Report: Ocean Noise Harms Dolphins, Whales

[Judi Lynn]

Report: Ocean Noise Harms Dolphins, Whales
By PAUL CHAVEZ
Associated Press Writer

November 22, 2005, 4:03 AM EST

LOS ANGELES -- Increasing levels of ocean noise generated by military sonar, shipping, and oil and gas exploration are threatening dolphins and whales that rely on sound for mating, finding food and avoiding predators, according to a new report.

The report released Monday by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that the affects of ocean noise on marine life range from long-term behavioral change to hearing loss to death.

The report, a follow-up to a 1999 study, included details from necropsies performed on beached whales suspected of being exposed to Navy sonar.

Scientists who examined more than a dozen whales that beached in the Canary Islands in September 2002 found bleeding around the brain and ears and lesions in the animals' livers and kidneys.
(snip/...)

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-ocean-noise,0,6716182.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[Gregorian]

1. Shit for brains.

What else is there to say?

[shance]

2. Is this low wave sonar noise coming from the HAARP project?

NRDC needs to request an investigation on the HAARP Project.

[Judi Lynn]

3. This report points to sonar. More from the story:

"It is a set of symptoms that have never before been seen in marine mammals," said Michael Jasny, the report's principal author. "That physical evidence has led scientists to understand that the sonar is injuring the whales in addition to causing them to strand."

Researchers believe that whales are suffering the same type of decompression sickness that is known as "the bends" in humans. The leading theory is that sonar either causes whales to panic and surface too quickly or forces them deeper before they can expel nitrogen, leading to nitrogen bubbles in the blood.

A federal probe into the mass stranding of 17 whales in the Bahamas in March 2000 cited the Navy's use of mid-frequency sonar as a contributing factor.

The Natural Resources Defense Council sued the Navy last month in federal court in Los Angeles in an attempt to curb its use of mid-frequency sonar, which is the most common method of detecting enemy submarines. The environmental group wants limits on sonar during training exercises, not in war.

In the new report, the NRDC urged the National Marine Fisheries Service to better enforce the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. The service should also require the Navy to obtain permits for its sonar exercises, according to the report.
(snip/...)

[TX-RAT]

4. Sounds like another story i heard recently.

Turned out it was the adult males, attacking rival adult males and killing the younger ones to decrease competition.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Dolphins too? Do you have a link to anything on this?

This article indicates the animals beached themselves, and that the areas in question were also areas exposed to Navy sonar.

Do you recall reading how whales can cause large numbers of other whales to beach themselves? It should be very interesting to hear.

[TX-RAT]

9. It was the Dolphin Murders, on the discovery channel

Sorry but whales were beaching themselves long before the invention of sonar.

[KittyWampus]

11. Just because whales occassionally beached themselves before sonar

doesn't mean that sonar doesn't now contribute to and/or cause such beachings.

[TX-RAT]

12. Never said it didn't

There are many reasons for the beaching.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0806_030806_whaleheart_2.html


http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1255374.htm

[roseBudd]

6. Marine animals can develop catecholamine cardiomyopathy, which is

the "fight or flight" substance commonly called norepinephrine.

I've done a lot of reading about catecholamines because my born to a feral mom, cat has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and my hypothesus is that "scaredycats" many of who are probably rescued ferals, or born to ferals have excessive levels of circulating catecholamines which hemodynamically could predespose the left ventricle to remodeling and hypertropy. My cat has been taking the beta-blocker atenolol for 3 years and in that time there has been no progression.

[JudyM]

7. Tell the Navy to stop harming whales with high-intensity sonar (link)

Click on the 3rd item from the bottom to make your voice heard:

http://www.nrdc.org/action/

[Judi Lynn]

10. Thanks for the link. n/t

[SomewhereOutThere424]

8. That's the sorrow of it

War and its makings don't just effect the 'enemy', if there ever was one. I'll never get the people who support war and such even though it hurts our environment, or support hurting the environment on their own...

[wordpix2]

13. lesions in livers/kidneys could be from ocean pollution, not just sonar

Either way, humans continue to hasten these animals' extinction. Join NRDC to fight this. I am today.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Navy Moves Forward on Sonar Facility Despite Concerns About Whales

Navy Moves Forward on Sonar Facility Despite Concerns About Whales

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 23, 2005; Page A09

The Navy is moving ahead with plans to build a 500-square-mile sonar training range off the coast of North Carolina, officials said last week. The project has sparked fierce opposition from environmentalists, who say some of the world's most endangered whales and sea turtles pass through the area.

