GOVERNMENT COVER-UP
OR SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE?

THE REAL REASON WHALES AND DOLPHINS BEACH THEMSELVES!

by Capt. David Williams
Deafwhale Society, Inc
david@deafwhale.com
skype: "deafwhale"

 

 

The Deafwhale Society, Inc. is a non-profit 501-C research group dedicated solely to solving the centuries-old mystery of why whales and dolphins beach themselves. Donations are accepted but not solicited. If you want to help us, please link to our web pages.  We also need a webmaster and other volunteers with spare time and to do research  To join/volunteer the Deafwhale Society, Inc., send an email to david@deafwhale.com. We are also seeking a filmmaker to do a documentary film of our work.

 

New Book Coming Out


I have a new 110,000-word docudrama coming out entitled SeaQuake. The characters therein reveal how shock waves from an undersea earthquake sank the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion, and why the US Navy refuses to tell the truth about the loss and about why whales beach themselves. I also reveal all about the conspiracy to cover-up strandings. Read the first four chapters for free and send an email if you want to reserve either a paperback or digital editions. If you like whales, you'll love this story. (link)

 

(under construction)

News Flash:  04/07/2012:  3,000 dead dolphins in Peru is not creditable story.  More likely numbers less than 300.  Injuries caused by oil industry seismic survey or by dynamite fishing by locals.

News Flash:  03/19/2012:  Four sperm whales wash ashore on a Chinese beach in the Yellow Sea after encounter with 5.7 magnitude seaquake along the drop off edge of the Philippine Trench near Samar, Philippines, a known feeding grounds for sperm whales.

News Flash: 03/15/2012:  Dolphins washing ashore on Cape Cod injured  by the oil industry surveys ongoing off the coast of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland,  and Greenland. Cape Cod should expect increased beachings for several more winters.

 
 
  
 
 
 

News Flash 10/12/2009:  SeaQuake in the Ionian Sea kills 7 sperm whales; they beach on the Italian coast December 10, 2009  

 
  

I attended my first mass stranding in 1972. I read shortly thereafter that Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, had tried to solve the mystery of why whales beach themselves three hundred years before the birth of Christ. I was challenged.  I thought if I could solve such an ancient enigma, I would become famous like Aristotle. My fantasy soon became my obsession. I contemplated every known consistent observation a thousand times, and read everything printed on whales twice. I also developed a deep attachment for the animals. Working to save them became my life's mission.

I always told myself that when I truly understood why they beach themselves, I would be able to tell others in one simple sentence. Finally, after 40 years, here's what I came up with: All outwardly healthy whales and dolphins that beach themselves are suffering from navigational failure brought on by barosinusitis.

Barotrauma in the sinusitis can be a deadly injury for marine mammals because it prevents them from diving and feeding themselves and also disables their biosonar. Said differently, not only are whales and dolphins with barosinusitis unable to dive much deeper than a few meters due to pain, they also lose their sense of direction.

My big disappointment came a few years ago when I realized that I was not the first to solve the mystery of whale strandings—most whale scientists have known for decades that stranded whales suffer from barosinusitis.

The only thing I did was uncovered an enormous scam played on the whale-loving public by whale scientists. They have known for decades that sinuses barotrauma causes strandings but have refuse to inform the public. Instead, they promote invalid reasons for strandings in an effort to turn the public's attention away from the barosinusitis-inducing activities of the navy and oil industry. Why? Because the Navy and the oil industry supply 98% of all whale research funds worldwide. These two groups don't want the scientists talking about barosinusitis because barosinusitis is the identical injury induced by their underwater activities. Whale scientists will not get their projects funded if they don't cater to the wishes of those who supply 98% of their money and they know it!

