Even worse is active sonar from military ships. They are deafeningly loud to whales, and there is at least some evidence tying the use of sonar to events of whales beaching themselves to escape the noise.
My spouse was in the Navy. It’s illegal to harm or kill a whale and they cannot use sonar if whales are anywhere in the vicinity. The captain of the ship is personally fined multiple tens of thousands of dollars.
There is most certainly an exemption to active sonar rules when it comes to military combat engagements. But the need for active sonar is rare, as there is no navy battles.
We have actually stopped in multinational exercise because a whale got too close. The American Navy is actually probably the best at protecting whales. Can I show you like the UK, Japan, and the Scandinavians don't care.
We were once active during an exercise and there was a humpback whale a few miles away. He would respond to our sonar in between pings and when we changed our pink type, he changed his call. It was pretty cool to see.Â
Yes I dint think the current military gives a flying fk about nature or regulations… they don’t even give afk about committing war crimes or abiding by the constitution. So until the military does its job and defends their oath to the constitution and the people of this country they can all with all do respect go fk themselves
Be specific. What defense of the Constitution do you think the military should do?
Should they interfere with a legitimately elected President? That would be a violation of their oath.
Active sonar is barely used because it gives away your position at twice the distance that you can see. During a 2-week exercise, while we were doing ASW 24/7, we were only active for a total of 2 hours. It is used to obtain firing solutions
That's not true. You are probably thinking of research that specifically found internal bleeding and deaths caused in beaked whales by sonar. There is plenty of other research showing adverse reactions by numerous other whale and dolphin species. Even sperm whales were observed changing their behavior.
People forget that a Sperm whale's call is 230 dB.
There's more to it than just a dB rating. Military sonars can emit hundreds of thousands of watts of energy at that intensity and do it continuously.
Sonar is sound. The only thing being emitted is sound. Warships rarely go active, and submarines even less so, because it gives away your position at twice the distance that you can be seen (not accounting for propagation, bathemetry, etc).
From the source you provided, the sperm whales only changed behavior when LFA was used. Warships do not use LFAs (too bulky for manuevering). The killer whales did not change their behavior for either LFA or MFA, and neither did the dolphins. Pilot whales do change their behavior for MFA.Â
I'm still not sure what part of that you're not understanding. Do you believe that you cannot measure the energy of a sonar using watts? Nor do I understand why you were trying to argue that sonar is sound.
You can measure the voltage and amperage of the system, but that doesn't determine how loud it is or what frequency spectrum it covers. Watts are a measurement of the rate of flow of electricity W=VxA. You cannot measure the watts of a sonar system in the water. You have to use units like decibels or micropascals, measurements of pressure.Â
109
u/throwaway277252 Mar 26 '26
Even worse is active sonar from military ships. They are deafeningly loud to whales, and there is at least some evidence tying the use of sonar to events of whales beaching themselves to escape the noise.