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Navy Sued for Sonar-Blasting Whales
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a CNN report about a suit brought against the U.S. Navy for sonar pollution. From the article: "The environmentalists want the Navy to use harmless passive sonar -- listening for sounds made by marine mammals themselves -- to locate the animals before using mid-frequency sonar. They also want the Navy to avoid migration and calving areas and to turn on sonar systems gradually so that the animals have time to flee."
Who said anything about predictable. Having it turned off whenever you go into a new area and listening on passive for a while is best practice generally anyway - once you start pinging whoever's on the receiving end definitely knows you're coming, wheras you may be able to hear them passively without getting detected.
I am trolling
Well, active sonars are not used on submarines only.
Surface ships use them too.
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And yet I noticed that you failed to cite a single empirical source published in an accredited, peer-reviewed scientific journal. The closest you came was the vague reference to "whale bends", which is NOT linked to sonar in any way, shape or form - except by environmentalists, who apparently can't be bothered to do research or get published.
Next time, try for some *real* science articles, not propaganda pieces. The propaganda only impresses the choir.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I've been a part of these sonar experiments, and let me tell you, there is a big misunderstanding of the physics of sound going on here.
So that the animals have time to flee????
Flee where? The next ocean? These are exremely low frequency transmissions. The only thing literally preventing the sound from traveling around the world is the placement of the continents. Once when these transmissions were being transmitted from Alaska, I was in a submarine just south of Hawaii and I was being woken up in my rack. It was very damned loud. When sound penetrates the hull of a sub it's notable for being either very close or very powerful.
I question the need for this technology because we have better means of tracking enemy ships and subs. We have MAD (magnetic anomaly detection), SOSUS, etc.
We don't have to be killing wildlife. And it does kill them....I've seen the reports.
I did point out there has been no massive marine mammal deaths in the vicinity of San Diego and Norfolk. One of San Diego's biggest tourist attractions is Whale Watching. IF Sonar hurts whales THEN there would be no whales to watch since the Navy has been transmitting 235db of Sonar off the coast of San Diego for 50+ years. IF Sonar killed whales, La Jolla beach would be covered in dead whales. Since it is not, I have to make the assumption that Sonar does not harm whales.
And I am not kidding...
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The Navy mostly gets paid for driving ships around and looking fierce. Keeping up the PR image at home with respect to whales is rather a secondary mission.
That's also a pretty fair estimation of how it works in other branches of the military. The Army, for example, has an Environmental Compliance Officer and NCO in every company. I'd say that for the common sense stuff, like energy conservation, protected habitat and proper disposal of POL, the rules are followed 95% of the time. Where I work, we have various chunks of the training area marked for an endangered bird and no one goes in those areas unless they're lost.
If it were a case where someone blatantly broke existing rules then I'd expect the PR guys to try to cover up or find a scapegoat. But that's not the situation here.
High frequency systems are used in shallow water though when distance isn't as important as accuracy (with a shorter wavelentgh, a high freq system is better for finding underwater obstacles/mines). It just happens that the ideal frequencies used in sonar match the frequencies used by marine mammals (actually, I think sonar tends to be higher in frequency, but it's still well within the hearing range of the animals).