About.Com — the Web site about virtually everything — has restarted the “Military Photo of the Week” feature.

The idea is that readers submit funny captions for standard Department of Defense pictures, often involving some field activity captured by a military photographer.

Rod Powers, a retired Air Force first sergeant who guides military discussions on the Web site, includes the weekly photo on his blog and invites readers to submit comments. In the previous format, someone judged the top three captions of the week, which I thought worked better, but I understand that it was more time consuming.

About.Com has kept up the old archive of military photos and captions, many of which are quite amusing. Here’s a sample of water-related photos from the archive with the top-rated captions. You may click on the CAPTION # to see some of the other captions submitted.

U.S. Navy photo

CAPTION 23

“Mom said to come in NOW!” (David)

“Uh sir…enemy bombers in range!!” (Weasel)

“Oh $#!^, we hooked you up backwards on the CAT. Do some of that fancy pilot stuff and see if you can get pointed in the right direction.” (PaulFalk)

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Official DOD photo

CAPTION 62

The men knew that the Admiral was getting lazy when he conducted the first drive by open ranks inspection. (Jonathan Elder R)

“Hiding behind our backs? What? No! We’re not hiding anything behind our backs.” (Xie)

Damn Naval drag races… (Sgt. Yell2Much)

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Official DOD photo

CAPTION 36

The Environmentalists received this picture as an explanation for why so many ships were hitting whales. (XGEP)

“Okay Sir, do you see this little sinking boat? Yeah, that’s you.” (Coelho)

“Just 15 more years in the NFL and I could have bought one of these…15 more years….” (Devil Dogg)

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Official DOD photo

CAPTION 12

“Obi Wan? I haven’t heard that name in years.” (Veuxdeux)

“Hey soldier, Pull my thumb.” (PaulFalk)

Achmed’s “Popeye” impression was the last straw. The Navy silenced him with the 16 inch guns. (P3C-AT)

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Barnacles and other organisms that attach themselves to ships’ hulls are the focus of an enormous amount of attention, as experts try to find nontoxic methods of keeping hulls clean.

Historically, bottom paints have included compounds that deter organisms with their toxic effects. To be successful, such antifouling paints must slough off at a sufficient rate. That places these toxic compounds into the water, where they can build up in enclosed bays.

When and where such compounds actually reach toxic levels in the environment is a complex problem, involving the toxicity of the compound, the amount that gets released within an enclosed inlet and the level of mixing that occurs in the waters.

Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton is struggling with the issue of copper, a primary component in antifouling paints now that tributyltin has been banned. TBT builds up in marine life and is quite toxic to clams and oysters.

The Navy recently reached an agreement with the Department of Ecology to reduce the amount of copper in its stormwater discharges. Most of the copper comes from releases during sandblasting and painting activities. The Navy has tightened up its processes. (See Kitsap Sun, May 29.)

The Navy is considering treating such stormwater before release, and negotiations are under way for a new federal discharge permit. I’ll be writing more about this issue in the coming weeks.

Behind the scenes, the Navy is spending an enormous amount of money to develop new materials and processes to prevent growth on the hulls of ships. The reasons are obvious. Fouling of ships hulls can reduce vessel speed by up to 10 percent, requiring a 40 percent increase in fuel consumption to counter the extra drag. That’s amounts to roughly $1 billion a year the Navy has to spend, according to the Navy’s own figures. (See story on the Web page of the Office of Naval Research.)

It’s hard to tell whether there are any absolute breakthroughs, but some interesting findings are coming out of studies into why barnacles attach to some marine animals, such as gray whales, but not to sharks. Anthony Brennan at the University of Florida is looking at the unique surface pattern found on sharkskin and trying to mimic that for a ship’s hull. The best explanation of the concept can be seen in a video produced by the Office of Naval Research (bottom of page).

That report also mentions work by Shaoyi Jiang at the University of Washington, who is working on anti-fouling coatings that incorporate mixed-charge compounds, which alternate between positive and negative charges and seem to keep organisms from binding.

