Active Sonar + Marine Life

[tycho102]

per the news item on the beached whale --

I am of the mind that we've got to stop using active sonar, or at least at the power levels necessary for sub detection. Obviously this puts operator training into a questionable position, because it's dozens of diesel boats we're going to have to defend against (if anything).

I really do think we've got dolphins and whales with either physical trauma or sensory confusion, as a result of sonar use. I've suspected this for a few years but I'm at the point where something needs to be figured out. I honestly don't trust the Navy to do an apolitical study of the issue, and there are too many "independent" universities and corporations who are not so independent as they profess, so I have doubts about the ability for an extensive investigation in open-water.


I think it's time we developed simulation abilities such as we currently do with nuclear warheads: computer simulations rather than actual detonation tests.

[down and out]

Have a read of this

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/sonar.asp

[waste gate]

Why is it that animal lives are more important than human lives?

Here is an alternate scenerio: When these 'high powered' SONARs are in use its b/c a target was detected.

[SUBMAN1]

Why is it that animal lives are more important than human lives?

They aren't. But I think the point is, they are part of an eco chain - they die, we die. Its the way it works, so I think some consideration needs to be taken to make sure we have a healthy planet.

-S

[ASWnut101]

It's a whale! Do we eat them? No.

[SUBMAN1]

It's a whale! Do we eat them? No.

SOme people do! I'd like to try it once, but only once - just to see!

Anyway, they keep another thing in check - like possibly overpopulation of Kril where the kril might over populate and block sunlight for some plant that feeds some other fish...and down the chain it goes until the ocean dies out, which in turn starts killing bears for example since there is no salmon, (and no fisheries for us too!) and the bears allow deer to over populate that eat all the grass and kill off something else - its one massive chain reaction type deal - you need all species to survive so that the chain is kept in place.

-S

[ASWnut101]

I find that killing off a few whales will destroy the planet a very poor possibility, yet infront of Al Gore's dream.



Whale meat does look alright, though. Maby I'll try it one day.

[SUBMAN1]

I find that killing off a few whales will destroy the planet a very poor possibility, yet infront of Al Gore's dream.



Whale meat does look alright, though. Maby I'll try it one day.

AL Gore is whacked. My opinion. Not as harsh as he makes things out to be, but still, it would have an effect - not one whale, not 2, but thousands yes.

[ASWnut101]

I think that the rate that we kill whales with sonar is lower than their birth rate. To date I haven't seen any ill effects of killing them. They don't need to just be killed off for nothing, but a sonar ping death I don't find needless. They just got in the way.

[Drebbel]

Here is an alternate scenerio: When these 'high powered' SONARs are in use its b/c a target was detected.

Target ? Or the navy using their equipment and exercising on a contact they found ?

The way I see it is that if you are not going to attack it it was probably not a target after all and there was (afterwards) no need at all to use that sonar.

Any navy that has these systems which have such a peace time effect on species that are so high on the list of animals the general public loves should be really worried and make a huge effort in searching for alternatives.

[waste gate]

Here is an alternate scenerio: When these 'high powered' SONARs are in use its b/c a target was detected.

Target ? Or the navy using their equipment and exercising on a contact they found ?

The way I see it is that if you are not going to attack it it was probably not a target after all and there was (afterwards) no need at all to use that sonar.

Every navy that has these systems which have such an effect on species that are so high on the list of animals the general public loves should be really worried and make a huge effort in searching for alternatives.

I apologize if I should have used the word 'contact' ISO target. I'm a SH3 guy and everything is a target.

As far as the plausability I don't think the scenerio is out of reason. Wasn't it a couple of months back that a report about a Chinese sub was alleged to have creaped into a US Carrier Battle Group? The reports of the Russian subforce being a wreck doesn't preclude the sortie of at least a few boats probing US defences.
China could also be probing.

I thought that tactics precluded the use of active SONAR under most situations. Letting the contact know they have been detected seams like one of those situations. No one can tell how long the contact was monitored for its passive signature B4 they were pinged. Its not called the 'silent service' for nothing.

