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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."
Past September during NATO maneuverse killed eleven whales died. More info here.
They are obviously not aware of the Navy's latest plans to use high intensity soundwaves to destroy incoming torpedos
No, it's more like telling radio and microwave tower operators to use white blinking lights instead of red ones because the red ones interfere with bird migration (really -- they do).
This sort of thing does not interfere with any sort of economic well-being, nor does it require a significant cost up front, like your analogy presumes.
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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.
So, don't be too sure the Navy couldn't live with some restrictions.
Yeah but those are submarines, which as far as I know try to operate quietly. A carrier battle group won't exactly be quiet, so they might as well use active sonar since they're going to be noticed already.
Let me start by saying I'm a retired Sonar technician. I spent 20 years in the US Navy working on various Sonar systems. Never mind the fact active Sonar is the best way to catch a diesel powered submarine. Never mind the fact almost every country in the world has diesel submarines, including Iran. Lets just focus on whether or not Sonar hurts marine mammals. The Navy has been using Sonar for over 50 years and there hasn't been a mass extinction of marine mammals due to Sonar. If you believe the environmentalists and then consider the number of ship's that have been blasting sonar into the ocean in the vicinity of San Diego, CA and Norfolk, VA, the natural assumption would be massive marine mammal deaths in those areas. Guess what? It hasn't happened. In fact, one of the joys of my job was the listening to the dolphins that were attracted by the Sonar. They certainly didn't appear stressed. The Navy has spent millions of dollars trying to determine if Sonar hurts marine mammals. The Navy already complies with most of the environmentalist requests just in case Sonar "might" hurt a marine mammal. I was personally involved in an investigation over the death of a dozen beak whales off of the Canary islands. There was 5 Spanish ships and 1 US ship. The Spanish ships were closer to shore than the US ship. Guess who got blamed for these whales beaching themselves? In the end, it was determined the whales beached themselves trying to get away from the shipping traffic, not the Sonar. The Spanish ships sonar operate in the same frequency range as the US. Since these ships transmit in this area on a regular basis and there have been no mass deaths of beak whales Sonar was absolved of the cause. There still has been no definitive proof after 50 years. If you want to protect marine mammals, go after the industries that regularly dump trash and industrial waste. Have whales beached themselves? Yes! Does anyone know why? No! "Hmmm look around...oh yeah! The Navy has money, lets sue them for research dollars!" It's a frivolous lawsuit by a bunch of folks that have nothing better to do than hate their own government.
It should also be noted that since the late '90's the Navy has on a number of occasions let whale researchers use their equipment, or listen to parts of recordings made while on patrols, to do research on the animals. One of the more notable bits of research included the discovery that there were *at least* 800 blue whales in the northern Atlantic, when it was presumed that blue whales had been wiped out in this area. Turns out the blues that survived whaling just became more adept at avoiding ships, and passed this knowledge onto their young.
There was no mandate for this cooperation. They did it "just because", after the Navy changed it's policy on the use of some of its listening equipment (and recordings), which previously had been blanketed as classified. Why? Because quite a few folks in the Navy actually *like* whales, and a sizable fraction are amateur whale enthusiasts who thought it might be of use to their more professional counterparts.
The military is not the heart of evil that some people seem to think it is.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I get the feeling that many of these groups are in it to "fight the establishment" and for the power to meddle with people's lives.
I'll go one further. They seem to be doing their best to destroy all technological advancement, decrying every step forward as furthering some great evil against their god - Gaia. They are, for want of a better description, a sort of militant environmental Amish, willing to use whatever dirty tactic at hand to freeze all development so we'll be stuck in a state of perpetual crisis, where they can forever shrilly scream about how the rest of us heathens are doomed. I think there worst nightmare would be having the entire Earth's populatin turn 'green' overnight, because who then would they have to blame, to point fingers at, to call interdict down upon?
A further subset, characterized by the Earth First! and PETA folks, would only be happy if all but a few tens of thousands of human beings were wiped out, with the pathetic remainder returning to a hunter-gatherer existence - which would no doubt include their righteous selves as the new priests to their Mother Earth goddess. From that vantage they could spend the rest of their lives telling us what dirty little sinners we are just for daring the soil the surface of our Holy Mother with our filthy feet, and how greatful we should be that they, the priests, are there to show us The One True and Right Way(TM).
