War of the Whales (21 page)

Rose was yet another graduate from UC Santa Cruz, where Gisiner had been among her teachers. She wrote her PhD thesis on killer whales in the Pacific Northwest, where she met and befriended Ken Balcomb. Then she moved to Washington, DC, to take over the Humane Society’s marine mammal campaign. The Society focused most of its anticruelty advocacy on pets, lab animals, factory farming, and wildlife. But Rose had convinced its leadership to sign on as co-plaintiff in a previous lawsuit that Reynolds had brought against the Navy. Reynolds had come to appreciate Rose’s pragmatic, results-oriented style—unusual among animal welfare and animal rights activists, who are characterized more by their passionate intensity than by their ability to work collaboratively with groups on different wavelengths of the “humane movement” spectrum.

Reynolds and Rose agreed to add the Navy’s general counsel and ONR’s attorney to their letter’s recipient list, just in case its legal implications escaped the Secretary. By the end of the day, the letter had been faxed and hard copies mailed by certified post.

Reynolds’ letter achieved its intended effect of raising an alarm in the Navy’s legal wing. The Secretary of the Navy and his general counsel sat face-to-face across the Secretary’s desk, marking up their respective copies.

Like many Navy Secretaries, Richard Danzig had never served in the military. Appointed by his former Yale Law School classmate Bill Clinton, Danzig was an attorney, technocrat, and policy wonk who’ d spent his career rotating among corporate law firms, the Defense Department, and Washington-based think tanks. He knew next to nothing about marine mammals, and not much more about sonar. But he recognized a threatening legal letter when he read one.

For the past six years, Reynolds had been a persistent thorn in the Navy’s side. As soon as Danzig heard about the stranding, he grasped its legal implications. He understood that any evidence gathered on the ground in the Bahamas might well end up as an exhibit attached to a lawsuit. And he’ d been expecting just this kind of letter from Reynolds, demanding that the Navy cease and desist whatever exercises it might be conducting in the Bahamas.

Danzig knew he could expect vehement pushback from the fleet if he were to impose any limitations, even temporarily, on training exercises. But unlike the admirals, Danzig had to balance military considerations against the potential political, legal, and public relations fallout from the stranding, especially if the national media picked up the story and ran with it. As the civilian head of the world’s largest navy, who served at the pleasure of a civilian commander in chief, the Navy Secretary’s job description encompassed the often-conflicting demands of politics, the law, and national defense.

Before deciding how to respond to Reynolds’ letter, the Secretary wanted to be fully briefed on any naval activities in the area, and on all matters related to sonar and whale strandings. He was determined to avoid having the Navy dragged into court by NRDC over the Bahamas incident.

Another Navy Secretary had underestimated Reynolds the first time he sued the Navy. Danzig was too savvy a veteran of Washington politics to repeat that mistake.

When Reynolds first heard about the Navy’s “ship shock” program, Fisheries had already approved the Navy’s application to test the structural integrity of its new Aegis-class destroyer, the USS
John Paul Jones
, with underwater explosives. In less than 30 days, the Navy was scheduled to “shock” the ship’s hull by detonating bombs weighing up to 10,000 pounds apiece in the coastal waters of Southern California.
¹

For the first time since the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act two decades earlier, the Navy had voluntarily applied to Fisheries for a permit to conduct tests that might “harass or harm” marine mammals. As soon as the Navy’s plan was announced, the young director of Save the Whales in Los Angeles, Maris Sidenstecker, began to mobilize public and scientific opposition.
²
The marine sanctuary where the Navy proposed to detonate explosives was home to endangered blue, sperm, fin, and humpback whales, as well as dolphins, seals, and sea lions. But the Environmental Assessment conducted by Fisheries arrived at a Finding of No Significant Impact, and the agency authorized the Navy to detonate 282 underwater explosives over the next five years.

Maris Sidenstecker was desperate to stop the ship shock tests. The day she called Reynolds to ask for help, he was sprinting to meet a filing deadline in his four-year-old fight to block construction of a toll road through the fragile coastal wildlands of Orange County, California. In a variation on the spotted owl defense used to save old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, Reynolds had successfully invoked the endangered status of the tiny coastal California gnatcatcher to prevent the toll road from being built across the bird’s disappearing sage scrub habitat.

He’ d never met Sidenstecker, and he had less than three hours to file his motion in the toll-road case. He’ d become expert in enforcing the California Endangered Species Act in defense of animals and their habitats, but he’ d never sued to protect marine mammals. The only oceans case he’ d ever been involved in was to prevent the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation from dumping sewage into coastal waters.

In addition to lack of time, staff, and expertise in relevant law, there was the hard fact that any legal battle against the US Navy would be an uphill slog. California was virtually a Navy company town, with seven bases across the state, including the Pacific Fleet’s home port in San Diego. The Navy employed tens of thousands of Californians and spent tens of billions of dollars in the state each year. Judges in every circuit could be expected to give special deference to the armed forces, particularly over a “national security” activity such as ship shock tests.

Reynolds was a strategic activist who often found himself surrounded by passionate idealists. He considered himself the grownup in the room who had to make prudent decisions about when, how, and if to take legal action. He never wanted to launch a high-stakes lawsuit without enough time for planning, research, and careful preparation of legal arguments.

Unless he saw blue.

