Behring Point resident and local government representative, Stephen Smith, helped bury the last two whales that washed ashore in Central Andros.
Mr. Smith, a life-long resident of Behring Point, is one of a number of residents who fear that testing at the AUTEC base in Central Andros, particularly sonar testing, may have something to do with a number of whale strandings on the island, the most recent of which have occurred 10 miles apart, near the U.S. military testing facility.
“What I’ve seen over the years [is a] lack of fish, people complaining about certain sickness, and things like that. You have plenty reefs up on the shore, what’s caused that? The lack of fish, you could have gone out to the reef and catch the amount of fish you wanted, the conch, lobster, now everything’s just like it’s vanishing,” Mr. Smith told The Bahama Journal yesterday in an interview.
“This isn’t the first time, or the second time that a whale has drifted onto Andros. This has been happening from back in the 1960s.”
The Atlantic Undersea Testing and Evaluation Centre [AUTEC] opened in Andros in 1965 and its mission is to “support the full spectrum of undersea warfare by providing accurate three-dimensional tracking, performance measurement, and data collection resources to satisfy research, development, test and evaluation requirements, and for assessment of fleet training, tactical and material readiness.”
Mr. Smith estimates that in the past five years, there have been at least six whale deaths that residents know of.
It’s why Mr. Smith, who is also a local government representative, thinks that residents’ and local environmentalists’ concerns should be represented at a meeting between AUTEC and Bahamian government officials expected to take place in the next few weeks.
“When you look at it, the constituency is made up of the people. We have to live here. The government, most of them live [in New Providence], going to AUTEC without [local] representation, who knows what’s going on,” he said.
Deputy Chief of Missions at the U.S. Embassy, Dr. Brent Hardt, could only confirm that government ministers would be in on the planned meeting.
In an earlier interview with The Journal, Dr. Hardt emphasised that AUTEC had nothing to hide and denied any suggestion that AUTEC personnel were not reporting sightings of distressed or dead marine mammals on the island.
Residents want the government to put a stop to all testing in the Tongue of the Ocean until it can be determined what is causing the whale deaths, but Dr. Hardt said that to stop any ongoing work would not “make a lot of sense,” given there was no scientific evidence connecting the testing to the deaths.
Fisheries experts admit that the whale deaths could be related to natural causes, and point out that similar incidences are happening all over the world; however, some now fear the strandings in Andros are happening too frequently in the same area to be a coincidence.
Andros resident and director of the Bahamas Environmental Research Centre Margo Blackwell, speaking on behalf of concerned residents, said that while the upcoming meeting is “very important,” residents are more concerned about the outcome of the discussions.
Ms. Blackwell remembers burying a whale on the island as a child, in 1967.
“There’s no question that we need to have more information shared with us. The people feel very strongly that if we don’t do something drastic to find out what’s causing the degradation of our environment, the deaths of the whales, then we’d be irresponsible citizens. This is something that citizens have to demand an answer to,” Ms. Blackwell told The Journal.
“So it would be in the best interest of AUTEC, Dr. Hardt, the [U.S.] Embassy, the minister of foreign affairs, our minister of [marine resources] to involve all of us as stakeholders in trying to make something understandable out of this tragedy.”
Concerned residents, NGO and local government officials have already been in touch with independent international marine mammal experts in an effort to learn more about sonar and ocean noise in general and prepare for any future strandings.
Next month, a scientist from the Ocean Mammal Institute will be a part of town meetings in New Providence and Andros in this educational effort.
“Part of our responsibility as citizens as well is to educate ourselves to the point where we’re able to take first response,” said Ms. Blackwell. “This kind of network is already working around the world, where people train themselves to get their own samples and get them analysed.”
Ms. Blackwell said it is also time to revisit the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which she says does little to protect the creatures the legislation is named after.
While residents acknowledge that there is no scientific evidence indicating that the whale deaths have anything to do with testing at AUTEC, they say there is not enough information being made available to them to allow for an informed discussion.
In a move to obtain some of that information, Ms. Blackwell, along with other concerned residents, have asked Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell to help them get the information that might help explain the last four whale deaths that have taken place since 2004.
A beaked whale came ashore near AUTEC in January 2005, a whale [species unknown] came ashore on Big Wood Cay sometime in 2004, a sperm whale came ashore in February 2006, and just over a month later, another beaked whale was discovered, according to the group, which has also asked for relevant autopsy reports and other information.
The last two whale carcasses found on the island are believed to be too decomposed to test for a specific cause of death, leaving scientists and residents to wait for another stranding if they hope to learn more about what may be causing the whales to come ashore.
By: Erica Wells, The Bahama Journal