Planning for the $99 million range has been underway for almost 10 years, but environmental challenges and concern that the sound waves from sonar may harm protected marine mammals have held up the process. The Navy published its draft environmental impact statement Friday and plans to begin a series of public hearings on the proposal next month.
(snip)

But animal researchers and environmentalists have grown increasingly alarmed over the Navy's plans and the potentially damaging effects of active sonar -- which sends out very loud blasts of underwater sound.

Whales and other marine mammals have very sensitive hearing, and a growing body of research has shown that sonar can disorient and sometimes kill them. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmentalist group, sued the Navy last week over its use of mid-frequency sonar, the type that would be deployed at the new sonar range. The group claimed that the sonar threatened endangered animals, in violation of several federal environmental laws.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/22/AR2005102201172.html?nav=rss_nation

[Judi Lynn]

15. U.S. Navy Sued to Block Mid-frequency Sonar Harmful to Whales

U.S. Navy Sued to Block Mid-frequency Sonar Harmful to Whales

LOS ANGELES, California, October 19, 2005 (ENS) - Loud as a rocket launch, sonar used across the world’s oceans during testing and training by the U.S. Navy harms marine mammals in violation of U.S. environmental laws, claims a lawsuit filed here today in federal court by a coalition of conservation and animal welfare organizations.

Whales, dolphins and other marine animals could be spared injury and death with common sense precautions, but the Navy refuses to implement them, according to the lawsuit, brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Cetacean Society International, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the League for Coastal Protection, and Ocean Futures Society and its founder and president Jean Michel-Cousteau.
(snip)

The case follows a successful lawsuit by some of the same groups, settled two years ago, that blocked the global deployment of the Navy’s new low-frequency active sonar system, and restricted its use for testing and training to a limited area of the northwestern Pacific Ocean.

Marine mammals have sensitive hearing, and intense sonar blasts can disturb, injure, and kill them. Whales exposed to high-intensity mid-frequency sonar have repeatedly stranded and died on beaches around the world, some bleeding from the eyes and ears, with severe lesions in their organ tissue, the plaintiff groups point out.
(snip)

"The U.S. Navy could use a number of proven methods to avoid harming whales when testing mid-frequency sonar," said Fred O’Regan, President and CEO of IFAW, a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit. Protecting whales and preserving national security are not mutually exclusive. The American people deserve more of a can-do approach from the U.S. Navy," O’Regan said.
(snip/...)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2005/2005-10-19-07.asp

[wordpix2]

16. BushCo and Rummy's DOD are behind this-where are Navy and NOAA leakers?

"Adding to the controversy, the proposed North Carolina site is in the general area of a mass whale stranding that occurred in January, when 37 whales from three species died on the beach within 24 hours. The Navy was conducting a sonar training exercise offshore during that time, but Navy officials say the ships were too far away to have caused the strandings.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration investigation of the stranding was to have been issued this summer, but officials now say it will not be ready until early next year, after the comment period for the sonar training range has closed."

[IndianaGreen]

17. Whales and dolphins threatened by naval sonar, says UN report devices

Whales and dolphins threatened by naval sonar, says UN report devices
By Daniel Howden
Published: 25 November 2005

High-intensity naval sonar poses a serious threat to whales, dolphins and porpoises that depend on sound to survive, says a report by the United Nations Environment Programme.

The study lends the first official support to claims by environmental groups that military manoeuvres are responsible for the increasing incidence of mass whale beachings. "We know about other threats such as over-fishing, hunting and pollution a new and emerging threat to cetaceans is that of increased underwater sonars," said Mark Simmonds, of the Whale and Dolphin Society. "These low-frequency sounds travel vast distances, hundreds if not thousands of kilometres from the source."

A coalition of environmental groups launched by, among others, Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, sued the US Navy in October, over its use of sonar, saying the ear-splitting sounds violated environmental protection laws. The lawsuit is aimed at vessels that use mid-frequency sonar to locate submarines and underwater objects. The navy has 60 days to respond.

Tests on the bodies of seven whales that died near Gran Canaria in 2002 found haemorrhages and inner-ear damage, which experts said was caused by high-intensity, low-frequency sonar used in the area, it added. There are no laws governing noise pollution in the oceans, but western governments, considered largely responsible with their increased military presence in the seas, say they need more research before taking action.

The Australian Department of Defence has admitted two minehunters used short-range, high-frequency sonar to search for a 360-year-old Dutch wreck off Marion Bay, where 110 pilot whales died in two beachings last month.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article329181.ece