On January 15 & 16 in 2005 off the coast of the Outer Banks in North Carolina, near Oregon Inlet, a mass beaching of Whales occurred. I remember reading about this tragedy at the time and being deeply saddend. It was shocking because so many whales washed up and were killed. a Minke, 2 dwarf sperm whales, and a whopping 33 short finned piolot whales.
Today in the Raleigh News & Observer the year long report has finally been released by NOAA, they neither attribute the cause of death to be conclusively SONAR related, but they
have not ruled out SONAR as the cause of death either.
To read the entire article http://www.newsobserver.com/...
upon closer inspection of the article a few facts come to light.
Environmentalists suspected sonar was to blame after the Navy acknowledged that it was in the area using sonar about that time. The NOAA report reveals that Navy ships were using sonar Jan. 12 through 14 as close as 54 nautical miles off shore, for durations as brief as a minute and as long as 75 minutes.
So... the Navy was in the area at the time, testing their SONAR for as long as 75 Minutes at a stretch. Within days they have mass strandings occurring with three species of whales affected.
The beaching, which occurred Jan. 15 and 16, 2005, at and near Oregon Inlet, was rare because it involved multiple species: 33 short-finned pilot whales, two dwarf sperm whales and a minke whale. Three whale species have never before washed up on the North Carolina coast over such a short time period.
(emphasis mine)
Additionally...
Michael Jasny, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the NOAA findings ruled out other causes, such as a shared illness or an environmental threat, including a toxic algae bloom. To him, that points toward sonar.
(emphasis mine)
The Navy is pushing to build a permanent SONAR training range off this same North Carolina coast where all these beachings have occurred. They need to find a location that will not interupt these magnificent creatures, or understand their migration habits and plan to discontinue testing when the whales might be harmed. They need to understand that the public will not stand for their stonwalling techniques and will support the fair and safe treatment of our aquatic neighbors.
The Navy insists that they were not to blame, that they were 50 nauticle miles from Oregon Inlet, but anyone that knows anything about how sound travels in water knows that sound can travel vast distances underwater and travels 5 times faster underwater than it does in air.
Here is a link to beyond discovery for those that are interested in reading more about this. http://www.beyonddiscovery.org/...
The major factor here though is this:
When Fox and his colleagues listened to the recordings of the underwater eruptions they also heard other underwater noises--including the vocalizations of baleen whales. The realization that SOSUS could be used to listen to whales also was made by Christopher Clark, a biological acoustician at Cornell University, when he first visited a SOSUS station in 1992. When Clark looked at the graphic representations of sound, scrolling 24 hours day, every day, he saw the voice patterns of blue, finback, minke, and humpback whales. He also could hear the sounds. Using a SOSUS receiver in the West Indies he could hear whales that were 1,770 kilometers (1,100 miles) away.
(empasis mine)
The "I was 50 miles away" story does not hold water (literally). Sound travels extremely long distances under water. We must take great care not to destroy the habitat of the largest mammels on the planet.