Navy's Plans for Sonar Facility Challenged

[Judi Lynn]

Navy's Plans for Sonar Facility Challenged
Danger Posed to Whales Is Cited

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 18, 2006; Page A02

The civilian agency in charge of marine issues has sharply challenged the Navy's plans to build an underwater sonar training range in the Atlantic Ocean, saying that the military significantly underestimated the danger posed to whales and other marine mammals and that the science the Navy used to reach its conclusions is flawed.

In a technical letter to the Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the Navy had neglected to address the likelihood that its mid-frequency sonar would kill some whales and that the highly endangered right whale makes its annual migrations near the proposed site off North Carolina and could be threatened. But most telling, the NOAA letter said that the Navy had used a measure for allowable noise 100 times as high as the level recommended by the agency.


The sonar testing range is a high priority for the Navy, which says that it needs an Atlantic Ocean site to train sailors to detect foreign submarines that come near American shores. But it is trying to get the project approved at a time when scientists have become increasingly convinced that the loud blasts of active sonar have caused whales to strand themselves and die.

The NOAA letter, which is a formal comment on the Navy's environmental impact statement regarding the sonar range, is the most public indication so far of what agency insiders have described as friction between NOAA and Navy officials regarding the sonar issue. In the past, NOAA has generally supported the Navy's plans with reservations, but the most recent letter makes little effort to hide significant disagreements.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702258.html?nav=rss_nation

[Trillo]

1. We should be able to fly to other planets in other solar systems?

We can't take care of this planet. We don't deserve another one.

[AlecBGreen]

2. yeah look out

I heard them Ruskies are patrolling our shores with hundreds of nucular ICBMs. Better spend a few billion to stop 'em. But hey, I got an idea...lets let foreign countries run our ports. That should be totally safe :eyes: Morans.

[acmejack]

3. Here is the problem

"Much of the letter was taken up with a technical discussion about how much noise a whale can stand before it changes its behavior and suffers harm. The Navy relied on tests involving whales in captivity and concluded they would generally not be harmed by sound below 190 decibels. But NOAA argued that whales and other marine mammals in the wild are likely to react differently to noise than captive, trained animals and said that studies of animals in the oceans supported their view. It recommended a maximum allowable noise level of 173 decibels, which is more than 100 times quieter than the 190 decibel standard."

This is not even close to the true output level of these systems. Bear in mind 3 dB=100% increase in power! I won't say what it is since it is classified and I'm not the Vice President. I was once involved with these systems, I worked on systems that listened ONLY. When I was reassigned into pinging systems, notably the low frequency whale killing project I resigned. Never worked in the military field again (and who says Lockheed Martin has NO sense of humor).

[RC]

4. The pain threshold in compressible air is 120 DB

And the Navy can generate 190 DB in noncompressible water?
Let's burn down the forest to find an ember to light your cigarette why don't we.

[acmejack]

6. Way more.

Limited by the cavitation threshold (where the water literally boils).

[RC]

8. Talk about your crimes against nature.

This has got to be one.
We have to get the paranoid right into treatment before they destroy the rest of the planet.

[Divernan]

5. How has NOAA escaped being gutted by Bush, like other fed agencies?

Look for whoever authored this critique to be forced into early retirement. Or maybe they'll send him/her to Gitmo for being unpatriotic. Some half-witted Bush political appointee was asleep on the job, as per usual, that he/she didn't stop NOAA from objecting to this project.

Get a clue, military-industrial complex/Pentagon. Other major powers are NOT devoting their national budgets to developing super-stealth submarines. Other major or developing powers have started entering into their own trade agreements/treaties with each other and leaving the US out in the cold. So why should we be the best armed bully on the playground, when no one else comes to our playground anymore?

[seafan]

7. Here are 2 very good articles about this:

From the North Carolina News and Observer:

Can sonar, sea life mix?
January 3, 2006

Just as the U.S. Navy is gearing up to install a 660-square-mile sonar training range off the coast of North Carolina, evidence is mounting that sonar harms some whales.
Scientists link sonar to some fatal whale beachings, though they aren't certain how the underwater sound causes trouble. Some suspect it can startle animals, making them surface so fast that they get the decompression illness known as the bends.
Environmentalists suspect that Navy sonar caused the rare beaching of three whale species in January 2005 on the Outer Banks. A federal National Marine Fisheries Service report expected as early as this month may or may not clear that up.

