Posted on 07/05/2006 10:18:14 AM PDT by SmithL
HONOLULU The Navy said it will rely on a different type of sonar during exercises off of Hawaii after environmentalists won a temporary restraining order stopping the service from using a high-intensity sonar that could harm marine mammals.
U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper's order came after the Defense Department granted the Navy a six-month exemption from the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow use of the "mid-frequency active sonar."
Environmentalists had argued the exemption was aimed at circumventing the lawsuit they filed last week to stop the Navy's use of the sonar in the Rim of the Pacific 2006 exercise.
Government lawyers were reviewing the ruling, and the Navy will probably respond soon, said Jon Yoshishige, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii.
Meanwhile, participants in the multinational exercise will search for submarines using "passive sonar," which historically has been used during such exercises, Vice Adm. Barry Costello, commander of the U.S. 3rd Fleet, said in a statement late Monday.
Active sonar locates objects by analyzing sound bounced off them, while passive sonar involves analyzing noises generated by the objects.
Vice Adm. Barry Costello, commander of the U.S. 3rd Fleet, said Tuesday that using active sonar to track submarines is a skill that would deteriorate with a lack of practice.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Tell the damn whales to get out of the way, or we'll consider going back to the primary source of non-wood fuel we used in the 1800s.
Perhaps you would be willing to take your primary input for communication, eyes or ears, and subject them to stimuli that is the equivalent to 250 dbs of acoustic or stare at flash grenades, on a continuous basis?
Do you have reliable information that backs up that premise? Is that what whales actually experience?
Impressive education.....NOT!
No, but it would eliminate some enviros.
I don't care how they disapear and long as they do.
As I said, animals can't tell us what they feel...would you blow a whistle in your dog's ear as hard as you can?
I was on the ship that did the acoustic tests.
Granted, they are a major pain in the ass.
heh heh
You haven't told me anything useful.
Would I want the siren from a fire truck in my bedroom blaring all night? Of course not.
Do I care if it's blaring two miles away? Nope.
Should fire trucks have sirens? Yes, and the fact that they do does not make me deaf or otherwise harm me.
2 miles away, is a lot closer than an acoustic level that can be heard halfway around the world.
I'm not saying the navy shouldn't test, I'm saying that it is almost a certainty that it does damage to mammals.
You can't just pass off your conclusions here and expect them to be accepted as fact.
Even if I accept your assertion that whales can hear sonar from 12,000 miles away, which I don't without some evidence, it doesn't mean that hearing it closer than that distance damages them.
We all love whales and think they're nifty. That's not the point. The anti-military agenda forces want to use the loveable whales to shut down on our navy. That's a fact.
What is missing are the facts that correlate between sonar and damaged whales. It ain't good enough to say, "Look, a whale beached itself. Must be the damn US Navy."
Yet I've never seen an otter with a hearing aid.
COINCIDENCE??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I don't really care whether you believe me or not. I am passing on what I observed.
How does anyone measure the pain that a wild animal, especially a sea mammal, experience? Since no human tests were or are going to be done, I am going by what happened to the diver.
I disagree that it's unfortunate. He became an antifreeper, and he hates this place and many of the people in it.
That's probably because they have special places they live at. I heard it's in northern Manitoba, but I'm not sure.
I detonate one flash-bang grenade in my room every 43 seconds.
Keeps me on my toes.
The Otter Old Folks Home. But of course.
Can you even see your toes, through all the spots?
You haven't given us anything to believe or disbelieve.
"We're hurting the poor whales" is an opinion, not an observation.
If you have no evidence to back that up, fine. I was just trying to find out if you had anything to support that opinion.
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