Along with my co-authors, I'm proud to announce the publication of our recent study entitled: Co-occurrence of beaked whale strandings and naval sonar in the Mariana Islands,Western Pacific
The open-access article appears in the journal Proceedings B of the Royal Society and is available at the following link: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/lookup/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.0070 *Abstract* Mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS), used for antisubmarine warfare (ASW), has been associated with multiple beaked whale (BW) mass stranding events. Multinational naval ASW exercises have used MFAS offshore of the Mariana Archipelago semi-annually since 2006. We report BW and MFAS acoustic activity near the islands of Saipan and Tinian from March 2010 to November 2014. Signals from Cuvier’s (Ziphius cavirostris) and Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris), and a third unidentified BW species, were detected throughout the recording period. Both recorders documented MFAS on 21 August 2011 before two Cuvier’s beaked whales stranded on 22–23 August 2011. We compared the history of known naval operations and BW strandings from the Mariana Archipelago to consider potential threats to BW populations. Eight BW stranding events between June 2006 and January 2019 each included one to three animals. Half of these strandings occurred during or within 6 days after naval activities, and this co-occurrence is highly significant. We highlight strandings of individual BWs can be associated with ASW, and emphasize the value of ongoing passive acoustic monitoring, especially for beaked whales that are difficult to visually detect at sea. We strongly recommend more visual monitoring efforts, at sea and along coastlines, for stranded cetaceans before, during and after naval exercises. *Note Added In Proof:* After the manuscript was accepted for publication additional information was made available to the authors by the US Navy. Although the January 2019 beaked whale stranding occurred within the publicly reported dates for Exercise Sea Dragon (14–26 January 2019), the US Navy confirmed that there was no sonar usage associated with this training exercise, or elsewhere within the Mariana Islands Training and Testing area in the 6 days prior to the stranding. If this event is removed from the statistical analysis, there is a 1% probability (see electronic supplementary material, table S2) that three of eight beaked whale strandings occurred within 6 days after MFAS operations by chance. As discussed within the manuscript, the statistical analysis was limited to assessing the overlap between beaked whale strandings and known MFAS events (either via public reporting or through detection on passive acoustic devices—see figure 3). The Navy is working with NOAA to make the broader dataset, which is classified, available for further statistical analysis. *Also of interest*: An additional beaked whale near stranding occurred on the island of Rota in the Mariana Archipelago on November 21, 2019, which is not included in this study. In the waters around Guam, a major multinational naval ASW operation (Vanguard 2) began on Nov 20, 2019.
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