forever in the wild. "We don't want the British Library to be sole preserve of these sounds. These animals are indicators of the health of the environment," he said. "We are becoming increasingly urbanised people, and more out of touch with the sounds of the countryside. Our sound-space is filled with manmade noise and we have lost, or can't hear, some natural sounds that have been around for hundreds of thousands of years," Ranft added. "I am a little sad when I see so many people listening to manmade sounds on their iPods. Sometimes they should unplug their earphones and listen to some of the sounds around them." Source: Guardian, 4/19/06 [READ ARTICLE] British Library Website [PURCHASE CD]

SongFinder Makes High-pitched Bird Calls Audible Again - Help is at hand for aging birders who have lost the ability to hear the higher-pitched bird calls they long enjoyed. A new device co-developed by renowned environmental sound recordist Lang Elliott transposes the now-inaudible bird calls and songs down into lower pitches, making them once again audible. The unit, dubbed the SongFinder, is designed to be worn in the field, and uses headphones and stereo imaging to allow birders to track birds in three dimensions, just as they are used to. Source: NatureSound website [WEBSITE]

Modern Train Horns Raise Ire of Rural Residents - Across rural England, complaints are pouring in about the sound of new train horns. Sheila Kolstoe, 57, lives near a crossing. "I've lived here since 1987 and it wasn't until the new trains were introduced that horns became a problem," she said. "It used to be a dull noise the body could absorb, but now it's two-tone and causes stress and sleep deprivation. It's like a form of torture. Imagine every time you go to sleep you get woken up every 20 minutes by a noise louder than a pneumatic drill." Residents in Leicestershire have the same problem. Janet Barkby lives a quarter of a mile from a foot crossing in Barrow-on-Soar. "It's got louder, the length of the noise has got longer and it's a more piercing sound than it used to be. Safety is paramount but when you consider it's only a foot level crossing and it's not very busy, it seems a little over-the-top." The Noise Abatement Society says it has received 17,000 complaints in the last couple of years, from across the UK, and describes train horns as the worst noise pollution facing the country. Peter Ainsworth, MP for East Surrey, has proposed a motion in Parliament, backed by 70 MPs, which calls for train companies to install the broadband horns used in the US, at a cost of £700 each, or revert to the old horns. Guidance on horns is issued by the Rail Standards Safety Board which revised the rules in 2003 in response to complaints, lowering the minimum decibel level from 120 to 112. Source: BBC, 1/30/06 [READ ARTICLE]

"Most Complex" Animal Songster is Plain-tailed Wren - The typical songbird is a solo artist, content to warble alone in a tree or on a wire. Some species, however, do the George Jones-Tammy Wynette duet thing, and there are even a few that sing in groups. But nothing quite matches the performance of the plain-tailed wren of Ecuador and Peru, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir of the avian world. Biologists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland report that groups of the birds sing four-part songs, the males and females trading phrases with split-second timing for up to two minutes. "I think this is the most complex song in a nonhuman animal," said Peter J. Slater, a professor of natural history and, along with Nigel I. Mann and Kimberly A. Dingess, author of a paper about the bird published in the journal Biology Letters. Source: NY Times, 9/20/05 [READ ARTICLE]
Related: Interview with David Rothenberg on playing music with birds. Source: NY Times, 9/20/05 [READ ARTICLE]