So why don't the Navy and the oil Industry want the public to known about barosinusitis? The reason involves the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act (link). This defective laws state repeatedly that National Marine Fisheries Service must protect marine mammals and sea turtles to the "best available scientific information." If there is "no available scientific information on barotrauma or barosinusitis in whales" the Marine Mammal Protection Act is worthless legislation. In other words, as long as the scientists, who are bribed with taxpayer money, do not research barotrauma, there is no protection whatsoever from injuries that could easily blow out their sinuses, air sacs, and middle ears and cause them to die slowly over many weeks. And, as long as the Navy and the oil industry supply 98% of all the funds to research marine mammals, there will never be any "best scientific information available" as applied to pressure-related injury in whales, dolphins, and sea turtles!  

There's no reason for these two worse offenders to spend taxpayer money to shot themselves in their own foot!

But not all marine mammal scientists are fraught with fear of losing income. Professors Hal Whitehead and Linda Weilgart, at Canada's Dalhousie University, are making an effort to reveal the bias in marine mammal science (link) (link) (link).

The unethical cover-up surrounding barosinusitis also extends to NOAA, who hands out millions of taxpayer dollars every year to the "save-the-whales" rescue teams (link). The payoff money is called John H. Prescott grants. These teams get lots of cash because they are the first experts at the scene and in the position to control the media and make sure the navy and the oil industry don't get blamed (link). Can you imagine the public uproar if the rescue teams started suggesting to the news teams that the naval and/or oil industry activity might be causing barosinusitis leading to the strandings? These are also the same teams that cut open the whales and dolphins so obviously the rescuers need compensation too. Of course, as long as they're using taxpayer money to finance the cover-up, how much is spent really doesn't matter to them. 

The rescue teams also want to make sure that there is always a mystery behind beachings because it helps them in their donation seeking. Notice at this website how the begging is done (link) while at the same time they are clearing the Navy from all responsibility. They even have donation plans so they can inherit your estate after you're dead (link). There are all kinds of ways you can give your hard-earned money to the rescue teams (link). They are playing on the heart strings of the whale-loving public to enrich themselves. Saving whales is big business and the management of these groups pay themselves millions annually. No wonder the mystery will never be solved by the current establishment.    

In the mean time, NOAA's whale experts use taxpayer dollars to buy themselves a big expensive party yacht (link). But before I tell you more, please allow me to explain how the cover-up works...

As mentioned above, barosinusitis is the real reason why whales and dolphins beach themselves. Barosinusitis also happens to be the primary injury suffered by whales exposed to the underwater activities of the navy and the oil industry, not deafness as you are misled to believe. Barosinusitis is a pressure-related diving injury that occurs when marine mammals are exposure to excessive changes in the surrounding (ambient) water pressure.  

But rather than admit the existence of barosinusitis, and work on ways to prevent it, whale experts publish senseless stranding concepts like social cohesion (mass suicide), biosonar failure due to slopping beach, chasing prey too close to shore, sharks, killer whales, parasitic worms, viruses, bacteria, fungal infections, red tides, severe storms, geomagnetic navigation failure, geomagnetic storms, phases of the moon, sun spots, heavy metals, immune failure, ingestion of plastic bags, movement of ice sheets, and movement of nutrient-rich waters closer to shore.  None of these ideas ever gained "lead theory" status indicating the weakness in all of them.

Once you know the truth as I do, the deception become blatant. For example, in a recent incident in which 3 dolphins were killed by a US Navy explosion (see video news), whale scientists presented an abstract at a conference in Tampa, Florida revealing what killed the animals. But before you read the abstract, keep it is mind that the least amount of injury any air-breathing diving animal might suffer if exposed to an explosion is a bruised or ruptured sinus membrane (barosinusitis). Said differently, if an air-breathing, diving critter does not suffer barosinusitis when exposed to an explosion, then the pressure wave was too weak and no other injuries are possible. However, rather than mention barotrauma in the sinus cavities, the scientists stated;

