Admiral Farragut's torpedoes and the Hawai'i Superferry

There is a point at which a commander throws caution to the winds and orders, in the words of Admiral Farragut, “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.”

It worked for David Farragut in the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. He defeated the Confederate fleet—largely because most of the tethered mines, then called torpedoes, were duds. They bounced off the ships' hulls and didn't explode.

(Image: The U.S. Postal Service's 1903 Farragut stamp, a $1 issue.)

Damning the torpedoes is always risky. It doesn't always work. Indeed, it seldom does. Take the Hawai'i Superferry (I know, you're tired of the Superferry).

Early on, when there was still plenty of time to perform a proper environmental study without holding up the ferry at all, someone made that call.

To paraphrase the classic line from “The Treasure of Sierra Madre:” “We don't have no EIS. We don't need no EIS. I don't have to show you any stinkin' EIS.”

Never mind that the Councils of three of the four counties, representing 100 percent of the ferry's destinations from Honolulu, asked for environmental studies.

Today's it's popular to blame the “environmentalists” for the Superferry's failure. But County Councils are hardly hotbeds of environmental furor. They mostly get blamed for representing the interests of power, not the radical vegan community.

Someone, at some point, made the Farragut call, although we don't know whether it was in Governor Linda Lingle's office, Superferry president John Garibaldi's office, a Superferry lawyer's or state Attorney General's office, a public relations consultant's office or perhaps a state Department of Transportation office.

The call was wrong. The Hawai'i Supreme Court said so, although the court's position in this is widely misunderstood. It required the Department of Transportation conduct an EIS—not that the Superferry prepare one.

In late August, 2007, a 15-year-old kid on a surfboard was among four dozen swimming and paddling protesters in Nawiliwili Harbor, preventing the Superferry's entrance. When Coast Guard officers used boat hooks to try to snag him and arrest him, he insisted they arrest the ferry captain as the real lawbreaker.

Technically, the Kauai kid on the surboard was wrong. Arguably, he should have been protesting at the state Department of Transportation office—or at the office of the person who made the Farragut call, if anybody could figure out who that was.

And technically, the Superferry was right as it sailed into the minefield. But clearly, the Farragut call in this case was catastrophic.

For Farragut, the mines didn't go off. For the Hawai'i Superferry, they did.

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate

Tata Motors' Nano, the $2,000 car debuts

India's Tata Motors is making good on its promise to sell a $2,000 to $2,500 car, the Nano.

Depending on whom you talk to, this is really great news or an environmental catastrophe.

(Images: A hot little red Nano. And a yellow Nano interior. Credit: Tata Motors.)

For folks in Hawai'i, it's interesting news, but hardly important—it will be a long time before a Nano is available here, it will need to have a bunch of improved features to meet U.S. safety standards, and it will certainly cost a lot more.

But what it is, is interesting.

There are three models. It's a little over nine feet long, and weighs 1,320 pounds.

By comparison, a Honda Civic is more than 14 feet long and weighs 2,600 or so pounds.

The Nano seats four and has a two-cylinder engine. The gas tank holds 15 liters of fuel, about four gallons. The Nano comes with seat belts, but not air bags.

It has been touted as Tata's “city car,” an inexpensive vehicle to get Indian families off motorbikes.

Top speed is 65 miles an hour. Fuel economy is 55 miles to the gallon.

The Civic gets 29 to 34 miles to the gallon. It has air bags, air conditioning and a pile of other features not found in the ultra-budget Nano.

For folks on a tight, tight budget who absolutely need a car, the Nano may be a godsend.

Environmental groups say that putting millions of cars in the hands of folks who would otherwise not be driving cars at all, will create traffic, fuel, environmental and other issues that could cause untold problems.

Tata will begin taking orders next month and says it will deliver the first Nanos in July.

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate

New information further tangles Hanalei whale stranding

The cause of a 2004 stranding event involving melon-headed whales at Hanalei Bay gets more interesting as time passes.

And so does the role of the moon.

(Image: Melon-headed whales circling in tight formation in Hanalei Bay July 3, 2004. Credit: NOAA.)

A new scientific paper published in February concludes that military mid-frequency played a major role, and that there's no consistent evidence that the phase of the moon did. The Hanalei stranding and a simultaneous stranding in Rota, the Mariana Islands, happened at the full moon.

But just when you start leaning hard in one direction, the foundation of your assumptions gets shaky. To muddy the water, of two Philippines strandings of melon-headed whales this year—after the new paper was published—one of those, too, happened at the full moon.

More precisely, the day after the night of the full moon, same as with Hanalei and with Rota.

Science ever requires reconsidering your conclusions based on new data.

This gets complicated. Stick with us.

In the continuing controversy over the Navy's use of sonar, and the larger role of noise in the marine environment, the prime bit of Hawai'i evidence is the apparent stranding incident in Hanalei Bay on a day in 2004 on which the Navy was using mid-frequency sonar.