As you know the book 'Blind Mans Bluff' is illuminating as to the deception inherent in sub sevice.

[Ishmael]

I would be interested if there are any marine life surveys taken from the early 1960's through the early 1980's. That was really the early heyday of high-powered active sonars like the SQS-26 models. There weren't any mass dolphin or whale kills from that time as I remember. The reason I keep hearing for such kills seems to be bacterial infections caused by compromised immune systems. I've never heard of acoustics being the cause of that.

[leeclose]

Can i point out a small problem here 90% plus of all sonar work is done passive. IE no emissions so i would love to see where the heck there getting there info from in all my years in Subs i only ever saw us go active once Reason*****classified*** and skimmers er cough surface ships prefer to list passive as well only real active stuff are dipping sona boays from those pesky bean cans with rotors:up: and as loud and annoying as they are i dont see em frying a whale:yep:

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Passive sonar is done extensively in the US Navy, I believe, because for a long time they had an acoustical superiority over their main prey - Russians. Most of the time you get to hear them, so why let them know you are hearing them?

If you have aren't sure of an acoustic advantage, your use of active will go up, hoping to create a less penetrable "buffer zone" - even if you tell the target where you are, hopefully it is harder for him to get within X miles, so at least you have some space to play with when he attacks.

With subs inching closer and through the background noise level of the ocean, active searching (not just occasional rangefinding) will become more common. You can play games with signal processing for awhile, but eventually there's just no signal that stands out above the randomness. At that point what's left is to hit your own sound waves into the water.

[SUBMAN1]

One thing I would like to point out - this is a minor problem as compared to everything else we are doing to damage the planet. Some of the energy spent here could be better served down in the Amazon or something.

-S

[TteFAboB]

Don't worry guys. The solution is simple:

Change the light bulbs inside submarines and destroyers for fluorescent models.

[SUBMAN1]

Don't worry guys. The solution is simple:

Change the light bulbs inside submarines and destroyers for fluorescent models.

Hahahaha! That was pretty d*mn funny! :lol: :up::sunny:

-S

[moose1am]

The navy needs to train. Because we will fight as we train. Training is the key to winning the next sub war. Britain was almost defeated by subs during the early parts of WWII.

Today there are more and more new types of quiet subs that can threaten world trade.

We can scare off birds with loud noises when they get too thick in certain areas.

Why can't the navy use progressively louder sound waves in fixed places in the Ocean to drive wales and other sea creatures out of an area before the louder sonar training starts.

We can make a large array of sound devices that can be controlled by computers. These devises can move in a wave form from one area to another. Much like at a foot ball game when the crowd does the wave. This wave (sound can become) progressively louder with each wave. This would scare the sea creatures away without harm before the subs start using the very loud sonar devices.

Whales are important and need to be protected but so do the men who go to sea. Men will always be more important than the whales.

We had a Chinese sub surface within range of one of our Aircraft Carriers not too long ago and that must never happen again. Training with active sonar may be the only way to keep our ships and navy safe and out of range of enemy torpedoes and missiles.



per the news item on the beached whale --

I am of the mind that we've got to stop using active sonar, or at least at the power levels necessary for sub detection. Obviously this puts operator training into a questionable position, because it's dozens of diesel boats we're going to have to defend against (if anything).

I really do think we've got dolphins and whales with either physical trauma or sensory confusion, as a result of sonar use. I've suspected this for a few years but I'm at the point where something needs to be figured out. I honestly don't trust the Navy to do an apolitical study of the issue, and there are too many "independent" universities and corporations who are not so independent as they profess, so I have doubts about the ability for an extensive investigation in open-water.


I think it's time we developed simulation abilities such as we currently do with nuclear warheads: computer simulations rather than actual detonation tests.