         "Imaging studies demonstrated gas bubbles within vessels of the brain, vertebral canal, esophagus, larynx, intestines, liver, within the heart and pulmonary vasculation, free in the peritoneum, surrounding the renules and within perimandibular fat pads.  One animal demonstrated acute fracture of the right tympanic plate with disruption of the ossicles. Gross necropsy revealed moderate to marked intravascular gas bubbles present in abdominal and thoracic vasculature. There were acute petechial to ecchymotic hemorrhages in the lungs, concentrated in the subpleural regions, in the mucosal and submucosa of the trachea, bronchi, esophagus, and in fat along the mandible (acoustic fat). Histologic (microscopic) review demonstrates no significant pathology other than changes associated with acute hemorrhage and embolism. Oil red O staining of lungs and lymph nodes demonstrated fat emboli within alveolar lumens and subcapsular sinusoidal spaces.  Gas evaluations indicate gases with similar composition to inspired air or intestinal gases. The presumptive cause of death for each animal was acute vascular gas embolism. These findings provide a baseline of lesions from animals exposed to known barotrauma at shallow depth."
As you can see, no mention was made of barotrauma in the sinuses. It is impossible for a shock wave from an explosion to induce the above trauma and not injure the sinus cavities and air sacs. In fact, barosinusitis is slight compared to what the scientists reported.  The rest of the pod no doubt suffered bloody barosinusitis but where still able to swim away. Some will recover, but most likely developed a sinus infection and died 4 to 8 weeks later. The Navy's purpose in the misleading abstract is found in the last sentence where it states: "these findings provide a baseline of lesions for animals exposed to known barotrauma at shallow depth." This is misleading—the baseline lesion for a dolphin exposed to a known barotrauma is simple barosinusitis. But they do not want to come anywhere near the sinuses and air sacs in the heads of these animals since they will open a can of worms that know they could never close.
 
The cover-up has been ongoing for maybe 50 years! During this time, one brief sentence has leaked out from the scientific community that came close to explaining why whales beach themselves. This sentence also revealed what most whale expert have known for 50 years. In 1962, Dr. Francis Fraser, the curator of marine mammals at the British Museum of Natural History offered the following insight on barosinusitis while commenting (link) on the mystery of why whales beach themselves. He said:

       " It is very easy to imagine a condition in which the air-sac system has broken down, so that it is no longer reflecting, and, with the isolation of the essential organs of hearing disrupted, the animal may lose its sense of direction."  

Barosinusitis is indeed a condition in which the air-sac system (aka: pterygoid sinuses) has broken down, and the animal losses its sense of direction. These small sacs of air surround the cochlea, acoustically isolating it from the whale's own loud voice. The air in these sinuses also deflects and channels sound around inside the whale's head like light bouncing off mirrors (ref) (ref). This acoustic deflection/channeling prevents sound waves from hitting the cochlea from all directions—a must if the whale is to determine the azimuth of any returning echonavigation signals. Dr. Fraser was right—whales and dolphins become lost when the air-sac system suffers a pressure-related injury. The big question is why have marine mammal scientists withheld the awareness that barosinusitis could cause a pod of whales to be lost?

The following will prove that US Navy whale experts know that healthy, functional sinuses are an absolute must if whales are to dive and feed themselves. Working sinuses are also mandatory if the whales are to use their biosonar to fix their position in the sea. This fact was confirmed in a 2004 article (link) in which US Navy scientists had the following to say about air cavities in the heads of dolphins:

     "... the presence of air around the bulla (cochlea) contributes to the acoustic isolation of the ears by providing a sound-reflective barrier between them. The almost complete dorsomedial coverage of the bulla (cochlea) with air should contribute to the animal's ability to differentiate time of arrival differences by impeding conduction through soft tissues that exist between the ears. In combination with other air spaces in the head, this should allow dolphins to capitalize on spectral differences in received signals due to shadowing and may contribute to minimum auditory angular resolution in the vertical and horizontal planes. Position, geometry, and volume of the air spaces within the head of the dolphin are important components of both the sound production and reception process and care should be given to their properties when developing models of biosonar production and hearing in dolphins."

