
US Navy limits 'whale-harming' sonar in Pacific - chesterfield
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34252058
======
rhodysurf
Im an Ocean Engineer and thus, a big part of the curriculum was sonar and
transducers. The effect of sonar on animals was often asked about in class and
the response was usually that "the Navy doesnt care". Im really glad to see
this finally getting more attention from the Navy after being ignored for so
long.

~~~
niels_olson
I was a Navy surface officer for years. We had required reporting criteria for
any marine mammal sighting at least as far back as the 1990s, and we had
operating restrictions on the sonar as well. There are a lot of watermen in
the Navy, I'm sorry people think we just don't care.

The fundamental tension is that we all love marine life, but someone has to be
able to fight the war, and testing weapons and training people is an
inextricable part of that.

And the other side ultimately, in a sense fundamentally, has a zero tolerance
policy. There's somebody out there who feels every sonar should be dismantled
and recycled, never to be used again. And in a law-abiding world, that
person's opinion must also be respected, and the senior officers in the Navy
take their obligations to the Constitution quite seriously, probably in a
rather sophisticated way, where in they have forced society to tell them how
far they should go. Unfortunately, that contra-extreme position of no sonar is
not going to be realized without a durable world peace where geopolitical
tensions can be definitely resolved in all cases without even the _threat_ of
violence.

~~~
justizin
> There are a lot of watermen in the Navy, I'm sorry people think we just
> don't care.

I think that the notion is that "The Navy", as an institution, does not care,
to which I would offer, "The Navy" as an institution has no capacity to care
or not care, only individuals and groups of them within it do.

~~~
superuser2
I think it's reasonable to comment on whether institutions "care" or not about
negative externalities by looking at the policies they have in place to
mitigate them.

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tinfoilman
The US navy does not care.

They have known about this for years; they have either finished the testing OR
they have completed their purpose with regards to the weapon. My guess is the
later

Sorry for the DMlinks but 2012 -
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2142763/U-S-Navys-
so...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2142763/U-S-Navys-sonar-
explosives-hurt-dolphins-whales-previously-imagined-causing-creatures-deaf-
die-greater-numbers.html) 2014 - [http://www.rt.com/usa/204191-navy-whales-
dolphins-military-d...](http://www.rt.com/usa/204191-navy-whales-dolphins-
military-drills/) 2014 - (about a report from 2000
[http://www.wired.com/2014/07/war-of-the-
whales/](http://www.wired.com/2014/07/war-of-the-whales/)

Given this has been on going for a 15 years we know about, and most likely
another 5-10 years before the public noticed it does make me wonder what they
were up to 20+ years of Sonar abuse towards animals. Feels more like they had
a plan rather than simply testing a weapon.

~~~
wtbob
> They have known about this for years; they have either finished the testing
> OR they have completed their purpose with regards to the weapon.

Sonar is not a weapon; it's a sensor system intended to discover enemy
submarines.

~~~
Amezarak
I have no idea what sonar frequencies are what, but to expand on your point,
sonar is basically the only kind of sensor that works underwater. Radar and
sight are basically useless.

Sonar is really all you have to see underwater, and is used heavily for
scientific purposes, not only military purposes. Ocean-floor mapping is done
with sonar. Active sonar of the kind that hurts whales is not in frequent use
by deployed military vessels on military or surveillance missions because,
while it gets you a good picture, it also announces "HERE I AM!!!" to the
entire world.

~~~
rustynails
According to Wikipedia, the issue is with (low frequency, active) LFA sonar.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_stranding](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_stranding)

I read somewhere it's about 240db. For reference, a jackhammer at about 1m
(3.3ft away) is 130db and is classified as Painful for humans,

[http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Noise/](http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Noise/)

I am not knowledgeable on acoustics, let alone acoustic dissipation or
acoustics in water - but I can see logic behind the argument that LFA sonar
causes a problem for whales.

~~~
nitrogen
Also keep in mind that decibels are logarithmic, so 240dB is 10^(24-13) times
as much sound power as 130.

~~~
jleader
No, you forgot that the d stands for deci (i.e., 1/10th).

