Sonar and marine wildlife

[Ray Moscow]

This has long been my suspicion, but here's an interesting SciAm article on the subject:

Does Military Sonar Kill Marine Wildlife? (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-military-sonar-kill&sc=DD_20090610)

Unfortunately for many whales, dolphins and other marine life, the use of underwater sonar (short for sound navigation and ranging) can lead to injury and even death. Sonar systems—first developed by the U.S. Navy to detect enemy submarines—generate slow-rolling sound waves topping out at around 235 decibels; the world’s loudest rock bands top out at only 130. These sound waves can travel for hundreds of miles under water, and can retain an intensity of 140 decibels as far as 300 miles from their source.

OK, your highly intelligent species has evolved extremely sensitive hearing to aid you in finding prey by ecolocation, communicating with others of your kind over vast distances, etc.

Then someone from a hairless ape species blasts you with 140 decibels because they are afraid some other individual hairless apes are going to sneak up on them from underwater.

Just be glad that whales don't have nukes to show us how they feel about the situation.

[Valheru]

A week or two ago we down here in South Africa had a mass beaching of whales. The whales that were saved only proceeded to beach themselves again, as if they insisted that dry land was the place to be and they were not going back into the water.

There was some speculation of sonar arrays being responsible, but to my knowledge South Africa doesn't have anything like the detection arrays of the US, UK, Japan and Russia. There's been no substantial evidence of anything. It's a mystery.

We also have a VERY small conventional sub fleet (like, maybe three or four diesel subs) that would in all likelyhood not be able to cause this.

The problem is, you don't know what's down there. For all we know, the US and Russians are playing cat and mouse around the southern tip of Africa and nobody would ever know except the participants.

[Ray Moscow]

Yeah, I was down there when it happened. This kind of thing is really sad.

[Oolon Colluphid]

This has long been my suspicion, but here's an interesting SciAm article on the subject:

Does Military Sonar Kill Marine Wildlife? (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-military-sonar-kill&sc=DD_20090610)
I've had it in SMOGGM for some time:
http://oolon.awardspace.com/SMOGGM.htm#nogilldolphins


Jepson et al, 'Gas-bubble lesions in stranded cetaceans', Nature 425, 575-576 (9 October 2003) (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6958/abs/425575a.html)

BBC: Noise pollution hurting whales and dolphins (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/animals/newsid_1708000/1708957.stm)

[premjan]

D'oh

[Christina]

There was a big battle about that here years ago before Monterey Bay became a national marine sanctuary and the Navy was still denying that it had any effect on marine mammals. Now things like that don't get discussed here anymore thankfully.