Since its proven that the US Navy knows the truth, why are marine mammal scientists still refusing to tell the public that barosinusitis is the likely reason for beachings? One could say that they are pretending not to know about barosinusitis so that the Navy can continue to kill whales and the scientists can continue to rake in the taxpayers' money! Simply put... the Navy, NOAA, and the oil industry are using taxpayer money to bribe marine mammal scientists continuously, year after year. If you doubt me, visit the Navy's website and review the research projects they funded in FY09, FY10, and FY11. Notice that not one penny went to research barotrauma or barosinusitis, which is a marine mammals worse nightmare come true. The number one injury in navy divers is pressure related so how can Navy admirals ignore barotrauma is the massive sinuses of the greatest divers the world has ever known?

When you review what the Navy funded, also take notice of the child-like stupidity in the projects themselves. None of them are of value in preventing injury in whales. They are spending the taxpayers' money to keep the spotlight off barosinusitis. This alone should tell you that the entire marine mammal research program funded by the Navy, NOAA, and the oil industry is nothing more than pure bribery.

If they would only stop the deception and spend the money to find ways to prevent pressure-related injury, we might still be able to save our whales and dolphins before its too late. 

Here's how barosinusitis occurs: Assume that a navy sonar, a seismic airgun array, an explosion, an undersea earthquake, or an undersea volcanic eruption has caused a series of dangerous pressure oscillations in the water surrounding a family of diving whales. During exposure to rapidly changing external pressures while diving, the volume of air in their massive sinuses will expand and diminish in direct proportion to the changing pressure (Boyle's Gas Law). The overall volume could drop 400% as the phase on increased pressure crosses over the pod. When the phase of diminished pressure (aka: rarefaction) passes a microsecond later, the volume of air instantly quadruples. Assuming the frequency of these oscillations at 10 cycles per second, and the duration of the disturbance at 15 seconds, the volume of air in the sinuses would bounce back and forth from a 400% over expansion to a 400% under deflation (800% change), 10 times per second for 15 seconds (150 times in 15 seconds). Because the volume of air in the enclosed air spaces both compress and expand rapidly during the passing of the disturbance, while bodily tissues, blood, and bones do not, strong pressure differentials develop at air-filled interfaces causing shear forces that tear, bruise, and disrupt tissues, membranes, and small blood vessels. The air would be displaced into the surrounding tissues while the sinus cavities fill up with blood. When such a disaster happens to a pod, each whale loses its ability to dive and feed itself along with its sense of direction.

Allow me to elaborate further. You'd be correct to call toothed whales and dolphins "airheads" because approximately 30% of the volume of their head is occupied with a mixture of air and foam enclosed inside sinuses and air sacs of all shapes, including the pterygoid, peribullary, maxillary sinuses shown in the illustration on the right. The health of these sinuses is critical to a diving whale's survival because, as mentioned above, the air and foam serve to channel sound inside their heads and make their biosonar work. They also use these air sinuses to generate clicks and whistles. If a major disturbance in ambient pressure occurs around a pod of whales, it injures all their air sacs and sinuses at the same time. As Dr Fraser suggested 50 years ago, the entire pod would simultaneously – and instantly – lose its sense of direction! 

Read more: "The Acoustic Function of the Air Sacs."

It stands to reason that a pod of lost, injured whales would group together on the surface for protection against sharks. The question is: where would man expect to encounter a pod of whales suffering from barosinusitis? The simple answer is on the beach.  Again, allow me to explain. If the water was calm like the surface of a small pod, the lost pod would swim in random directions, like a group of lost people wandering around on a desert. But the dynamic ocean is rarely calm.

The most important point to grasp is that surface currents will always present much greater resistance when the lost whales tries to swim in any directions except downstream with the flow. Grasping this simple concept of resistance to the flow of water is necessary to understanding the mystery of why whales beach themselves. If you looked the videos or pictures taken during a stranding, you will see that the whales are always swimming with the flow of the surface currents when they go ashore and never against it! Going with the flow is the same as swimming in the path of least resistance. This path will always be taken by any lost object moving through a system. For example, water flowing downhill follows the path of least resistance. Storms travel in the path of least resistance by flowing toward zones of low barometric pressure, where lower air density offers less resistance than does higher pressure zones. Thus, it can be safely stated that, without a sense of direction, and no land marks to guide them, a lost pod of whales will always swim downstream with the flow of the surface currents. 