So 240dB is 10^(2.4-1.3) times as much sound power as 130dB.

~~~
vonmoltke
No, nitrogen's math is correct. The conversion from linear to dB is

y = 10 * log(x)

and the conversion back is

x = 10 ^ (y/10)

Every change of 3dB is a doubling or halving of power. Every change of 10dB is
an order-of-magnitude change in power.

~~~
nitrogen
Right, I did 24-13 instead of 240-130. That's 100 billion times the power.

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adrianN
I find it amazing that before we started polluting the sea with propeller
noise and sonar, whales basically had a global communication network.
Whalesong could be heard for thousands and thousands of miles.

~~~
jMyles
Truly amazing. I only recently found out about the patterns of whalesong.

------
d_theorist
What is the science behind this?

~~~
d_theorist
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_mammals_and_sonar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_mammals_and_sonar)
has a nice summary.

------
masklinn
Here's a great recent article (originally from the July/August issue of Orion)
on beaked whales and sonar impact study
[http://blog.longreads.com/2015/09/02/whale-
watch/](http://blog.longreads.com/2015/09/02/whale-watch/)

------
npeihl
There's a pretty good book called "War of the Whales" by Joshua Horwitz that
discusses the work of whale researcher Ken Balcomb to convince the Navy to
limit sonar operations.

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rasputhin
Nice to see the military take a pragmatic approach..

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pvaldes
Quotes in "whale-harming" are totally unnecessary. Is a well known fact that
naval practices kill whales. An example; massive strandings in Canary islands
were a big problem until Spain ban the use of navy sonars in its shores.
Result: No more cases of entire groups of several agonizing whales in the
beach since them. Not a single one.

[http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ggoodstefani/exclude_navy_...](http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ggoodstefani/exclude_navy_sonar_and_end_mass_strandings.html)

Is not only that the pressure wave generated will burst the inner ear and
lungs of some nice animals. Humans have lungs also. There is probably a real
danger of death for any human diving at many miles of distance with those
practices (that normally are not disclosed to the big public in advance).

~~~
pdabbadabba
I wouldn't read those quotations as indicating skepticism that the sonar harms
whales but, rather, as just another case of the BBC's odd headline-writing
practices. I often find the BBC quoting things in headlines in ways that seem
unnecessary and awkward. As in this case, the quotations sometimes give the
amusing impression that the BBC is calling obvious or trivial propositions
into doubt. Like this one:

 _BBC 'to launch personalised iPlayer'_

I think they're trying to remain scrupulously neutral by quoting as much
material as possible, but they often overshoot to convey skepticism about
their own article.

Here is a pretty thorough survey (and takedown) of BBC's headline quotations.
[https://adrianblau.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/the-curse-of-
quo...](https://adrianblau.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/the-curse-of-quotation-
marks-on-the-bbc-website/)

~~~
mikeash
The use of quotation marks to indicate sarcasm or doubt is pretty new, while
using them to just mean "this is literal text from elsewhere" is much older.
Not to say the new usage is somehow "wrong" but neither would I call the BBC's
usage odd.

~~~
pdabbadabba
I don't have a strong view about this, and I certainly understand why the BBC
is using quotation marks in the way it is. But if I were an editor at the BBC,
I think I would be uncomfortable with the fact that the quotations communicate
the wrong message to so many readers -- and, worse, mistakenly suggest that my
publication is being snarky or skeptical of the claims highlighted in the
headline. This seems like very much the opposite of the quotation marks'
desired effect.

~~~
mikeash
You're right, even if this usage may be perfectly acceptable, if it gives a
lot of people the wrong idea it's probably time to change.

~~~
jasonlotito
Kowtowing to the lowest common denominator shouldn't be done lightly. We are
on a site called Hacker News, after all.

~~~
pdabbadabba
> Kowtowing to the lowest common denominator shouldn't be done lightly

Certainly not when you put it like that! But you might also call it
"communicating effectively with your audience." So maybe kowtowing isn't so
bad after all when it just involves responding to the linguistic conventions
observed by your readers, and the goal is simply communication.

I also don't know that people who read quotation marks as connoting doubt, in
the absence of any other evident reason for them, can fairly be called "the
lowest common denominator."

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jkot
.. and in next episode Sea Shepherd will ram USS George Washington