[scrag]

I am always amazed at the "Active Sonar kills Marine Mammal" crap that is in the press. Been in the Sonar buisness 20 plus years - weird part was there was a lot read (100 X ) of high power active used in the cold war by both sides (majority by skimmers) and you never heard of the massive beachings by various cetacean species. Now a DD goes active and the suppossedly "smart cetacean" beaches itself the DD is automatically faulted. There are a number of references to "Beaked Whales" beaching in the vicinity of Navy Exercise (largely US) but little is mentioned about beachings in other area of known concentrations of Naval Forces (ie those of the Russia or China) Why? It is also mentioned that the symptoms suffered by whales is similar to the Bends or Nitrogyn Narcosis (gas bubbles formed in the blood stream) which can lead to death - why because in humans it is associated by a rapid change of depth (deep to shallow) with an inadequate dwell time at depths that allow the body to adjust. So are the whales changing depth too quickly? No one knows for certain - but it is also not conclusive that the whales are being killed or given the bends by Actice Sonar. Funny part about all this is that the loudest living thing in the world is in fact a Blue Whale which is at 190 dB//uPa as well as the Humback Whale at 180 - 186 dB//uPA. This is as loud as most Sonars employed today.

[moose1am]

It's not bs that sonar kills whales. This does happen. It would kill a human if he were in the water when the sonar hit him. I'll bet that today's sonar systems have a lot more power than those used during WWII.

And it's not the bends or air bubbles killing the whales from sonar. Whales can dive to great depths and stay down for long periods of times. They take a breath at the surface and get only so many molecules of air. A diver can't get the bends from free diving. He may pass out from a lack of oxygen if he stays down too long but the bends he will not get.

You have to breath compressed air at great depths or for long periods of time to build up nitrogen in the blood stream. Only then if you surface too quickly will that nitrogen out gas into the blood stream and form bubbles

What is killing the whales is the LOUD SOUND WAVES that are busting the eardrums and inner ears of the Whales. If a human were to swim out in front of one of today's sonar units he too would have ruptured ear drums and loose his hearing.

It took a while to establish the cause of the whale deaths because many people didn't know the navy was active in the area where the whales died.

Not sure if Russia gives a damn about saving whales. So this may not get reported in the Russian Press. Not really sure that Russia has a free press and that could be why it's not reported.

Whales have certain migration routes and they are found in different places during different times.

More research could be performed to discover where the whales are going to be at certain times and then the navy could do training in areas that will most likely not have any whales there at that time of the year.

The problem is that the navy needs to train sonar operators to conduct operations in areas were we may most likely find and fight the enemy. That could be along OUR OWN Coast lines. Therefore our navy needs to train in this area.

Enemy subs will be looking to destroy our naval bases and areas around these bases needs to be guarded well. Since we have a lot of naval bases along the Pacific Coast line that means we need to train in this area. But this area is where the Whales migrate up and down the coast line. Blue whales migrate from the Gulf of Cortez up to the the Washington State coast.

Today's modern electric subs are much too quiet to detect at long range with passive sonar. Therefore the need to train using active sonar is great.

A lot more sea life is going to die when we have a war since a lot of nuclear powered ships are going to be sunk and or destroyed. That will release a lot of radiation into the oceans. And if we go to war it could easily turn into a nuclear war which will not only wipe out a lot of marine life but mankind as well.

I am always amazed at the "Active Sonar kills Marine Mammal" crap that is in the press. Been in the Sonar business 20 plus years - weird part was there was a lot read (100 X ) of high power active used in the cold war by both sides (majority by skimmers) and you never heard of the massive beaching by various cetacean species. Now a DD goes active and the supposedly "smart cetacean" beaches itself the DD is automatically faulted. There are a number of references to "Beaked Whales" beaching in the vicinity of Navy Exercise (largely US) but little is mentioned about beachings in other area of known concentrations of Naval Forces (ie those of the Russia or China) Why? It is also mentioned that the symptoms suffered by whales is similar to the Bends or Nitrogyn Narcosis (gas bubbles formed in the blood stream) which can lead to death - why because in humans it is associated by a rapid change of depth (deep to shallow) with an inadequate dwell time at depths that allow the body to adjust. So are the whales changing depth too quickly? No one knows for certain - but it is also not conclusive that the whales are being killed or given the bends by Actice Sonar. Funny part about all this is that the loudest living thing in the world is in fact a Blue Whale which is at 190 dB//uPa as well as the Humback Whale at 180 - 186 dB//uPA. This is as loud as most Sonars employed today.