Disclaimer: I live in a university town, in Oregon. I get exposed to these crackpots on a regular basis, and college kids - supposedly the best and brightest of us - lap it up like born-agains at a tent revival. I don't know what they're teaching in college anymore, but it sure as hell isn't critical thinking.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Vanderlaan, A.S.M., Hay, A.E., and Taggart, C.T., 2003. Characterization of North Atlantic right whale Eubalaena glacialis sounds in the Bay of Fundy. IEEE J. Oceanic Eng., 28(2), 164-173.
Laurinolli, M.H., Hay, A.E., Descharnais, F., and Taggart, C.T., 2003. Localization of North Atlantic right whale sounds in the Bay of Fundy using a sonobuoy array. Marine Mammal Science, 19(4), 708-723.
These papers (and others that are not yet published) come from a Physics-Biology interdisciplinary collaboration at Dalhousie University in Canada; for more see http://oceanography.dal.ca/index.html and follow links to get to Hay's (Physics) page or Taggart's (Biology) page.
This work has already led to policy changes, e.g the shipping lanes in the Bay of Fundy have been shifted, to try to reduce the probability of ships striking whales.
More work is needed, and not just on the acoustics. For example, we have no clear understanding of what happens when a ship strikes a whale at a given angle and closing speed, so it is impossible to make policy recommendations on the speed of ships in key areas. (It is undesirable to build up statistics by observing nature, because the right-whale population is on a path of extinction, so every individual matters.)
third-party enviromentalists (and lawyers of course) standing by (in Armani suits of course)
I spent almost fifteen years of my career in environmental organizations, and I can tell you in all that time I never saw a single Armani suit, unless it was on TV. Sandals -- check. Jeans and T shirt -- check. Above costuming made "dressy" by throwing a blazer over -- check.
Of course, you do need to look rich to ask for a lot of money. Things may be different on the West Coast, but in the Northeast Armani would definitely mark you as a poseur. I've seen more of comfortably scuffed, rumpled Boston Brahmin costume affected. Dockers, stout walking shoes, tweed jacket and polo shirt for every day; for meetings dress shoes, blue blazer, suitably themed tie. Suits are mainly worn by accounting and finance types, I can't think of many instances where I've seen them on others. Usually if the distinctive old money look (basically something you might wear tramping around the stables while making it completely clear you're not a groom) isn't right, then you go right for evening wear.
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Maybe you slept through grade school biology, or maybe you dropped out. Food chains are CONNECTED, and every time a species is eliminated, it causes repercussions all over the place. So yea, whales are definately part of our natural resources because they're connected some way with everything else that lives in the sea.
Dork.
Naval sonar isn't just a nuisance - it's a very serious problem. I live in Seattle and there have been whale-damaging amplitutes of sonar received in the Puget Sound that came all the way from California. Active sonar actually kills or seriously maims aquatic life (especially marine mammals who use echolocation).
This isn't a meaningless, treehugging, war-ignoring request being made to the navy. What the navy is doing is the equivalent of old-time whaling in terms of the effect it's having - except it hurts even more than whales.
World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
I can say that, after spending 10 years as a sonar tech on a surface ship in the US Navy, there are a lot of people writing a lot here about something that they don't know much about - and pretty much getting it wrong. Even in littoral waters, passive sonar is an effective asset, but for a final targeting solution, nothing beats the accuracy of active sonar.
Subs tend to not use active sonar for what ought to be obvious reasons. Surface ships don't use it as a primary sensor because it's relatively easy for the target to hide below the thermal layer. Even aviation assets don't use it for the number one reason that everyone else doesn't use it: once you ping the enemy, they know that you're coming.
But, once you've made the decision to attack, you've got to have a very accurate fix on the target. Active sonar does that. Active sonar is the sensor of last resort - once you start pinging, you've given away the fact that you know where the enemy is - and the enemy knows that, too. No ship, submarine or aircraft in any Navy cruises around with their active sonar blaring away - number one, it's like waving a big old flag saying "here I am" and number two, it's about impossible to sleep through if your berthing area is below decks. You won't go deaf, but you won't sleep, either.
Also, just as anectodal evidence, when we participated in exercises off of the Bahamas and Florida, we never suffered a dearth of dolphins swimming with the ship, even when we were actively pinging a target. The sonar would be going off like crazy and the dolphins would stay right with the bow of the ship. And in the Gulf of Oman, there didn't seem to be any shortage of whales, either, even though there were destroyers alongside of a repair tender operating low and mid frequency active sonar for maintenance.
So don't get the idea that the Navy is out there pounding the water with sonar - they're not. And based on what I've seen and read, I'm not even close to being convinced that sonar is negatively affecting the cetacean population.
-h-