Beaked whales have mass stranded during some naval sonar exercises, but the cause is unknown. They are difficult to sight but can reliably be detected by listening for echolocation clicks produced during deep foraging dives. Listening for these clicks, we documented Blainville's beaked whales, Mesoplodon densirostris, in a naval underwater range where sonars are in regular use near Andros Island, Bahamas. An array of bottom-mounted hydrophones can detect beaked whales when they click anywhere within the range. We used two complementary methods to investigate behavioral responses of beaked whales to sonar: an opportunistic approach that monitored whale responses to multi-day naval exercises involving tactical mid-frequency sonars, and an experimental approach using playbacks of simulated sonar and control sounds to whales tagged with a device that records sound, movement, and orientation. Here we show that in both exposure conditions beaked whales stopped echolocating during deep foraging dives and moved away. During actual sonar exercises, beaked whales were primarily detected near the periphery of the range, on average 16 km away from the sonar transmissions. Once the exercise stopped, beaked whales gradually filled in the center of the range over 2–3 days. A satellite tagged whale moved outside the range during an exercise, returning over 2–3 days post-exercise. The experimental approach used tags to measure acoustic exposure and behavioral reactions of beaked whales to one controlled exposure each of simulated military sonar, killer whale calls, and band-limited noise. The beaked whales reacted to these three sound playbacks at sound pressure levels below 142 dB re 1 µPa by stopping echolocation followed by unusually long and slow ascents from their foraging dives. The combined results indicate similar disruption of foraging behavior and avoidance by beaked whales in the two different contexts, at exposures well below those used by regulators to define disturbance.

The number and distribution of vocalizing groups of Blainville's beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) were analyzed before, during, and after multiship mid‐frequency active sonar operations at the US Navy's Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) in the Bahamas. Groups of foraging animals were isolated by detecting their echolocation clicks using an array of bottom‐mounted hydrophones. Two data sets were evaluated consisting of 115 and 240 h of acoustic data in May 2007 and 2008, respectively. Vocal activity was observed to decline during active sonar exercises and increase upon cessation of sonar transmissions in both data sets. Vocal activity did not recover to preexposure levels in the postexposure time period in 2007 nor in the initial postexposure period in the 2008 data set. Clicks detected during sonar operations were generally found to be on the periphery of the hydrophone field and vocal durations declined for those groups that remained on the range in that time period. Receive levels were calculated for several vocal groups of whales and indicated that animals continued to forage when exposed to sonar at levels as high as 157 dB re: μPa.

There is increasing concern about the potential effects of noise pollution on marine life in the world’s oceans. For marine mammals, anthropogenic sounds may cause behavioral disruption, and this can be quantified using a risk function that relates sound exposure to a measured behavioral response. Beaked whales are a taxon of deep diving whales that may be particularly susceptible to naval sonar as the species has been associated with sonar-related mass stranding events. Here we derive the first empirical risk function for Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) by combining in situ data from passive acoustic monitoring of animal vocalizations and navy sonar operations with precise ship tracks and sound field modeling. The hydrophone array at the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center, Bahamas, was used to locate vocalizing groups of Blainville’s beaked whales and identify sonar transmissions before, during, and after Mid-Frequency Active (MFA) sonar operations. Sonar transmission times and source levels were combined with ship tracks using a sound propagation model to estimate the received level (RL) at each hydrophone. A generalized additive model was fitted to data to model the presence or absence of the start of foraging dives in 30-minute periods as a function of the corresponding sonar RL at the hydrophone closest to the center of each group. This model was then used to construct a risk function that can be used to estimate the probability of a behavioral change (cessation of foraging) the individual members of a Blainville’s beaked whale population might experience as a function of sonar RL. The function predicts a 0.5 probability of disturbance at a RL of 150dBrms re µPa (CI: 144 to 155) This is 15dB lower than the level used historically by the US Navy in their risk assessments but 10 dB higher than the current 140 dB step-function.

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