snip

The Navy evaluated potential sonar range sites off North Carolina, Virginia and Florida. But it has long favored a patch of ocean 47 miles offshore of the Marines' Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville. It's at the edge of the continental shelf and in the path of the warm-water Gulf Stream. Waters there teem with many types of fishes, sea turtles, dolphins and whales.
Unexplained whale beachings were recorded long before sonar came along. But the technology, developed in the early 1900s, is increasingly suspected as playing a role. Since the 1990s, scientists have linked mid-frequency sonar blasts to a small number of strandings of beaked whales, species that are less likely to beach than other whales. Some of those whales live off North Carolina.

snip

Scientists tie mid-frequency sonar blasts to whale beachings in three Atlantic Ocean island groups -- Madeira, the Canary Islands and the Bahamas. The Navy concedes that its sonar was a culprit in one incident, when 17 beaked whales stranded in the Bahamas in 2000. The military blamed narrow underwater channels, which limited where the animals could swim to escape the sound.
A 2003 report in the science journal Nature found that some of the 14 beaked whales that stranded in the Canary Islands in 2002 had internal injuries resembling damage from gas bubbles, a symptom of the bends. The Navy says that beaked whales may be a special case and identifies four species found off North Carolina as most vulnerable.

snip

Federal laws, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, forbid the harming or harassing of whales and other sea mammals, including dolphins. So the National Marine Fisheries Service is reviewing the Navy's plans to protect those creatures.

snip

The marine fisheries agency this month is expected to release a report exploring what caused the mysterious whale strandings on the North Carolina coast last winter. At least 37 whales washed ashore in mid-January near Oregon Inlet. Most were pilot whales, but one was a newborn minke whale and two were dwarf sperm whales.

snip

Environmentalists say mid-frequency sonar used by the USS Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group during offshore exercises may be at fault.

snip

Also, Doug Nowacek, a Florida State University biologist, has conducted sound studies on right whales. Some, he said, get startled by sound and move to the surface and stay there. If right whales are bothered by sonar, they could place themselves in greater danger of colliding with a ship if startled, he said.
"This certainly has the potential to significantly disrupt or harm those animals," Nowacek said.
The marine fisheries service is "taking a hard look" at the Navy's claims about right whales, said Leathery, the service's section director.

http://www.newsobserver.com/100/story/384371.html



Another Right Whale Calf Killed Off Florida - Tail Sliced Off

by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, YubaNet
January 12th, 2006

In the wake of another critically endangered North Atlantic right whale calf found dead as the apparent victim of a ship strike, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) today officially petitioned the U.S. Coast Guard to use its emergency power to establish safety zones in Florida where the vulnerable calves spend the winter.

On January 10, 2006, a right whale calf was found dead near Jacksonville, with its tail brutally sliced off, injuries consistent with propeller wounds. Ship strikes are the largest known cause of death for the North Atlantic right whale, considered one of the planet's most endangered species with less than 300 animals left in existence. In the past year, five percent of the total female breeding population has been killed, as well as two near term calves.

A large cohort of calves born this summer is the slow-moving whale's only chance for survival. Right whale calves are particularly vulnerable to ship strikes due to their undeveloped diving capability. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has assigned a "Potential Biological Removal" of zero to the species, meaning that every new human-caused death could push the species over the brink of extinction.

"This is the critical moment for the Coast Guard to act," stated New England PEER Director Kyla Bennett, a former federal biologist whose organization is also pushing for adoption of long-stalled proposed rules by NOAA that would require reduced ship speeds, rerouting and channel restrictions to minimize ship traffic in sensitive calving and migratory areas. "If this generation of calves is decimated by ship collisions, the species is unquestionably doomed. The Coast Guard has demonstrated that it as an agency that gets the job done and done well...when they decide to do so. We are asking the Coast Guard to use their emergency powers to intervene and help prevent ship strikes of right whales, a role that the Coast Guard can and should undertake."

snip

http://www.seaflow.org/article.php?id=406



I do believe that the bursts of sonar disorient the whales, then, as they try to escape to the surface too fast, they suffer "the bends", then are either injured by ships or succumb to internal auditory organ damage/bends.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to end the cold war conservatives' rule?

[acmejack]

9. yes it would.

It would be wonderful to apply those financial resources to the myriad problems in America, instead of pouring it into the pockets of the fat cats of Carlisle Group and the like. Not to mention the crimes against nature committed in the name of the all powerful "National Defense" card which trumps everything else, including oxygen for grandmothers as we now know. Oh wait, that was a millionaires tax cut, sometimes I just get my injustices confused, please forgive an old man.

[MasonJar]

10. Do we Americans have to daily inflict harm on our fellow world

companions? We are the SHAME of history. Please let the dems win in 06 so we can impeach these charlatans. How do we reach the Navy?