US Navy Sonar Killing Whales by the hundreds?

I came across this article printed in the Saturday edition of one of my local papers. I thought it was pretty timely considering the Whale in London Thames story that held everyone's attention all weeked.

It seems the US Navy was doing some sonar tests off the coast of North Carolina and within a few hours 37 whales beached and eventually died.

That was in January 2005. Fast forward one year and the official report of the incident comes out and needless to say the exclusion of all mention of the Navy sonar testing has many in the area screaming foul.

A year later, environmental groups say the government's investigation of the whales' deaths smacks of a whitewash.

"All references to sonar have been systematically excised from the document," said Andrew Wetzler, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council

The council sued to have a preliminary necropsy report released. This week the government released two versions of the report, one of which is a revision a council spokesman says is watered down.

Reports on Whale Deaths Criticized

So, is there any precedent for this many whales beaching at one time? Well, 60 Whales beached and died 1 month earlier in New Zealand:

Scien tists Search for Common Clue Behind Mass Whale Strandings

So that's 60 and 37... Sounds like an impossible number of whales to beach themselves all at once. Okay how about 130 just three months ago:

AUSTRALIAN Navy ships off a Tasmanian beach during a mass stranding of pilot whales were using active sonar, a controversial military technology implicated in whale deaths.

The minesweepers, searching for a historic anchor, used short-range, high-frequency active sonar, the Defence Department said last night...

...A total of 130 long-finned pilot whales have died in this week's mass stranding east of Hobart. State wildlife officers were keeping watch against further beachings last night.

Only 18 whales were successfully returned to the water by teams of rescuers.

Navy Rejects Whale Blame

I searched further and discovered this isn't a new thing at all. It's been going on for 20 years!

Over the past 20 or so years, a number of mass whale stranding incidents have been reported in close proximity to military active sonar testing sites...

Bahamas (2000)
In March 2000, 16 whales of four different species stranded themselves in the Bahamas. Although two minke whales and eight of the beaked whales were rescued and sent back to the sea, the rest of them were already dead.

These strandings occurred within 24 hours of Navy mid-frequency testing in the area.

The Canary Islands (2002)
Fourteen beaked whales stranded on the beach during international military sonar exercises performed in this area in September 2002.

According to a report in the scientific journal Nature, the intense sonar pulses may have caused these beaked whales to ascend too rapidly, thus resulting in a physiological effect similar to decompression sickness in human divers. Examinations of the stranded whale carcasses showed gas bubbles formed within whales’ vital organs such as livers.

In addition to these incidents, Greece (1996), the Canary Islands (1985, 1988, 1989), and the U.S. Pacific Northwest coast (2003) have all experienced mass whale strandings in the vicinity of military active sonar exercises.

Mass Whale Strandings

So, there's ongoing, seemingly increasing, incidents of large numbers of whales beaching themselves at the same time. In many of these incidents there are *confirmed* Navy sonar excercises going on in the area. The Navy denies there's a sonar issue. Finally when it happens on a US beach, they actually have to do an investigation because the 37 dead whales are on the endangered species list. When the final report is at last delivered one year later, in 2 different versions, it doesn't even mention sonar? No wonder the interested parties all smell "cover up".

Originally posted by SKMDC1
So, there's ongoing, seemingly increasing, incidents of large numbers of whales beaching themselves at the same time. In many of these incidents there are *confirmed* Navy sonar excercises going on in the area. The Navy denies there's a sonar issue. Finally when it happens on a US beach, they actually have to do an investigation because the 37 dead whales are on the endangered species list. When the final report is at last delivered one year later, in 2 different versions, it doesn't even mention sonar? No wonder the interested parties all smell "cover up".

Problem is that they don't know what caused the whales to beach themselves. You prove that it is sonar and I'll be the first person to help with efforts to get its use banned. In my opinion they are too quick to blame sonar. Nobody is doing any real research into why this is happening they are just accepting that it is sonar. There are other ways of putting noise into the water. We have had several major seismic events over the last few years.

When I was in the US Navy my squadron specialized in anti-submarine warfare. The majority of sub hunts take place using passive sensors. You essentially put a microphone into the water and listen for manmade noise. While doing this I was surprised at the amount of seismic noise that we picked up.

The old WWII movies showing all of these ships in a row blasting their sonar in order to try to find a submarine are ancient history. Today's subs will hear you coming while you are out of detection range and move to avoid you or attack you. The only sonar that has any heavy use is the fathometer that is used to find the depth of the water. A military fathometer puts out a low powered, highly directional signal to avoid its signal from being picked up by the enemy.

It is my opinion that blaming sonar for these events is just the so called "environmental movement's" anti-military bias coming to the top. This can be traced back to the Cold War when the Soviets helped fund their movement in exchange for their protests against US and NATO military forces.

The Sound Of Silence

I'm former U.S. Navy and I find claims that active sonar doesn't harm sea life to be impossible to believe.

I am concerned about the very strong possibility that use of high-energy active sonar does indeed cause serious consequences, possibly including whale beachings and other kinds death or disability of hundreds of species ranging from simple to complex.

I think it would be more constructive if we were to avoid dragging selective outrage into the discussion by singling out one navy for what pretty much all of them do -- as even demonstrated by a source cited in the thread starter (Australian Navy).

Hence I would like to remind those of my fellow members who may be inclined to overlook a key fact:

The U.S. Navy isn't the only navy that uses active sonar.

Knowing what I know about sonar technology, I seriously doubt it's even the worst offender.

