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."

Comments

Yeah right

[jtrainor]

Sonar is too useful for the Navy to accept restrictions on how it's used. This suit will go nowhere.

Re:Yeah right

[MrFlannel]

You play like you practice.

Re:Yeah right

[tsotha]

I live near Bremerton, Washington, and so know a lot of ex sub-mariners. Most of them tell me that in all their years on subs, they NEVER used active sonar. It gives out too much useful information to anyone who might be trying to locate the sub.

Well, yeah, they were on a platform that depends on stealth for safety. Subs don't go active unless they're sure they've been discovered. On the other hand, there's lots of platforms that use active sonar, like helos, sonobouys, and destroyers.

The other point to consider is whether or not this stuff would be used against another navy in wartime. If you plan to use a system under pressure, you have to test it frequently and train under the most realistic conditions possible. My prediction is this suit won't go anywhere, except maybe a face-saving settlement that doesn't have any real effect. Personally, I'd rather the navy was given every lattitude to train - when a war comes it's too late.

Re:Yeah right

[medelliadegray]

real war, versus training are two different beasts. the training aspect SHOULD be altered to be less dangerous to marine life.

i fully believe that training is hella important beforhand. BUT you dont see the navy jets firing real rockets at each other in training because it'll kill.

Why is it so hard for them to use the sonar differently in training? I didnt RFA but the headline even said that they wanted the navy to first listen for animals, then progressively turn on their sonar systems such that animals had a chance to flee. whats so hard about that? how is having animals within your training area going to adversely effect your training?

dumb.

Re:Priorities?

[Anonymous Coward]

OOOH evil TERRORISTS!

Do you believe everything your government tells you?

I love Westerners..

[boomgopher]

I hope everyone realizes that it's shit like this that gives environmentalism a bad name - and why regular guys like me vote against anyone who says they are environmentalists.

It's nice that we have (for the most part) stopped killing whales, but this is ridiculous. People need to get a life, and go protest something more important, like, say, the enslavement of 6 year old girls as prostitutes in Cambodia.

Re:I love Westerners..

[TerminaMorte]

No... it's not ignorance. I think the reason that 'regular guys like him' vote against enviornmentalists is because they are bat-shit insane.
 
For example, comparing the killing of animals to the holocaust. http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/02/28/peta.ho locaust
 
Sadly, this isn't the worse things enviornmentalist groups have done. No, that would probably be comparing the owning of pets to owning human slaves. http://www.animalrights.net/archives/year/2005/000 353.html. And that's not even bringing up the Animal Liberation Front (a group of terrorists who firebomb research labs)
 
It's hard to vote for a group of people who are so morally replusive that they make W.A.R. look reasonable.

Re:I love Westerners..

[aether_1980]

This seems like a poorly thought-out comment to me. Basically, you are claiming that all environmentalists are terrorists and/or insane? I guess the same would then apply to all Christians, given some of the less than intelligent things a small fractions of their number have done in the past.

The CNN article doesn't really have much detail. Some trivial googling yielded the following links:

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/nlfa.asp
http://www.eurocbc.org/sonar_lfas_implicated_in_wh ale_deaths_30oct2002page1253.html

which have more useful information. I think the bigger problem is that the US Navy want to deploy a large scale, permanent sonar system to monitor the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Such a system would flood both areas of sea with very high volume sonar:

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file =/headlines01/0618-03.htm

Anyway, there is a lot of additional information around about this. Personally, I think the problem of finding submarines should be solvable in a more elegant way than flooding 2 oceans with sonar.

Cheers,

Rhys Hill

well, here's a cynical explanation

[Quadraginta]

What struck me about this article was the Navy's response, namely that they were already doing most of what the NRDC wanted. They sounded a bit bewildered, actually.

So what's up? Well, for a really cynical explanation, consider this. According to the linked article, the peak season for getting people to donate money to nonprofits and charitable groups is just before Christmas, a time rapidly approaching, and nonprofit execs are already forseeing a reduced supply because of the previous demand from Katrina, a sort of bad-news burnout.