Every so often, some part of his brain overrode his reason. On first hearing about a habitat or an environment in peril, his mind would very occasionally do a synesthetic backflip. Before he could evaluate the case law and size up his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, his visual field became flooded with color. It was always the same rich cobalt blue. He had no idea whether the phenomenon was related to his childhood eye surgeries or to some more obscure deep-brain anomaly. But he’ d come to welcome the calm, cool oasis of that blue. As someone who calculated every decision to the nth degree, it was a relief to override the cautionary “Stop” signs with an emphatic “Go” from his gut.

Five minutes into his first phone call about the Navy’s planned explosives test, Reynolds saw a field of deep blue spreading out in every direction.

•  •  •

Reynolds’ compulsion to answer calls for help was bred in the bone. Growing up, his brother and four sisters often joked about his messiah complex. By fifth grade he’ d already developed a precocious, almost comical obsession with civics—and a determination to fix the world’s problems. He set up a pair of card tables in the bedroom he shared with his older brother that he called his “ambassador’s desk.” Armed with a manual typewriter and a government organization manual that included contact information for all the federal agencies and congressional offices, he embarked on a one-boy letter-writing campaign. He’ d write to representatives of both parties to comment on upcoming legislative issues. He typed missives to the US ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, with his thoughts about arms control and world hunger. He clipped articles from newspapers and magazines and pasted them onto lined, three-hole paper, and filed them by topic in binders: Civil Rights, Vietnam War, Space Race, Political Speeches. He revered
National Geographic
magazine as the gospel of globalism and kept the year’s issues arranged chronologically on his desk. He tape-recorded local community meetings on his Akai reel-to-reel machine and transcribed his own minutes. In 1964 he memorized all 20 propositions on the California ballot and created a seating chart for his sixth-grade classroom that mirrored the US Senate chamber. In 1966, at age 13, he volunteered to work on Democratic congressman John Tunney’s reelection campaign.

Inside the crowded Reynolds household on Spruce Street, all the children felt deeply loved by both their parents. But they believed their mother, Mary Lee, had a special bond with Joel—perhaps because of his chronic childhood eye problems. Both his mother and father expressed effusive appreciation for his accomplishments, and Joel feasted on their attention, always proud to report to them on his latest success, in school, on ball fields, or onstage.

Music was the family’s common currency. Joel’s father, Bill, was a professor of music and the choral conductor at the University of California, Riverside. Everyone sang and played an instrument. Joel played piano from age six, and his father taught him the violin beginning when he was nine. By high school, he was playing violin in the Riverside Symphony Orchestra and singing in the UC Riverside chorus. Music would remain a lifelong source of pleasure for him. But unlike two of his siblings who went on to become music professors, Joel never considered it more than a passionate avocation. He reserved his professional aspirations for the only mission that really mattered to him: saving the planet.

Joel Reynolds in his twenties, preparing to play in a string quartet with his sister, Martha, and father, Bill Reynolds.

It’s not clear from what wellspring of grandiosity Joel drew his self-confidence. Perhaps it was his special bond with his mother. Whatever its source, his unshakable optimism in the face of steep obstacles persisted throughout his life, despite periodic professional setbacks and marital struggles.

Joel’s devotion to preserving wilderness was easier to trace. During his family’s summer vacations at his grandmother’s house in nearby Palos Verdes, he and his siblings and cousins spent all day bodysurfing at Redondo Beach. As a teenager, he began to explore California’s wild places. His father built a cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains with five other faculty families. Whenever he could, Joel holed up in the cabin to practice his violin in seclusion and to hike the mountains. It was a revelation to discover—within a few hours’ drive from the smog belt of the valley—the foothills of the southern Sierra Nevadas in full spring blossom, the rugged peaks of Kings Canyon National Park, and the vaulted cathedral groves of Sequoia National Park. He climbed Mount Whitney’s 14,505-foot peak and planned a summerlong Mexico-to-Canada hike along the 3,000-mile Pacific Crest Trail—until the necessity of getting a paying summer job intervened.

Among his civic role models, Joel placed the Kennedy family on a special pedestal. He idolized their passion for culture, social justice, and family cohesion. To the 15-year-old Joel, Robert Kennedy personified intelligence, compassion, and street fighter grit in service to social justice. Joel followed the progress of the 1968 Democratic presidential primaries with almost unbearable excitement as California emerged as the likely climax of the march toward nomination. Joel was already looking forward to working on Kennedy’s fall campaign.

Kennedy’s assassination on the night of his California primary victory in June of 1968 broke Joel’s heart, but not his idealism or his activism. In an act of epistolary catharsis, he spent the summer typing letters to each of the 104 delegates and alternates to the Republican National Convention, urging them to nominate the moderate Nelson Rockefeller. He withstood the disappointment of Richard Nixon’s nomination, election, and inauguration. He refused to cave in to cynicism.

Two years later, when Joel won a national essay-writing contest sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English, he attracted the attention of top college recruiters. An admissions officer from Harvard came to town, took him out to lunch, and invited him to visit the university that spring. But Joel’s father balked at the idea of sending him to a private college. Joel’s older brother Chris, also an excellent student, had continued to share a bedroom with Joel at home while attending UC Riverside, where the tuition was virtually free for faculty members’ children.

Joel was valedictorian of his high school in 1971. At graduation, he inveighed against society’s casual acceptance of violence in a speech that drew heavily from both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Three months later, he followed Chris to UC Riverside, and he lived at home throughout college.