Sound Waves Silence Whale Song
source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sound-waves-silence-whale-song
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The U.S. Supreme Court says the Navy can use active sonar despite evidence that it and other noise pollution can deafen, and even kill denizens of the sea
The noise in the Pacific off the southern California coast has become 10 times louder over the past five decades because of the rumbling of commercial shipping vessels, the clicking of oceanographic research equipment, and the din of Navy operations and sonar systems—all of which are threatening whales that use the same frequency range to communicate.
In an effort to save the whales, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued to stop the Navy from conducting operations in the area that employ that particularly damaging form of sonar. But the U.S. Supreme Court last week in a 5–4 ruling dismissed the suit, giving the Navy the all-clear to continue blasting sound waves despite the environmental impact.
But active sonar also rouses normally reclusive, squid-eating beaked whales from the deep. Sometimes, it causes them to ascend to the ocean surface so rapidly that they succumb to "the bends"—the development of deadly nitrogen bubbles in their blood; later their corpses wash up on beaches. Since 1989 the NRDC has documented 13 mass-stranding events of whales and porpoises that they said were linked to military sonar use. Among them: an event in January 2005 that led to the stranding deaths of 34 whales of three species along North Carolina's Outer Banks.
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More information in the article that is both interesting and sad. Too much noise.
The noise in the Pacific off the southern California coast has become 10 times louder over the past five decades because of the rumbling of commercial shipping vessels, the clicking of oceanographic research equipment, and the din of Navy operations and sonar systems—all of which are threatening whales that use the same frequency range to communicate.
In an effort to save the whales, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued to stop the Navy from conducting operations in the area that employ that particularly damaging form of sonar. But the U.S. Supreme Court last week in a 5–4 ruling dismissed the suit, giving the Navy the all-clear to continue blasting sound waves despite the environmental impact.
But active sonar also rouses normally reclusive, squid-eating beaked whales from the deep. Sometimes, it causes them to ascend to the ocean surface so rapidly that they succumb to "the bends"—the development of deadly nitrogen bubbles in their blood; later their corpses wash up on beaches. Since 1989 the NRDC has documented 13 mass-stranding events of whales and porpoises that they said were linked to military sonar use. Among them: an event in January 2005 that led to the stranding deaths of 34 whales of three species along North Carolina's Outer Banks.
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More information in the article that is both interesting and sad. Too much noise.
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