[scrag]

Okay that was funny. Frankly for smart creatures they do seemingly stupid things like run aground for no reason or behave on more a behavioural method than that of true intelligence. Frankly if you are so worried about the whales I would be flailing about whaling and countries that still support whaling as well as fishing on an industrial level that inadvertantly kills a number of small cetaceans. So here is some data for you:

How does active sonar harm whales? According to a report in the scientific journal Nature, animals that came ashore during one mass stranding had developed large emboli, or bubbles, in their organ tissue. The report suggested that the animals had suffered from something akin to a severe case of "the bends" -- the illness that can kill scuba divers who surface too quickly from deep water. The study supports what many scientists have long suspected: that the whales stranded on shore are only the most visible symptom of a problem affecting much larger numbers of marine life.
Other impacts, though more subtle, are no less serious. Marine mammals and many species of fish use sound to follow migratory routes, locate each other over great distances, find food and care for their young. Noise that undermines their ability to hear can threaten their ability to function and, over the long term, to survive. Naval sonar has been shown to alter the singing of humpback whales, an activity essential to the reproduction of this endangered species; to disrupt the feeding of orcas; and to cause porpoises and other species to leap from the water, or panic and flee. Over time, these effects could undermine the fitness of populations of animals, contributing to what prominent biologist Sylvia Earle has called "a death of a thousand cuts."

In regards to whales and ears here some more you
Some of the major differences with terrestrial mammals are 1) whales lack a tympanic membrane (or it's very reduced); they have a tympanic plate which is a very thin bone, capable of vibrations; 2) the bone that envelops the internal ear (petrose) does not contact the rest of the skull; it's suspended away from other bones by means of ligaments and surrounded by an oily-mucous foam that also fills the 3) extensive sinuses in the head (cavities in the soft tissues below the blowhole, connected to the middle ear and the nasal passages). These sinuses and their content regulate pressure within the middle ear.
The ear is efficiently isolated from the surrounding skull bones.

What is also very different in whales with respect to other mammals is the path of sound to the inner ear. In terrestrial mammals, sound vibrations that traverse the air are received by the tympanum, and the chain of ossicles amplifies these vibrations and transmits them inwards (the entrance to the internal ear is much smaller than the tympanum, thus enhancing the amplification). This is not efficient under water, where much of the sound is lost at each water-air/air-water interface.
In cetaceans (at least in Odontoceti, the toothed whales) sound waves are received via a sector in the lower jaw, and transmitted to the middle ear by means of a specialized soft tissue or 'fat pad' that extends from the lower jaw to the middle-internal ear. There, the tympanic membrane and the tympanic plate perceive different vibration frequencies.

The echolocation of toothed whales has been extensively studied, and the evolution of this system can be traced in the fossil record of whales:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comme... (http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/evolution_of_the_whale_ear/)
but there's not much information about baleen whales (Mysticeti). I know that the auditory meatus is more reduced, and that they don't echolocate like odontocetes do.

And finally since whales range the world over there will ALWAYS be a conflict between the need to train and the protection of marine mammals. Fact is that US Navy ships are severly hampered, with training being suspended until there are no cetaceans in the area - yes there are occassional incidents but no dat supports wide scale slaughter by active sonar systems - in fact scientist BELIEVE that is what is effecting them but lack CONCLUSIVE evidence to totally support there claim. One scientist evn admited that the Humpback transmits at 180 dB in close proximity to it's young and pod - with no ill effect to them - and in a frequency realm that covers MF Active - yet no ill effects are observed.
Last thing about training - it is imperative that some degree of proficency be maintained in order to keep up some chance to protect the High Value Unit. We have to train in areas of oppertunity and imprtantly in areas where we expect to fight - otherwise training is pointless.