Save the dolphins and whales! Ruling Restores Sonar Ban Off Coast

Ruling Restores Sonar Ban Off Coast
Navy is told to devise new safeguards for marine mammals for its next training missions.
by Kenneth R. Weiss


A federal appeals court Tuesday restored a ban on the U.S. Navy’s use of submarine-hunting sonar in upcoming training missions off Southern California until it adopts better safeguards for whales, dolphins and other marine mammals.


The order allows the Navy to continue its current exercises, but will force the Pentagon to devise ways to ensure that marine mammals are not harassed or injured by powerful sonic blasts during a series of training missions slated to begin in January.

Those precautions, such as reducing sonar power at night, when whales are not easily spotted, will have to be approved by the same federal court in Los Angeles that ordered the initial sonar ban in August.

Tuesday’s decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals came in a case that had pitted the interests of unencumbered military training against environmental protection.

At issue is mid-frequency, active sonar, a technology developed to hunt for Soviet submarines in the deep ocean. The Navy has adopted the technique in coastal waters to train sailors for a potential threat posed by quiet, diesel-electric submarines operated by North Korea, Iran or other nations.

U.S. and NATO warships using mid-frequency sonar near land have, at times, left behind clusters of panicked and sometimes fatally injured whales and dolphins in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and in the Mediterranean Sea.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/14/5215/

As far as I am concerned, they should build a model of an ocean area
somewhere underground and enclose the top Admirals in a chamber inside,
and blast those guys with the sonar till their ear drums burst.

Leave the whales, dolphins and sea life and the rest of us out of the equation.

This would be one of them, but I 'get' your point.

Ear blast sonar wave zapper and decibal-mator in its final stages and am about to unleash it
on those who disagree with me in any way shape or form!

Good luck reaching me with that ole thang. :eyes:

:D

:thumbsup: