Military sonar blamed for mass dolphin strandings

[harpboy_ak]

Source: (London) Times Online

Tests on a captive dolphin have demonstrated that hearing can be lost for up to 40 minutes on exposure to sonar. Hearing is the most important sense for dolphins and other cetaeceans, and losing it is likely to cause them to become disorientated and alarmed.

The finding by the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology may explain several strandings of dolphins and whales in the past decade. Most strandings are still thought to be natural events, but the tests strengthen fears that exercises by naval vessels equipped with sonar are responsible for at least some of them.

(snip)

Sound can become trapped if a layer of warm water lies over cold water. When sound created in the warm zone reaches the cold water it can bounce back instead of travelling though it. This, Dr Mooney said, would have the effect of trapping the sound in the warm layer, where it would bounce around “like a ping-pong ball”, giving whales and dolphins little chance of escaping it.

(snip)

Dr Mooney said that this could explain three of the best-known strandings that have been linked to military sonar – in the Bahamas, the Canaries and Hawaii – because all three regions had a mountainous underwater topography.



Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6054843.ece

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But the current Supreme KKKourt lets the military kill these animals after torturing them with sonar for hours and hours. Time for Obama to stop this!

[aquart]

1. DO NOT MESS WITH THE DOLPHINS.

[leftchick]

2. my favorite rights group on this issue

http://www.nrdc.org/joingive/

[pleah]

3. K&R

[navarth]

4. If humans go exctinct

you can't say we didn't deserve it.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. I think we need an environmentalist on those subs, just to make

sure they aren't using sonar in a reckless way. You know, the way they get reckless by allowing dignitaries on the subs. Tuna boats, beware.