 

The path of least resistance might take them into the open sea where they are harvested by large oceanic sharks. On the other hand, the surface currents might carry them towards land, in which case the acoustically blind whales stand an increased chance of swimming directly into a beach (watch this shocking video). But why a beach? Because the current guiding the whales is the same energy that carried each grain of sand to build the beach in the first place. Wherever current washes ashore, you find a beach, along with everything else without a sense of direction including seaweed, plastic jugs, coconuts, and whales suffering from barosinusitis. Where current does not wash ashore you find rocks and no flotsam and no stranded whales.   more on surface currents and stranded whales...

The surface currents pick the stranding site, not the whales. Or, maybe I should say the wind picks the stranding site since the direction and strength of the wind exerts a powerful influence over the surface currents. For example, a gale force wind blowing toward shore could cause the current to wash non-navigating whales onto a rocky coast.

Tidal flow also plays a part in selecting the final stranding spot. As an example, if a lost pod of dolphins approached shore near an inlet to a backwater lagoon when the tide was rising, they could easily be guided by the rushing inflow into the inlet and into the lagoon. The lost pod would swim inside the lagoon until their bellies made contact with the muddy bottom. Then they'd stop swimming and mill around until the tide dropped and left them stuck in the mud.  Dolphins aren't stupid enough to accidentally be caught by a falling tide. They are acoustically blind and have no idea which way to swim to get out of the area. Again, barosinusitis is the cause of whale beachings since the injury blinds the animals.

You can prove with your own eyes that the direction of wind and the surface currents pick the beach. Look at the picture of a calm beach on the left. There is no shoreward wind. Now look at the picture on the right. The wind is blowing from the sea toward the beach, and setting a strong shoreward flow to the surface currents. You will never see a "lost pod" of whales or dolphins swim ashore when the sea is flat calm—the "lost pods" always come ashore when the wind and surface currents are directed shoreward. The stronger the shoreward flow, the greater is the chance that a "lost pod" will be washed ashore! Look at all the stranding pictures on this web page. Notice the struggle the rescuers are having trying to push the whales back out to sea against the incoming flow of the surface currents.  Now look at the following videos and notice the rough seas in the background. (video1)  (video2)  (video3)  (video4) (video5)  (video6)  (video7)  (video8)  (video9)  (video10)  (video11)  (video12)  (more videos coming). Of course, it all depends on the wind speed at the time the whales came ashore, not when the camera arrives. 

One other point should be made... 90% of all strandings are reported early in the morning by the first person on the beach. This means that 90% of all stranding occur at night. Why?  Because "lost whales" suffering from barosinusitis can usually avoid a stranding during the day by (a) raising their heads out of the water and looking around, or (b) by visually observing the sandy bottom. 

Because sharks have no swim bladders or air sinuses, they would not be injured by a major disturbance in pressure. Sharks would recognize such an underwater disturbance as a dinner bell and come looking for victims. They would be able to sense that the whales were injured. But as long as the pod swam in a tight group, the sharks would respect their strength in numbers, back off, and wait for stragglers.

Let me repeat, whales and dolphins hang out in tight groups for protection against big hungry sharks and killer whales—not social cohesion.

Sharks trail these wounded pods like wolves dogging a herd of elk. They wait patiently for a straggler to fall behind. The injured whales are aware of the waiting sharks so they stay close to their podmates. This is called a herd instinct; the same behavior shown by any group of mammals worried about predators. Place several dozen humans adrift in the open sea and see how long it takes them to get close to each other.

