SURTASS LFA

SURTASS LFA is a low-frequency active sonar system that becomes a contested instrument in the effort to understand and counter the whales’ abnormal behavior. First discussed as a possible cause of changes in whale behavior, it is later used against the whales themselves, making the system a point where scientific uncertainty and emergency policy collide.

System and Contested Effects

The U.S. government authorized the U.S. Navy to use SURTASS LFA to detect submarines, and the system was being tested in multiple locations. Leon Anawak explains that its reach could place 80 percent of the world’s oceans under surveillance; the system had cost $300 million, while its operators maintained that it would not harm whales. Alicia Delaware raises the Marine Mammal Protection Act as a possible constraint, but Anawak points to legal loopholes that allowed the program to proceed.

The discussion of whale behavior links the system to an unresolved scientific dispute. Rod Palm reports that Fenwick and Oliviera had considered underwater noise as a possible explanation, and that Fenwick had associated the whales’ condition with sonar. Earlier periods of naval sonar experimentation had coincided with increased whale and dolphin strandings around the world. Environmentalists connected some of those cases to nearby NATO exercises, and the Navy had eventually acknowledged sonar’s role in some strandings. But the evidence remained limited, and researchers disagreed about the consequences: Fenwick suspected noise could produce collective madness, while Anawak argued that disorientation might explain strandings but not deliberate attacks. The system is therefore presented neither as a proven cause of the crisis nor as harmless technology; its uncertain effects become part of the conflict over what action the authorities should take.

From Suspected Cause to Countermeasure

As the crisis widened, SURTASS LFA changed from a possible source of harm into a weapon directed at the whales. Judith Li announced that the authorities planned to use the system at high intensity to disable them, arguing that the response should match the apparent force of the attacks. The change in purpose was stark: the same technology whose effects on whales had been difficult to establish was now being deliberately deployed against them.

The policy rested on a brutal practical calculation. Officials wanted the whales kept away long enough for divers or robots to be sent below the surface, where human observation had become increasingly difficult. Yet the campaign was not expected to stop the attacks. In the emergency briefing, the sonar offensive remained underway, but its operators judged that it could succeed only by killing the whales. The animals did not retreat from the sound; the account suggests they were not acting under their own control, even as they continued to terrorize the waters. SURTASS LFA could therefore impose pain without reliably changing behavior or restoring access to the sea.

When Leon Anawak later spoke with Li, she acknowledged that the offensive had not achieved its intended results and that the authorities were close to abandoning it. She described the effort as one among many emergency measures, valuable at most for keeping the whales away temporarily so that underwater teams might be deployed. The system’s promised reach had made it an emblem of human surveillance and control; in practice, it could neither explain the whales’ behavior nor secure the conditions needed to investigate it. Its failed use sharpened the distinction between possessing powerful technology and being able to command the ocean.

Acoustic Evidence and Diagnostic Limits

The discussion also turns on what examination of the whales could—and could not—establish. Their brain stems had initially been described as containing a clot, alongside abnormal leakage between brain and skull; that diagnosis was then corrected. The clot was not a clot after all, and the material found inside the whales remained unexplained. These findings made a physical disturbance visible without identifying its source: they were consistent with concern about noise, but did not prove that SURTASS LFA had caused either the whales’ condition or their attacks.

Leon Anawak makes the scale of the acoustic risk concrete by contrasting a reported 180-decibel level at which a whale’s eardrums could rupture with the 215 decibels produced by an individual underwater transmitter; the combined effect, he says, would be louder still. The figures sharpen the ethical and practical stakes of deploying the system, but they do not resolve the diagnostic problem. The authorities possess a means of generating powerful sound, while the connection between that sound, the whales’ abnormal condition, and their behavior remains uncertain.

Operational Context

The sonar offensive unfolded amid a broader failure to regain access to the sea. Authorities were still sweeping the seabed for worms and placing nets in coastal waters, while underwater teams lacked the ability to send divers, probes, or submersibles down safely. Two large drag nets had been lost near Georges Bank, and three trawlers sent to sweep the Laurentian valley had disappeared in storm and fog. These losses did not establish anything about the sonar’s effects, but they placed its intended use in a revealing context: SURTASS LFA was expected to hold the whales back long enough for underwater investigation, even as the means of carrying out that investigation remained precarious.