For recreational boaters, the University of California Sea Grant Extension Program has been studying alternatives in San Diego Harbor and Newport Bay with the idea that the ideas could be applied elsewhere. One study looked at silicone- and epoxy-based coatings.

For more details, check out “Demonstrating a Solution to Copper Boat Bottom Paint Pollution!” (PDF 28 kb).

When you think about it, the need for a low-cost product that will keep hulls clean is obvious, but I’m frankly amazed at how many ideas are floating around, as can be demonstrated by plugging the words “antifouling” and “hull” into a search engine.

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Fred Hill Materials has sold its gravel-mining operation known as the Shine Pit, yet the company plans to move full speed ahead on the controversial pit-to-pier project. See today’s story in the Kitsap Sun.

I’ve been hearing rumors for well over a year that the company was struggling financially, yet I was never able to confirm anything.

With this sale, the company acknowledges that it has been having financial troubles, at least with respect to the construction downturn in the current economy.

Opponents may hope that this new development will mean the end of the pit-to-pier proposal, which includes a four-mile conveyor belt and a 1,000-foot-long pier designed to move gravel by barge and ship throughout the Puget Sound region and along the West Coast. Environmental groups argue that the project could injure Hood Canal, threaten smooth operations at the Hood Canal bridge and interfere with Navy operations.

Company officials insist that the benefits of the project far outweigh the potential problems. They say the sale of the Shine Pit will mean an infusion of money to continue environmental studies and permitting activities on the pit-to-pier project.

It appears the company is staking a good deal of its future on this major project, despite a well-organized opposition.

Today’s story about the sale of the gravel pit was posted on the Sun’s Web site yesterday afternoon. I expected to see a bunch of comments by now, but there has been only one. The writer, didisaythat, makes an interesting point:

I can’t believe that no one’s commented on this story yet. Poor Fred has got to be rolling in his grave about now. How can they have a pit-to-pier project anymore when they just sold their pit ????? Lets see how long they can keep the concrete end up and running before they sell that too…. This story just doesn’t add up.

For permitting details, see Jefferson County’s project site.
For opposing arguments, see Hood Canal Coalition.

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I’m beginning to get confused about these high-adventure reality TV shows filmed on the high seas, as television producers escalate the clash of man against the elements.

First, we had “Deadliest Catch,” in which we watched a ship’s crew riding giant waves and trying to stay alive while catching elusive crabs.

Then came “Whale Wars” in which we watched a ship’s crew riding giant waves and trying to stay alive while hunting another ship’s crew riding giant waves and trying to stay alive while hunting elusive minke whales.
The twist: Our heroes sail aboard a dark and brooding vessel that projects the image of a pirate ship and flies a flag that looks remarkably like a traditional skull-and-crossbones.

Now comes a new show called “Pirate Hunters: USN.” If I get the gist of it, we will watch a ship’s crew riding giant waves and trying to stay alive while hunting another ship’s crew riding giant waves and trying to stay alive while hunting another ship’s crew riding giant waves and trying to stay alive while carrying cargo along the African Coast.
The ultimate twist: Our heroes sail with the most supreme naval force on Earth while flying the valiant flag of red, white and blue.

How can this show possibly go wrong?

OK, on a more serious track, let me update these three real reality shows for you.

Photo from the movie “The Perfect Storm”

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Next week’s Frontline program on PBS allows viewers to race along with killer whales in the San Juan Islands, explore Seattle’s Elliott Bay with scuba divers and watch crab fishermen work their pots on Chesapeake Bay.

Hedrick Smith // PBS photo

Along the way, reporter Hedrick Smith peers into more stormwater outfalls than I could count, as he goes about asking scientists, politicians and environmental activists why Puget Sound and Chesapeake Bay are dying.

The two-hour documentary, titled “Poisoned Waters” (Tuesday, 9 p.m., KCTS) features stunning visuals that remind us why we love our waterways. More importantly, the program confronts questions about why we allowed these estuaries to be used as a toilet, unraveling the food web and even threatening our revered orcas with extinction.