Now if I were fundraiser in chief at NRDC, contemplating our usual Christmas appeal for donations mailing, I'd be worried about this. I might, depending on how desperate I was, consider advising that we do something to get our name in the news, something we could describe in our fundraising letter to illustrate how dire is our need for contributions right now.

Of course, I'd recommend that we be careful to pick a cause sure to tug at the heartstrings in the Christmas season. Say, a threat to mommy and baby whales in their breeding grounds.

Not saying this is true at all. Just that it's something to consider. Just because they carry weapons doesn't mean the Navy are always uncaring brutes. Just because they have photos of adorable animals on their newsletter doesn't mean nonprofit XYZ isn't as willing as the next firm to cynically grandstand a bit for the sake of next year's salary increases.

Re:well, here's a cynical explanation

[Quadraginta]

Well, no. They're not training "to kill humans." They're training to defend humans, if necessary with their lives. It may be some other humans get killed in the process, but that is not their purpose. And, someone who cares about people he's never met with such selfless dedication that he's willing to lay his life down for them seems like a good candidate for caring about defending innocent lives in general, including those of animals.

The reasons why someone is prepared to kill another human are very important when we ask what that preparedness means. The issue cannot be reduced, as you have, to a trivial syllogism: "If they prepare to kill, they must be callous killers."

In another /. comment thread, a parent commented that he might be prepared to hurt someone who for stupid and hateful reasons prevented him from getting medical care to his child. I think most people see that as admirable dedication to a child, an example of selfless devotion to the welfare of someone weak. But by your cramped moral calculus, we ought to have been surprised -- if he is prepared to hurt a person for any purpose, he can't really care for a child. I hope you can see how absurd that argument would be.

Killing someone may be a depraved evil act, an act of murder, and preparing to do so may demonstrate that a person is a true wretch. But killing a person may also be a great and moral act as well, an act of courage and noble purpose which saves the lives of countless others. It all depends on the circumstances. You can't expect a slogan to substitute for careful thought in deciding what a preparedness to kill means.

Re:well, here's a cynical explanation

[Quadraginta]

The Navy PR people...do this for a living. They know how to spin the story to hook people like you.

Alas, my point is that the NRDC people also "do this for a living" and also "know how to spin the story to hook people," albeit not people like me.

In fact, your argument seems more relevant to the NRDC than the Navy. 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. If they screw it up, well, they might have to get along with more restrictions on how they drive their ships around, but they're hardly in any danger of being disbanded and having to earn a living driving taxis, water taxis I guess.

On the other hand, if the NRDC doesn't convince people that the Navy (or whatever bad guy they've got in the crosshairs) isn't a threat dire enough to require you sending them a check for $20, $50, or whatever you can afford (every bit helps), then the corporation might well break up and everyone will have to get a job flipping burgers.

In other words, for the Navy proving the NRDC wrong is a matter of convenience, but for the NRDC proving the Navy wrong is a matter of survival. Which group is more motivated to, well, exaggerate things a smidge?

Re:well, here's a cynical explanation

[maxpublic]

So who do you trust more? The US Military or the Natural Resources Defence Council? I'd say that's a no brainer.

Yep, the military wins hands-down. The NRDC is well-known for it's inability to accept new information which might put certain of its fundraising activities in question, especially where science is concerned. They have a track record for lambasting any scientist who doesn't toe their party line and support them in every proclamation, no matter how thinly supported by evidence that proclamation is. They're fanatics to the core, little different than GreenPeace, Earth First!, or PETA.

The military, despite what the conspiracy fools say, doesn't outright lie nearly as often as people think. They just say "that's classified, now get the fuck out of my face" and leave it at that.

Max

Re:well, here's a cynical explanation

[Quadraginta]

Are you in the navy?

Nope.

But if your comment is meant to suggest that you suspect people often have practical and personal motives for public statements that purport to defend innocents -- why, you'll have seen from my earlier posts that I quite agree.

I think this is a great idea

[masterpenguin]

turning off sonar at predictable times sounds like a great idea. Its a good thing that groups like drug cartels can't get their hands on advanced military equipment like russian submarines Its not like terrorists groups learn from drug runners on how to get past american security.