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

[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.

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]

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?