When I talked to Hedrick Smith this afternoon, he said this project was unlike any he had done before.

“As a reporter, I loved it,” he told me. “I’m an outdoor kind of person. I have sailed both bodies of water. I was passionate about the outdoors, but I didn’t realize how bad the situation was. This has been an enormous education for me.”

Smith worked for the New York Times for 26 years, serving as a national and foreign correspondent. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971 as part of the team that broke the Pentagon Papers, revealing government lies about the Vietnam War. He won the prize again in 1974 for his coverage of Russia and Eastern Europe.

Smith has authored several best-selling books and produced 20 award-winning programs for PBS.

With a house on Orcas Island, he said he has visited Kitsap County numerous times, attending festivals and such.

The secret to good journalism, he told me, is to tell fascinating stories that use captivating pictures while explaining the “nitty gritty” of government policy and regulation.

“We want the topics to be interesting and entertaining and educational for people while pushing the frontier of their knowledge,” he said.

(more…)

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Sea trials this week for the newly repaired submarine USS San Francisco in the Strait of Juan de Fuca once again raises the question of whether the Navy can lessen its harm to marine life while adequately training for warfare.

USS San Francisco after underwater collision, Guam, Jan. 8, 2005. U.S. Navy photo

Check out my story in today’s Kitsap Sun, where I recount some of the history of this debate, which isn’t about to end soon.

We’ve covered this question many times in Water Ways. (Just put “sonar” into the search engine of this blog to go back more than a year.) The Navy won the first round in the legal theater when the U.S. Supreme Court (PDF 308 kb) reversed lower federal courts and decided that it would not second-guess the Navy until more studies are done.

I know there are many people who believe it’s an open-and-shut case, that the debate should be over, that the Navy’s mission is too important to allow interference by environmentalists, lawyers, courts or politicians.
I believe, however, that the debate is worthwhile, provided we bring knowledge to the table, though it may be uncomfortable at times.

As a result of the Shoup incident in 2003, the Navy stopped using sonar in Puget Sound except on rare occasions, such as this week. It appears the move was good for whales and dolphins, and I have not heard of any profound regrets from the Navy.

The Navy has undertaken a great deal of research about the impacts of whales on sea life, as it should, and Navy commanders have committed to making the information public. From that, scientists can debate what is and is not safe. In the process, we all can learn.

OK, there are also debates within the debate — such as whether the studies are independent enough of Navy influence — but that’s another question.

While the public does not need to know all about Navy tactics and capabilities, I believe everyone is served by discussions that can lead to either 1) better protections for the environment, or 2) knowing what environmental sacrifices we are making to protect our country.

Maybe it’s my training and experience as a reporter, but I don’t believe any one person in this debate is totally right. I believe, however, that even folks with an extreme point of view can learn from this debate and contribute something to the discussion.
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In closing, I’d like to respond to those who have criticized my stories for not containing enough “facts” or else brushing lightly over the details.

In the first case, I have a relatively good relationship with Navy officials, but (as anyone involved with the Navy knows), the Navy is very cautious about the information it releases, so often my stories are not as complete as I would like. If something is speculation or opinion, I try to label it as such.

The issue of details is often a judgment call. Looking back on my early career, I often filled my stories with details that left the average reader behind while satisfying a limited number of experts. Now, I tend to go the other way, trying to put things in context and leaving out a lot of details. Over the past year and a half, I have been fortunate to write this blog, Watching Our Water Ways, where I can post links to documents and Web sites for those who like to dig deeper. I hope that satisfies more people in the long run.

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Concerns about the Navy’s use of sonar Tuesday night in the Strait of Juan de Fuca are reverberating among environmental groups, whale advocates and researchers.

USS San Francisco leaves Bremerton Tuesday // Kitsap Sun photo

Many are wondering whether killer whales and other marine mammals may have been injured by the intense sounds — including human voices —emanating from the recently repaired fast-attack submarine USS San Francisco.

