Oceans Are 'Too Noisy' For Whales

That retty dumb of the Navy because their track across the ocean could be followed by someone looking to find the subs. Looks like they would want to leave the fish and the ocean creatures undisturbed to prevent this detection.

Good luck trying to track submarines based on a trail of dead fish. The notion that submarine sonar systems kill fish is horribly misconceived by people who do not understand water-borne acoustics.

I concur on the value of a trail of fish crumbs as a tracking method. However, whales, dolphins, and maybe other species do use a form of naural SONAR to navigate and communicate. It can be disrupted by excessive noise, not just from SONAR, but propeller cavitation and other noises. That certainly could have detrimental effects short of killing them.

E-Man, you are absolutely right. As the ambient background noise of the oceans rise, a significant detriment is felt by all creatures who use sonar. However, unlike what is proposed in the article, the higher ambient noise levels are primarly along the coasts and major shipping lanes. Once outside of these areas sonar marine life do quite well.

During my ocean going days I greatly enjoyed listening to the whale songs, dolphin clicks and the myriad of sounds produced by marine life. You could sometimes hear them right through the hull. Beautiful to hear. Even the Navy thinks so. Although it's received some bad press lately due to lawsuites related to sonar training ranges on the east and west coasts of the US, the Navy has put some pretty stringent restrictions and precautionary measures in place to protect marine life from medium frequency sonar transmissions.

old sailor

you have opened a real can of fish with that true but blunt statement. i don't know the class of can you were you were on but that being printed will sure as hell rile the anti hunt packers good reply.

three thumbs up skip!!!!

'da ber

I was never good at being sarcastic. lol

Yep. Based on some of your previous posts that I've read, I didn't quite get why you were approaching this issue in this direction. Now I know.

We have unprecedented mass stranding in New Zealand, of various cetaceans during the last 20 years.

The poor creatures are so disoriented that even when rescued from the beach, and taken out to deeper water, they beach themselves once more.

Conclusion is that they commit suicide, rather than endure the constant noise from man-made machinery.

Kind Regards....