Rebuttal to the Formal Comment on Schorr et al. (2014) submitted by Tyack et al. (2015)

Tyack et al. cite three specific concerns in their commentary regarding Schorr et al. [1], and we respond briefly to them here. Quotes around normal font designate text from their commentary; italicized text in quotes is from the original paper [1]. Tyack et al. state that readers may misinterpret findings in Schorr et al. [1] because they aren’t “. . .adequately appreciating that that some of the extreme dives highlighted in the paper were likely response dives.” In Schorr et al. [1], we stated repeatedly that whales were tagged on, and many remained within, one of the most heavily used Mid-Frequency Active (MFA) sonar training ranges in the world, and were “almost certainly exposed at some point. . .” to Navy sonar. An explicit goal of this descriptive paper was to “. . .provide insight into the true behavioral range of this species in a region of regular acoustic disturbance”, and we concluded with the statement "Given that whales tagged in this study far exceeded diving behavior previously described as extreme[2], the role humans might play in shaping this behavior can’t be discounted." Our use of the word ‘true’ was meant to indicate the range of behaviors we now understand this species to be capable of. The word ‘true’ was not meant suggest that behaviors described were ‘undisturbed’. While we regret any misunderstanding this may have caused, we did not anticipate this interpretation of ‘true’ because of our very explicit statements that our data were collected in an area of frequent acoustic disturbance. We did not go further than a broad description of these behaviors and their general context because we had no control over the complex sound field that these whales were living in, and comprehensive records of Navy sonar use were unavailable, as we explained in our concluding paragraph. We continue to work toward a comparison of behavior in exposed and unexposed states using these data. Acquisition of the sonar use data required for this comparison and development of appropriate analytical methods has been a lengthy process and we chose not to delay the dissemination of these generalized behavioral data in their entirety, given the unique perspective long-term behavioral records provide for this species. We clearly and repeatedly stated that human disturbance was likely to have influenced the behavior we recorded, and continue to feel strongly that selectively releasing the sonar context of a small subset of our data outside a manuscript that details the analytical techniques, limitations, and assumptions associated with deriving that information would be irresponsible. Even as Tyack et al. assert that we should have released specifics about sonar events in the original paper and call on us to do so here, they also go on to state: “. . .we suggest that conclusions about effects of sonar on diving behavior in the Schorr et al. [1] dataset should wait until the authors complete their analysis of the “subset of this dataset where major sources of acoustic disturbance—or just as importantly, lack thereof—can be accurately documented and independently verified””. We