From what I gather, there is talk about calling for an official investigation into the Navy’s activity, perhaps with input the National Marine Fisheries Service. More discussion is expected tonight at a public forum called by whale advocates concerned about an expansion of Navy training activities. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. at Port Townsend Community Center, 620 Tyler St.

Meanwhile, Val Veirs, professor emeritus of physics at Colorado College, has calculated that the highest levels of sound received at Lime Kiln Lighthouse on San Juan Island was about 140 decibels, according to a press release issued this afternoon by The Whale Museum. Veirs is president of the board for The Whale Museum.

“The received levels of the signals at Lime Kiln Lighthouse were about the most intense sounds that the hydrophones there have recorded in the past several years of continuous operation,” Veirs said a written statement.

The sonar pings were about as intense as those recorded in May 2003, when the Navy’s guided missile destroyer USS Shoup moved through Haro Strait, Veirs said.

Biologists observing killer whales at that time believe that the animals responded to the sound by moving away at a rapid pace. As a result of that incident, the Navy changed its protocols on the use of sonar.

I have requested additional information from the Navy about operations by the USS San Francisco, including general mitigation measures that the Navy takes when using sonar around marine mammals. Navy officials have indicated that the crew took the normal precautions to protect marine mammals.

For those still wondering about the strange human voice emanating through the water, you can start finding answers with this brief entry in Wikipedia:

The underwater telephone also known as UQC or Gertrude was developed by the U.S. Navy after World War II, the UQC underwater telephone is used on all manned submersibles in operation. Voices communicated through the UQC are heterodyned to a high pitch for acoustic transmission through water.

Based upon the Navy’s acknowledgment that crews were operating sonar in the Strait of Juan de Fuca but not Haro Strait, Veirs made additional calculations of the sound energy that must have emanated from the sub.

“We estimate that the distance between our hydrophone at Lime Kiln Lighthouse and the submarine was in the neighborhood of 10 nautical miles,” Veirs said. “For our hydrophones to pick up the strong signals that they did, the submarine was emitting sound with source level in the range of 174 to 226 dB re 1 microPa@1m.”

I’ll look to others to report on definitive studies and tell me whether these sound levels can cause injury under the circumstances we find in Puget Sound. But I seem to recall the levels reported by Veirs are worthy of concern. See “NOAA Technical Memorandum: Sound Exposure and Southern Resident Killer Whales (PDF 884 kb).”

While The Whale Museum has received no reports of stranded or injured marine mammals, the organization wants the public to be on alert and contact the San Juan County Marine Mammal Stranding Network, (800) 562-8832, if unusual behavior is seen.

Howard Garrett of Orca Network offered this response to a comment related to the previous entry about the sonar incident.

“The fact the sonar was taking place in the Strait of Juan de Fuca rather than Haro Strait is even more disturbing because 1) that is where the reports of Transients, a minke, & 2 gray whales were; & 2) if the sonar was happening in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, & it was being picked up so loudly at Lime Kiln & NW San Juan Island, then it must have been much louder closer to the source in the Strait…”

Obviously, this discussion will continue.

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UPDATE: Wednesday 8:15 p.m.

Navy spokeswoman Sheila Murray received confirmation this evening that the fast-attack submarine USS San Francisco, accompanied by a surface ship, was operating its sonar last night as it passed through the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The sub was conducting “required training dives” and did not enter Haro Strait, she said. The Navy undertakes precautions to protect marine mammals, she noted.

The voices heard on the hydrophones were from an underwater communication system between the ship and the submarine, she explained.

I have requested additional details, including the precise precautions that Navy personnel took to protect transient killer whales that may have been in the area.
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Original post:
I have asked a Navy public affairs officer to help me track down an unusual incident involving a human voice heard underwater last night in Haro Strait near the San Juan Islands.

Val Veirs, who operates hydrophones in the San Juan Islands, picked up odd sounds that he and his computerized monitoring system have never heard in at least seven years of operation.

