Did Navy sonar kill porpoises in Puget Sound?
FRIDAY HARBOR, Washington–U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service strandings coordinator Brent Norberg on July 1 indicated that tests to find out if Navy sonar killed porpoises in Puget Sound nearly two months earlier would be complete within another three weeks. “In all, 13 dead porpoises were found beached or floating between May 2 and May 20eight of them on or after May 5,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. NMFS recovered eight of the porpoises, the Whale Museum at Friday Harbor collected three, and two floated away. On May 5 the destroyer USS Shoup conducted a five-hour sonar test in the Haro Straight, between the San Juan Islands and Vancouver Island. Salish Sea Charters whale-watch operator Tom McMillan said a pod of up to 20 whales “abruptly stopped feeding, gathered in a tightly knit group, and swam to shore. The sonar ‘pings’ were loud enough for humans to hear on shore,” the Post-Intelligencer said. The sonar test ended after Canad-ian officials complained to the U.S
