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US Navy Limits Use of Whale-Harming Sonar
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Navy has agreed to new limits on its use of sonar and explosives in certain areas of the Pacific. Sonar is known to be capable of disrupting communication between whales and other sea life. There have also been incidents in the past where explosives have killed dolphins that got too close to a training exercise. A Navy spokesperson said, "Recognizing our environmental responsibilities, the Navy has been, and will continue to be, good environmental stewards as we prepare for and conduct missions in support of our national security." The new agreement (PDF) also requires quick reviews of the Navy's activities if there are marine-life deaths in the future.
This is an awesome agreement, amazing that they Navy did agree to anything. Yet also amazing how limited it is in scope, time, and expiry provisions.
The agreement here is not just about SONAR but also about:
pp 7 - Not ramming whales head on during training exercises
pp 8 - Not dropping explosives in prime ecological areas known to be heavily populated with whales.
pp 9 - Not using hull mounted mid-frequency sonar
The SONAR levels the Navy use for sonar is actually so loud that mass strandings regular occur with US Navy war games, see http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mjasny/us_navy_implicated_in_new_mass.htm. The beached whales have bleeding ears and cracked skulls. And those are just the ones that made it to shore.
Many comments here suggest the Navy avoids SONAR for fear of giving away position. It's not subs that use the high-power sonar, it's destroyers. Destroyers are not terribly worried about giving away their position. They use high-energy sonar for many things, including mine detection. See this video of a destroyer using sonar so loud people on whale watching boats could hear it above water, taken in the Orcas Islands north of Seattle, a very well known and sensititive whale breeding area. https://vimeo.com/35584781
Another thing they do is put incredibly loud sonar from a point in the south Indian Ocean, a location that has near line-of-sound to most other continents, and so loud it can be picked by receivers across the globe, providing like a CT scan of the ocean. That doesn't seem covered by this agreement.
However, it looks (from pp 3) like much of this agreement (pp 8 through 36 and 40) expires given just one opinion of “not likely to adversely affect” by US Fisheries department.