In 1971, in an article entitled, "Geometry For The Selfish Herd," evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton asserted that each member of the herd reduces the danger to itself by moving as close as possible to the center of the group. Thus the herd appears as a unit as it moves together, but its function emerges from the uncoordinated behavior of self-serving individuals. It's foolish to think that whales go ashore in response to the distressed cries of their podmates. Rather, blind individuals are quick to follow another member because they themselves are lost and have no idea which way to swim to reach safety.  They don't know they are about to be trapped in the sand. They are not following a leader; they are moving away from the sharks off in the distance behind them. They are following another lost whale that appears to know where it's going. It is the blind following the blind.

What if you knew sharks were waiting just offshore, would you swim off by yourself?  The terror each individual must experience when alone in shark-infested waters explains why injured individuals, when freed, will not swim away from the beach until the rest of the pod is also freed. They are not expressing sympathy, social cohesion, nor strong social bond; rather, they know the odds that they might be the next shark attack victim is greatly increased if they swim away alone.


SO WHAT IS THE REAL CAUSES OF BAROSINUSITIS IN WHALES?

We know underwater explosions can cause biosonar-disabling barosinusitis; as can exposure to powerful navy sonar and oil industry air cannons. In fact, any disturbance in the sea that generates rapid and excessive changes in the surrounding water pressure can rupture a whale’s sinuses. Nature can easily generate such pressure changes. For example, a meteorite’s impact with the ocean's surface would produce a series of potent pressure oscillations. So would an undersea earthquake. The vertical jerking of the seabed acts like a giant piston, pushing and pulling at the water, generating a series of intense low-frequency changes in pressure called seaquakes.  (aka: ocean acoustic waves or t-waves). The intensity of the pressure changes to which the whales are exposed is not so much related to magnitude as it is to the speed at which the seafloor shifts vertically, and to the depth of the focal point of the earthquake. The faster the seafloor shifts and the closer the EQ's focal point to the water's interface, the more danger to the whales.

Sailors have reported violent encounters with seaquakes since the beginning of recorded history. Hundreds of these eyewitness accounts (and other evidence) are posted on two websites (1750 to 1899)  (1900 to 2009). Reading these two web sites will convince you beyond even the slightest doubt that seaquakes do indeed cause barosinusitis in whales!

As touched on above, the stranding beach is always located downstream from the point of injury. I've traced approximately 500 beachings over the past 40 years. On average, seaquake-injured whales swim about 2,600 miles downstream from the epicenter before they strand. This journey takes an average 27 days.

 

THE COVER-UP OF BAROSINUSITIS IN WHALES!

Not one marine mammal scientists has ever been curious about whether whales simply lose their sense of direction and swim into a sandy beach with the flow of the surface currents. It's understandable that the public might not realize stranded whales always swim with the flow but how can marine mammal scientists be so blind to the obvious?

Look at the picture on the left... you can see the waves rolling in. This tells you that a strong shoreward wind in blowing, causing current to flow toward the beach. Examine videos and pictures taken during strandings, not afterward. If you look close you can see the surface current washing ashore. In many pictures and videos you see flotsam and sea weeds washing ashore with the whales. Why can't the experts make such a simple observation? Pretending to be ignorant of the obvious is the strongest evidence of a cover-up.

Nor has any whale expert published a paper on barotrauma or barosinusitis in mass stranded whales. We have excellent and detailed government publications on barotrauma in fish (link). Why don't we have something similar in stranded whales?

The mystery of why whales mass strand has been around since the beginning of recorded history; therefore, the cause has to be something that has been around just as long.  Undersea earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and meteorite impacts certainly fit the time frame. These events would produced a series of potent pressure changes in the water and could indeed breakdown the air-sac system and cause an entire pod of whales to get lost. Is such an idea so complicated that it defies the imagination of whale experts? It seems reasonable that such a simplistic concept would have been ruled in or out decades ago. Why is it that the experts never checked out seaquakes as a cause of strandings?  

We know that seaweed, floating garbage, driftwood, dead fish, dead whales, and other stuff drifting in the sea is carried to the beach by the surface currents so why not live whales who have lost their sense of direction? After all, the flow of the current is the same force that carried each grain of sand to built the beach in the first place. Again, is this idea too complex for whale experts? 

