Yesterday the Santa Cruz Sentinel ran an article on our SOCAL-10 behavioral response study. Here is the link <http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_16844518> and we have copied the first few paragraphs of text of the article below. Any comments or feedback are welcome and thanks for all the interest thusfar.
Scientists study sonar's impact on whale behavior
SANTA CRUZ -- Many marine mammals rely on sound for communication and navigation.
Whale songs can span oceans, and some mammals routinely plunge thousands of feet into salty darkness in search of supper. But what happens when the whales' auditory environment is overwhelmed by loud undersea noise from Naval sonar?
Circumstantially, nothing good: For decades, mass strandings have been reported in the wake of sonar-using naval training exercises. Mid-frequency tactical military sonar is used to detect underwater objects like submarines, and sonar noise levels exceed 230 decibels -- the equivalent of multiple jet engines.
Many of the better-known, potentially sonar-induced strandings involve dozens of whales and multiple species. In March 2000, 16 whales beached themselves in the Bahamas following a training exercise. In September 2002, 14 beaked whales washed up in the Canary Islands. Then, in 2004, as many as 200 melon-headed whales got stuck in a shallow Hawaiian bay. Similar incidents have been reported in Greece, Japan, Washington state and Spain.
But scientists still don't know how sonar leads to mass casualties, and whether it causes direct physical harm, interferes with navigation, induces panic or causes disorientation.
Santa Cruz researcher Brandon Southall is trying to find out. Southall is affiliated with UC Santa Cruz and is the president of Southall Environmental Associates Inc. Earlier this fall, he and colleagues from institutions including the Cascadia Research Collective, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute completed the first stage of a five-year study addressing marine mammal response to sonar-like sound.
The study -- called SOCAL-10 -- is funded in part by the U.S. Navy, which by all accounts is interested in using the results to lessen the effects of its sonar use on marine mammals.
(continued...please see link above for full text)
let's join our hands together to stop this kind of wrong doings. It may risk lives in the future if we just let them continue.
Posted by: mulberry bags factory | 11/02/2011 at 02:45 AM
Researchers still don't ability sonar spearheads to mass losses, and in case it creates regulate physical damage.
Posted by: casinos en ligne | 11/18/2011 at 05:54 AM