As best as anyone can tell, the sounds consist of a human voice interspersed with loud sonar pings. Click here for one of many sound files that Val saved.

“I have never heard anything like this before,” Val told me this morning. “I have computer codes that try to reject the usual things. The Shoup came out of that, and these programs are getting better at discriminating unusual sounds. They were telling us last night that this was something very different.”

Val, currently president of the board for The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, was the person who added scientific credibility to the loud pinging caused by the Navy destroyer USS Shoup as it passed through Haro Strait in 2002. Biologists on the water at the time reported that killer whales seemed to be fleeing from the sound. Since then, Navy ships are required to receive permission from fleet commanders before operating sonar in Puget Sound.

If anyone has specific or general information about the kind of sounds heard last night, please comment on this blog or send me an e-mail, cdunagan@kitsapsun.com.

During last night’s incident, Val said he went outside, where he has a clear view through Haro Strait. He says he is more than 90 percent sure that no surface ships were operating in the area.

“The sounds were filling the deep waters of Haro Strait, from one end to the other — and there was no visible source,” he told me.

Unlike the Shoup, which moved on through the Strait, Val said he could hear the strange sounds on two distant hydrophones, and they seemed to be moving back and forth in the channel.

Meanwhile, Jeanne Hyde of Friday Harbor, a frequent listener to the online Salish Sea Hydrophone Network said she heard the sounds and began making phone calls.

“I contacted the Bellingham Coast Guard Station and they called back and said it was the Navy, and it was a submarine,” Hyde said in an e-mail. “This was sonar all night, up until the last I was listening until 4:30 this morning.”

One of the concerns among whale observers is that transient orcas were seen in the area two days ago yesterday afternoon. Of course, the Navy is supposed to follow procedures to make sure marine mammals are not within a range where sonar could harm them.

Reports from Scott Veirs, Val’s son, and Jeanne Hyde, can be read on their respective blogs.

Fred Felleman, Northwest consultant for Friends of the Earth, points out that this unusual incident comes in the midst of the Navy’s effort to expand its training operations off the Washington Coast. See the Navy’s Web site for details.

“If the Navy wants to maintain their operations here, let alone expand them, then they should contribute information,” Felleman said.

Felleman has made the point many times that the Navy surely has a wealth of information that could add to the science about marine mammals, but the Navy keeps its information under wraps in the name of national security.

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I’ve always admired reporters who cover the military, and I guess I’ll include the Coast Guard in the future. These reporters must be among the most patient people in the world.

I’ve been trying to get some information from the Coast Guard, both at the national and the regional level. If I ever get the information I seek, I’m not even sure I’ll have a story. But I’ve been given no reason why I should wait, except that an investigation near Port Townsend involves a Coast Guard ship. Frankly, I think I’d get the information if the ship belonged to a private company.

Since I’ve exhausted all my sources, I’ll tell you what I think I know.

First, the Coast Guard has acknowledged in a press release that the icebreaker Polar Sea was conducting training exercises at Point Wilson on March 9. At 5:21 p.m., a small boat containing six crewmen fell from the ship. Four climbed up a Jacob’s ladder to the Polar Sea, and two were taken aboard a small boat from the CG cutter Midget, which was operating nearby.

One might think that this was the end of the story, but I heard from a reliable source that the Polar Sea had dropped anchor during the incident in an area where six underwater telecommunications cables were located. They were on the bottom where the water was about 260 feet deep. When the ship was ready to proceed, it had trouble lifting its anchor.

The next week, the Coast Guard posted a “notice to mariners” indicating that an unusual vessel would be operating in that area. It was the Global Sentinel, a ship that installs and repairs underwater cables.

Coast Guard officials would not tell me whether the Polar Sea had snagged the cable, but they did say an incident involving the ship was under investigation. Of course, we already knew about the investigation involving the man-overboard accident, but officials also confirmed that questions were being asked about an underwater cable. Still, it was hard to understand exactly what was being investigated, and I was given no further details.