Dr. Francis Fraser gave scientists the best clue to the stranding mystery 50 years ago when he said it was easy for him to imagine a condition in which the air-sac system had broken down. Why is it that no other marine mammal scientists in the last 50 years has considered the loss of directional senses from a broken down air-sac system as an answer to the stranding mystery?

Why is it that whale experts have never investigated barosinusitis as the cause of whale strandings? Is it because barosinusitis is an identical injury to the break down of the air-sac system induced by oil industry air cannons, explosives, and navy sonar?  

The system protecting the poor whales is riddled with corruption!

The new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), the former Minerals Management Service (MMS), was and still is a corrupted puppet of the oil industry. This government group collects fees from the oil industry and hands them out to scientists to study the environmental impact of the industry.  BOEMRE and the US Navy, fund 98% of all marine mammal research worldwide. In other words, by controlling BOEMRE, the oil industry and the Navy control 98% of all the money available to study whales and dolphins.

According to the Washington Post (and many other sources) dirty dealing and corruption has plagued this downright dysfunctional government agency for decades. Read these shocking links: (link) (link) (link) (link) (link). Since its inception, and in particular since the 1980s, BOEMRE has been embroiled or implicated in numerous scandals. For example, in 1990 BOEMRE employees were linked to prostitution. One BOEMRE female official got pregnant from sleeping with an oil and gas lobbyists. In September 2008, reports by the Inspector General of the Interior Department were released that implicated over a dozen BOEMRE officials of unethical and criminal conduct in the performance of their duties. The investigation found BOEMRE employees had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sex with oil and gas energy company representatives. BOEMRE staff had also accepted gifts and free holidays amid a culture of ethical failure. The New York Times revealed "a dysfunctional organization that was riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch. A May 2010 inspector general investigation revealed that BOEMRE regulators in the Gulf region had allowed oil and gas industry officials to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency. BOEMRE staff had routinely accepted meals, tickets to sporting events, and gifts from oil companies.  In 2009, the regional supervisor of the Gulf region for BOEMRE pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year's probation in federal court for lying about receiving gifts from an offshore drilling contractor. This deeply disturbing report is further evidence of the cozy relationship between BOEMRE and the oil and gas industry. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) alleges that BOEMRE has suffered from a systemic revolving door problem between the Department of Interior and the oil and gas industries. For example, thirteen months after departing as BOEMRE director, Bush appointee Randall Luthi became president of the National Oceans Industries Association (NOIA) whose mission is to secure reliable access and a favorable regulatory and economic environment for the companies that develop the nation's offshore energy resources in an environmentally responsible manner. Luthi succeeded Tom Fry, who was BOEMRE director under the Clinton administration. Luthi and Fry represented precisely the industries their agency was tasked with being a watchdog over. Lower level administrators influencing BOEMRE have also gone on to work for the oil and gas companies they once regulated. In addition, Jimmy Mayberry served as Special Assistant to the Associate Director of Revenue Management, managed by BOEMRE, from 2000 to January 2003. After he left, he created an energy consulting company that was awarded a BOEMRE contract via a rigged bid. He was convicted along with a former BOEMRE coworker Milton Dial who also came to work at the company. Both were found guilty of felony violation of conflict of interest law. (link) 

As it stands now, the underwater activities of the US Navy and the oil industry are responsible for at least 90% of the human-induced barosinusitis in cetaceans and they know it.  Thus, they must prevent any legitimate research on the topic to keep from pointing the finger at themselves.  They will fund plenty of research saying that ships kill whales, and that whale watching boats harm them, and that native cultures are killing too many whales. BUT THEY WILL NOT SPEND ONE DIME TO SHOW THAT BAROTRAUMA IS A DIVING MAMMAL'S WORSE NIGHTMARE COME TRUE!