A new paper compares that incident with other stranding and near stranding incidents involving the same species, the melon-headed whale. None of the other cases is known to involve sonar activity.

The paper, “Behavior of melon-headed whales, Pepnoncephala electra, near oceanic islands,” in the journal “Marine Mammal Science,” was written by Robert L. Brownell Jr of NOAA 's Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Katherine Ralls of the Smithsonian Institution's National Zoological Park, Simone Baumann-Pickering of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Michael Poole of the Marine Mammal Research Program in Moorea, French Polynesia.

They compared the Hanalei incident with a stranding that took place at precisely the same time in Sasanhaya Bay, Rota, near Guam. They also considered melon-headed whale behavior at different times at Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, and at Palmyra, the Line Islands atoll where the Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hokule'a is scheduled to arrive today.

Researchers in a previous paper in 2006 concluded that sonar was a more than possible cause of the Hanalei stranding: “While causation of this stranding event may never be unequivocally determined, we consider the active sonar transmissions of July 2-3, 2004, a plausible, if not likely, contributing factor in what may have been a confluence of events.”

Others, notably Hawai'i researchers Joe Mobley and Paul Nachtigall, along with Navy researchers David Fromm and Stephen Martin, in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, have suggested that lunar cycles or other factors could be associated with the unusual simultaneous Hanalei and Rota strandings.

In the Hanalei case, nearly 200 melon-headed whales entered the north-facing bay about 7 a.m. July 3. The animals remained in the bay, alternately swimming in small groups and milling in one group. Brownell's team called it “prestranding behavior.”

Navy sonar activity was being conducted offshore in conjunction with RIMPAC exercises. A Japanese ship nearly 30 miles away used sonar to the northwest of Kaua'i about 15 minutes before the whales entered the bay. The National Marine Fisheries Service, informed of the whale event during the day, asked the Navy to halt sonar use, which it did about 5 p.m.

The next morning, residents using canoes escorted the whales out of the bay. A newborn whale calf that washed ashore dead. “It must have been separated from its mother at some point during the event and died from dehydration,” the Brownell paper says.

Melon-headed whale strandings are far from unknown, and they have been reported occurring in the Pacific for as long as people have been watching them. In an 1841 case in Hilo, native Hawaiians in canoes are reported to have forced a stranding by driving nearshore melon-headed whales to the beach.

In the Rota case, which was going on at the same time as the Hanalei event, Brownell and his team said the whale behavior did not look like a stranding event; rather, the whales congregated without apparent panic in the bay, and later left.

But Mobley and his team argued that you couldn't ignore two near-shore appearances of large numbers of the same kind of whale, at the same time, nearly 4,000 miles apart.

“Beyond the extraordinary coincidence of these two events, at a minimum, the Rota event indicates that aggregations of this type may have natural causes totally independent of sonar activity,” wrote Mobley and his team.

In the July 2005 Nuku Hiva case, melon-headed whales congregated in a bay, and while they were there, three killer whales stranded—but the melon-headed whales did not.

“...both MHWs and killer whales behaved as if they were fleeing from some strong aversive stimulus. Perhaps this was the case but we have been unable to identify a likely candidate for such a stimulus, so the cause of the Nuku Hiva MHW event remains unknown,” Brownell and co-authors write.

The Palmyra stranding occurred in 1959, and melon-headed whales are frequently observed near shore at Palmyra.

Brownell's group said they compared the stranding dates with moon phase data, and found no correllation. But Brownell specifically excludes Rota from his lunar phase study, saying it wasn't a proper stranding.

The Navy argues that none of the events was a proper stranding, since aside from the dead calf, which washed ashore at a different Kaua'i beach near Hanalei, none of the melon-headed whales actually swam up onto the beach.

“In reality, none of the events are actually "strandings" since in none of the events did melon-headed whales actually strand,” said Mark Matsunaga, environmental public affairs officer for the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Browning calls the Hanalei incident a stranding and Rota not a stranding, largely based on reports of how the whales behaved—that they cruised apparently normally at Rota and appeared anxious at Hanalei.

But the whole argument about melon-headed whales and full moons took a new turn with a February melon-headed whale stranding in the Philippines also happened the day after the full moon, the same as the Hanalei and Rota events.

On Feb. 10, the day after the full moon, local fishermen helped guide several hundred melon-headed whales back to deep water in Bataan Province of the Philippines.

A second apparent stranding in the Philippines occurred at the half moon, a week before the next full moon, about March 4.

In the latest paper, Brownell says Hanalei's incident was different from all the others. If anything, compared to their 2006 conclusion, the researchers even more securely pin the blame on the Navy.

“Our review of (melon-headed whale) behavior strengthens the case that (mid-frequency sonar) use played a major role in the near MS in Hanalei Bay,” they write.