I contacted the company that owns the cable ship Global Sentinental. Officials said they could not tell me about their operations nor say who had hired them.

I then checked with Global Crossing, an international telecom company that uses the cables that cross Puget Sound. A company spokesman said the company’s system had sustained no disruptions.

Further inquiries to the Coast Guard got me nowhere, except for a promise that I would be informed as soon as the investigation was complete.

Reporters who cover the military often are forced to wait for official information, but I feel compelled to write down what I know right now, for fear that I might forget it and have to start over.

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Former Washington governor Gary Locke was nominated this morning to be President Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, a department that oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies integral to environmental issues in the Northwest.

Gary Locke accepts nomination to be Commerce secretary.
White House photo by Pete Souza

“Gary knows the American Dream. He’s lived it. And that’s why he shares my commitment to do whatever it takes to keep it alive in our time,” Obama said in announcing the nomination. See also a transcript of Obama’s and Locke’s remarks.

I was preparing to write something about Locke’s environmental history in Washington state, then I saw a piece that Howard Garrett of Orca Network had written. So I’ve yielded this space to him, and I would welcome further comments from anyone:

Gov. Locke has been a reliable friend of the Southern Resident orcas.

You may recall that on May 5, 2003, the USS Shoup was training with mid-frequency active sonars in Haro Strait where 23 members of J pod were foraging. The whales were videotaped as they bunched up near the shore and seemed very agitated, and at least 7 porpoises washed up dead days later. In June, 2003 Gov. Locke wrote a letter to the acting secretary of the Navy requesting a report on the incident and an explanation of the mitigation measures to prevent it from happening again. He wrote: “The actual or potential impact of sonar use on Puget Sound marine mammals is a concern.”

Ten years ago Gov. Locke said about our endangered Chinook, “Extinction is not an option.”

As Secretary of Commerce, Locke will preside over the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service (responsible for salmon and orca recovery) and will have a key role in determining how to best restore salmon runs in the Salish Sea and from the Columbia River to the Sacramento. The Obama team has declared that respect for science is back, and with Locke at Commerce and OSU marine biologist Jane Lubchenko as the new head of NOAA, there is every reason to expect that sound science will guide restoration efforts, at last.

Also, in December 2002, Governor Locke provided money from his own discretionary funds to pay for the rescue tug at Neah Bay to prevent oil spills, during the state’s $2-billion shortfall.

Gov. Locke is also among the political figures who have supported the goals of the Lolita Come Home campaign to retire the Southern resident orca captured in 1970 who remains on display in a Miami marine park. See Orca Network’s Captivity page.

If Gov. Locke is nominated and confirmed as Secretary of Commerce, he will be in a position to act on these principles immediately in the determination of the impacts of the proposed expansion of the Navy’s Northwest Training Range to include most of the waters along the coast from Neah Bay, WA, to Eureka, CA. If approved, multiple ships, subs and aircraft will be practicing with a wide range of sonars including explosive active sonars, along with demolition charges, torpedoes and a variety of anti-submarine munitions. See Orca Network’s page about the training range.

The comment period has been extended to March 11, and NOAA is required to review the proposal and comment on the potential impacts to marine mammals (including endangered Southern Resident orcas) and birds, fish (especially listed chinook salmon) and turtles along the coastline. The Navy EIS says no marine mammal mortalities are anticipated due to mitigations, such as placing observers on ships and listening for whale calls amid the maneuvering ships, sonars and explosions. As Secretary of Commerce, Locke (or Lubchenko) will review the EIS and at the very least, comment on how realistic that prediction of no mortalities really is. It’s unclear whether NOAA can hold up the training range expansion.

Locke can also be a valuable voice in Secretary of State Clinton’s diplomatic initiatives to tone down international tensions following 8 years of Bush/Cheney hostility, which degraded communications and contributed to the perceived need to train for an attack by enemy submarines.

Howard Garrett
Orca Network
Greenbank WA
360-678-3451

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