Since they control all the money spent to study marine mammals, they naturally look with strong disfavor upon any scientists who supports pressure-related injury (barotrauma) as a cause of whale strandings. On the other hand, they look favorably on any scientists who is willing to falsify and fabricate research saying the activities of these two groups are not harming whales. The crooked scientists get the money while the honest scientists lose their jobs or cave in to the corruption

Doubt me?  Search "barotrauma and whales" in Google, Yahoo, Bing, or Google Scholar and you'll find mostly my comments and ramblings. To make matters more suspicious, the research that you will find is blatantly evasive and deceptive. For example, the first scientific objective in one US Navy sponsored research paper (link) was: "To understand how the ears of deep-diving marine mammals are structured to prevent barotrauma:" Regardless that the main purpose of this research was to understand how a whale's anatomy prevents barotrauma, Dr. Darlene Ketten, the world's leading whale cochlea expert and a navy favorite, declared therein, " . . .we have no knowledge of what auditory structural adaptations these animals evolved to endure bathypelagic and rapidly changing pressures . . ." There was no discussion about barotrauma in whales. Nor was there one word about the massive air sinuses and air sacs in the heads of these deep divers. How is it possible to research BAROTRAUMA in diving mammals and not mention the part of their anatomy most vulnerable to pressure-related injury? The ONLY purpose of this US Navy-sponsored scientific doublespeak was simply to have Dr. Darlene Ketten officially declare that there was "no available scientific information on barotrauma in whales."

But why would making such an official statement in a research paper be so important?  The reason involves the Marine Mammal Protection Act (link). This defective law states repeatedly that National Marine Fisheries Service must protect marine mammals to the "best available scientific information." If there is "no available scientific information on barotrauma or barosinusitis in whales" as Dr. Darlene Ketten declared, the Marine Mammal Protection Act is worthless legislation to diving mammals when it comes to pressure-related injury.

The "best available scientific information" clause was the object of two well-written law reviews (link) (link).

Obviously, the navy and oil industry are not going to use taxpayer money to sponsor any research that will show how their operations cause rapid pressure changes that slowly kill marine mammals. Nor do they want to see barosinusitis accepted as the cause of mass beachings since it is only a small step from earthquake-induced barosinusitis to barosinusitis induced by explosives, sonar, and/or airguns.

Furthermore, any scientists who tries to research these topics own their own will face a group of well-funded scientists who will strongly disagree with them. In this fashion, "best available scientific information" can never be established. Instead, a scientific argument continues until one side of the issue runs out of money. The navy and the oil industry both have unlimited public funds and will use them to pay for all the research needed to keep barosinusitis from every gaining "best available scientific information" status.

This is exactly what they are doing with the deafness issue in marine mammals; keep the scientific debate ongoing and you defeat the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and can kill unlimited numbers of whales, dolphins, seals, polar bears, and sea otters with complete immunity.

In 2010, a group of scientists, supported by taxpayer money given them by the Navy and NOAA, published a research article saying most stranded dolphins were deafened; however, these crooks claimed that deafness was due mostly to old age and birth defects.  The importance of this research was monumental to the navy and the oil industry since there is now a scientific debate ongoing about whether deafness in dolphins is cause by sonar, explosives, airguns, birth defects, old age, ship noises, or etcetera, etcetera. So now we have a scientific argument on deafness in marine mammals and the laws protecting whales are defeated. The same thing will happen with barosinusitis. Taxpayer money will be used to kill our marine mammals and there is NOTHING we can do about it.

The sad part is there are ways to prevent barosinusitis and deafness in marine mammals if only the US Navy will face the problem and stop running away from their responsibility.  I think the answer lies in researching the connection between seaquakes and beached whales. After many millions of years of living in earthquake-prone water, whales have surely developed a means whereby they can detect earthquake precursor signals and move out of the way long before they are injured.  If we can duplicate the earthquake signals that scare the whales, we will be able to clear these animals away from the dangerous activities of the oil industry and the navy.

We could also research ways to save whales and dolphins suffering from barosinusitis. 

 
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