The Navy itself doesn't deny some role for sonar in the Hanalei incident, but argues for scientific caution.

“Much remains to be learned about cetaceans, including melon-headed whales,” Matsunaga said.

“Brownell's study is certainly not the final word on melon-headed whale aggregations. Even if one accepts that all scientific studies are subjective and selective by nature, we believe Brownell has overstepped."

He notes that the Mobley team in 2006 “indicated mass strandings are more common during the full moon and third quarter.

“That is not to say that lunar influences cause strandings, but they may result in animals being closer to shore in some environments and thus, serve as a contributing factor. Marine mammals strand for a variety of reasons, some of which are still unknown,” Matsunaga said.

One issue is whether birthing has anything to do with the full moon strandings. The baby whale found dead near Hanalei was just a week old. Two of four dead whales found near one of the February Philippine strandings were females, one of which was pregnant and one of which had just given birth.

Here is a line from the Convention on Migratory Species:

“Mass strandings of melon-headed whales have been reported from Moreton Island and Crowdy Heads, Australia, Malekoula Island, Vanuatu, the Seychelles, Aoshima, Japan, Piracanga Beach, Brazil, the Kwajalein Atoll, and Tambor, Costa Rica. It has been noted that in several mass strandings of this species, the ratio of females to males was about 2:1. This may reflect behavioural segregation.”

That raises the whole issue of human interference. If melon-headed whales have a history of entering bays and nearshore waters en masse, they also have a history of getting themselves out of those bays without help.

Except for handful of dead animals found on the beach the whales in most of these incidents did not physically strand themselves--did not run themselves up on the beach a la Whalerider.

What's the appropriate human response in this situation--they appear to be in distress, or at least behaving unusually, but do not appear to be in immediate danger?

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate

A photo of Phyllostegia hispida, Hawai'i's latest endangered species

For those on the email list, please note that we now have a photo of the Moloka'i mint, Phyllostegia hispida, which was the subject of yesterday's Raising Islands post. It's now in the original story, but here, too. Reader Bill Garnett of Wiliwili Hawaiian Plants, in Kalae, Moloka'i, Hawaii, took the picture and kindly provided the shot.

A Moloka'i mint, perhaps saved by the endangered species process

The listing process for endangered species, is just paperwork—it has no real effect, right?

Wrong, in the case of the very latest member of the federal endangered species list.

There, the attention has perhaps already saved the plant from extinction.

The species is a little Moloka'i mint called Phyllostegia hispida. It has never been common, and has no known common name.

(Image: The mint in flower, with unidentified butterfly. Credit: Bill Garnett. Wiliwili Hawaiian Plants, Moloka'i, Hawaii.)

It was officially added to the U.S. list of endangered species today, March 17, 2009.

But it might not have made it this far if the attention of being a candidate endangered species hadn't launched an effort to protect it.

For most of the 1900s, only 10 individuals were known, all from the forested mountains of east Moloka'i, but they all died out. Scientists figured P. hispida was a goner.

This little plant isn't the kind of mint you put in a julep, and it doesn't have a minty smell, but it's a relative of the fragrant mints. It's a vine with lots of branches—kind of sprawling and messy. It has floppy, rough-haired leaves and clusters of white flowers, according to the proposed listing notice last year in the Federal Register. The listing notice contains virtually all the information known about the plant.

In 2005, botanists searching Kamakou, a preserve operated by The Nature Conservancy, found two of them growing in the wild. And in the last two years, a total of 24 of them have been found, all but one in Kamakou Preserve, and the remaining plant in the state's Pu'u Ali'i Natural Area Reserve.

Cuttings were taken and carefully rooted, and the plantlets were re-established in Kamakou.

There are now 238 plants growing in the wild.

But there's still so little known about it that scientists aren't sure how best to protect it, other than growing it from cuttings and planting it in the wild. One assumes that protection from feral pigs and non-native weeds are important. And keeping an eye on it for disease or other problems.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has a year to designate the critical habitat for the species, but based on what's known about the plant, the places where it grows—in high Moloka'i at elevations between 2,300 and 4,200 feet—are pretty much already protected by the Conservancy and the state.

But one benefit of being identified as a plant in peril is that more folks are paying attention to it. And that may be the key to its survival.

“A variety of organizations such as the University of Hawaii’s Lyon Arboretum on O‘ahu, the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kaua‘i, and Kalaupapa National Historical Park on Moloka‘i are propagating plants that may be used for outplanting into suitable habitat.

“Land managers from Hawai’i’s Department of Land and Natural Resources have fenced some plants to protect them from feral ungulates, and The Nature Conservancy continues to control feral pigs and alien plants within the Kamakou Preserve,” said the Fish and Wildlife Service in a press release.

©2009 Jan TenBruggencate