While the topic question is a valid one, and maybe I'm just feeling a bit defensive because of all the anti-U.S. propaganda payloads I have to wade through around here on a daily basis, I think it would help tremendously if we bear in mind that this issue isn't just about the U.S. Navy.




[edit on 2/10/2006 by Majic]

I searched further and discovered this isn't a new thing at all. It's been going on for 20 years!

Whales have beached themselves long before sonar was ever invented. Therefore this is nothing but Eco babble.

All Eco terrorists want to do is blame the governments of the world so they can sue them and fill their coffers for some of their useless nonsense/claims.

Endangered Specie

Originally posted by shots
All Eco terrorists want to do is blame the governments of the world so they can sue them and fill their coffers for some of their useless nonsense/claims.

Well yeah, there's that, too. Gotta make a living somehow.

There may be nothing to all this but profit motive.

However, anyone who's seen what happens to fish that have the grave misfortune to be near a high-energy sonar emitter when it's being tested in port knows the foundation of this concern isn't necessarily cut from whole cloth.

I'm not worried about most sonar systems, which operate either passively or at very low energy levels that are highly unlikely to harm anything.

High-energy active sonar systems are another thing entirely.

Anyone who's ever been inside a submarine that's being pinged by the ASW elements of a surface warfare group has a practical feel for just how powerful their output can be.

If it can drive submariners nuts at a distance, there's a chance it may not be so good for sea life at closer ranges.

Just sayin'.

HAARP. THis is what the US Navy is involved in, and won't reveal any information on its actual uses and purpose. The "sonar" hypothesis is only a lure by the masse media to divert public attention's from the HAARP technology. Ever read or heard anything in a major news network or newspaper about HAARP?

Want any facts?

1- The HAARP antennas emit ELF waves that are at the same levels than the peripheral sounds that whales emit and recognize. These sounds are not the ones we hear from them with our ears, but the ultrasounds part of their spectrum that only specific breeds of animal can hear.

2- Among HAARP's on-paper purpose was to be able to locate submarines using ELF technology that allows the sounds waves to cross large portions of the Earth crust, and bounce at the lower ionosphere, thus being usable as a "global radar" system for submarines.

3- HAARP is fully operational since the late '90s... anybody can find records of massive beached whales phenomenon that happened in the '80s or '70s? I bet you won't, as all the whales that have beached in the past were isolated cases and most of these were sick or dead when they beached.



[edit on 13/2/06 by Echtelion]

Critical Mass

Originally posted by Echtelion
3- HAARP is fully operational since the late '90s... anybody can find records of massive beached whales phenomenon that happened in the '80s or '70s? I bet you won't, as all the whales that have beached in the past were isolated cases and most of these were sick or dead when they beached.

I remember stories of mass whale strandings when I was a kid in the sixties, and at that time, it was something of a matter of common folklore about whales committing mass suicide. They happen every year around the world.

Depending on who you ask, mass whale strandings have been going on for all of recorded human history.

www.google.com...

This suggests that mass strandings are not necessarily caused by HAARP or active sonar use.

However, that doesn't mean they are harmless to sea life.

Beachcomber Bonanza

As an intriguing aside, historically speaking, driving whales ashore was also done deliberately as a means of catching them for fun and profit – in addition to opportunistic hauls when whales beached themselves spontaneously:

A century ago, Cape Codders hunted whales

U.S. Navy Fesses Up – In One Case

I found the following article interesting, in as much as it points out that the U.S. Navy has acknowledged at least partial responsibility for a mass whale stranding off the Bahamas in 2000:

Whale Stranding in N.C. Followed Navy Sonar Use

As pointed out above, that doesn't mean the U.S. Navy is responsible for all strandings. Also, it may not be the case that whales will necessarily beach themselves the moment a destroyer fires up its SQS-53.

Still, it's worth an honest analysis and, ideally, practical steps being taken by all navies to reduce undue harm to the denizens of the ocean that don't wear uniforms.

Concept:

The Robust Passive Sonar (RPS) program developed innovative, adaptive signal processing algorithms for passive submarine and surface ship towed arrays that suppress the acoustic interference generated by surface shipping and increased the detectability of threat submarines. At the lower acoustic frequencies, shipping interference represents the primary noise background limiting the performance of existing sonar systems in littoral areas. Net system performance gains of 10-20 dB were the RPS' objective utilizing precise notching of shipping interference and the algorithms and array geometries used to accomplish these gains would dictate future tactical sonar designs. The program successfully collected high quality, mobile, multi-line, towed array acoustic and ancillary data and utilized this data to develop and assess signal processing architectures and algorithms.



Program Accomplishments:

Completed processing architecture and algorithms development.

Evaluated logarithms in laboratory testing.

Completed system trade studies for alternative acoustic aperture concepts

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robust Passive Sonar (RPS) has been tested and in use today. during operations few marine mammals were effected due to high db waves.

One of their own reports, from the Bahamas, concerning beaked whales.

www.bahamaswhales.org...

And one more, from 2007.


www.broowaha.com...

And the option to overturn/overrule states' rights, concerning negative environmental/economic impact from the damage of sonar devices used at the coasts.

www.fas.org...

reply to post by SKMDC1


Just watching a documentary on Animal Planet called Mermaids: The Body Found. A biologist was talking about a mass whale beaching where all the whales were found with blood running from their ears and internal trauma had occurred causing legions internally in all the whales.

The US Navy has been and is continuing to kill whales and other sea-life, this has got to stop. Major cover-up going on with the causes of the mass beachings, it's the US Navy travelling around the world in submarines killing everything in the waters. This documentary focussed on beachings that occurred in 2004.