posted 10-08-2003 07:51 PM            

By Seth Borensen

posted 10-09-2003 07:48 AM            

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~ Immanual Kant

posted 10-09-2003 12:34 PM               

"In late June, NRDC attorneys returned to U.S. District Court and argued our landmark case to save millions of marine mammals from the Navy's deadly LFA sonar system. The system would flood ocean habitats with high-intensity noise that can harass, deafen, maim and even kill whales. NRDC has asked the court to impose a permanent ban on global deployment until such a day as the Navy can prove it has complied with environmental laws and will do no serious harm to marine life. The court's ruling is expected by September"

It would seem as if the court ruled in the Navy's favour (quelle surprise!!) I'm in the UK, has anybody heard more up to date information?

B.B.C. World Service had a piece the other evening but i missed that bit. Apparently though, whales and dolphins are surfacing in great numbers with fatal symptons like the divers bends, boiling gases in the liver and other organs. The pain they're trying to get away from must be so great--or they no longer can sense what's up or down. The numbers correlate with nato exercises and the British Navy think it's all so wonderful they are now planning to implement these LFA systems also.

Goodbye whales.

Makes you proud to be human, eh.

posted 10-09-2003 01:08 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by orgonote:
Goodbye whales.

Makes you proud to be human, eh.

phil

[Edited 1 times, lastly by orgonote on 10-09-2003]

---

Nope, it disgusts me, and makes me ashamed to be a human.

posted 10-09-2003 06:26 PM               

""The US Congress is considering proposals that will make it easier to get permission to use high-volume sonars in the ocean - just as fresh evidence suggests that their noise can harm marine mammals.

Capitol Hill is looking at two measures to loosen the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), which sets guidelines for noisy experiments in the oceans. One would simplify the rules, making it easier to get permission to do the experiments. The second would exempt the US Navy from the regulations on the grounds of national security.

The changes are supported by the navy and by some geophysicists, who want to use noise-generating devices to study geological formations on the ocean floor. But they are strongly opposed by many marine biologists. "There is a huge split over the issue," says John Hildebrand, who studies marine mammal acoustics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

In a Brief Communication in this issue of Nature, a team led by Paul Jepson of the Institute of Zoology in London concludes that 14 whale deaths off the Canary Islands last year may have been caused by decompression sickness after the animals shot to the surface to escape sonars during Spanish-led international naval exercises1. The team says the sonar appears to have caused gas bubbles to form in the blood, damaging the whales' livers and kidneys.

posted 10-09-2003 07:10 PM            

By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Navy sonar may be giving whales a never-before-seen version of the illness known as "the bends," leading them to be stranded and to die, according to a new study in Thursday's edition of the scientific journal Nature.

The findings could strengthen the hand of environmental groups trying to force the world's navies to limit or stop their use of sonar during sea exercises. The U.S. Navy and the Natural Resources Defense Council this week are negotiating such limits in an effort to settle an NRDC lawsuit.

In the Nature article, scientists report finding gas bubbles in the organs and blood vessels of 10 beaked whales that stranded themselves along Spain's Canary Islands in September 2002. They beached themselves about four hours after the beginning of sonar activity nearby during an international naval exercise.

"Our findings suggest that naval sonar could be killing whales," said study co-author Antonio Fernandez, a pathology professor at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain. "The protection of the whales is a responsibility of everyone."

Other top whale scientists were skeptical.

Darlene Ketten, a senior whale biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and an ear, nose and throat professor at Harvard Medical School, said whales don't get the bends.

"We expect that these animals over 50 million years evolved to avoid problems resulting from diving," Ketten said. Other stranded whales have not shown symptoms of the bends, she added.

In addition, whales don't absorb the nitrogen needed for the bends to form, said Daniel Costa, a marine biologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The U.S. Navy, which is reviewing the Nature study, said more research is needed. The Navy defends the use of sonar as key to American security and has sought an exemption from the 31-year-old federal Marine Mammal Protection Act so it can use sonar.

"Imposition of restrictions on use of mid-frequency sonar prior to a comprehensive study of the issue could compromise the safety of America's men and women who serve aboard Navy ships," said Navy spokesman Lt. Commander Joseph "Cappy" Surette. Even if further research implicates sonar, the number of marine mammals killed by sonar is small compared with those killed by fishing nets, he said.

Navies have been using sonar - sound waves that travel through water - since World War II to find targets. Sonar mimics the systems that whales use to find prey.

A report by the U.S. Navy and the Commerce Department about a mass whale stranding in the Bahamas in 2000 concluded that Navy sonar was one of the chief causes of the whales' deaths. The National Academies of Science in February found that beaked whales often strand and die after use of naval sonar, but concluded that there was not enough evidence to blame sonar alone for strandings.

Decompression sickness, often called "the bends," occurs when scuba divers surface too quickly after lengthy dives. It's caused when nitrogen gas, which has been absorbed into the body at high pressure, is quickly released upon surfacing and forms painful and, at times, deadly bubbles in the body. It's similar to opening a bottle of carbonated soda.

The Canary Islands cases are the first large-scale evidence that something similar to the bends is at work, said study co-author Paul Jepson of the Zoological Society of London. Those whales, most of them Cuvier's beaked whales, had gas bubbles in different parts of their bodies. The bubbles were worst in their livers, where some bubbles exceeded 2 inches in diameter, according to the study.

Jepson said he didn't know exactly how whales got this condition. There are two possible ways: Either the whales are disturbed by the sonar and rise much more rapidly than normally, or the sonar could somehow cause bubbles to form.

"It's just one more piece in what's a very long line of evidence that the use of intense Navy sonar around the world is a serious environmental program," said NRDC attorney Andrew Wetzler.

NRDC sued the U.S. Navy to stop or alter its plans to use low-frequency sonar in the Pacific near whales. Most studies, including the Canary Islands one, were based on mid-frequency, not low frequency, said Surette. The Navy wants to use low-frequency sonar to track quiet enemy diesel submarines, he said.

"In recent tests this system has proved itself extremely effective at identifying potentially hostile submarines," Surette said. "An independent scientific research program concluded that the Navy could test and train with (the low-frequency sonar) without significantly affecting marine mammals."

In June, a federal judge-magistrate in San Francisco ruled that the Navy must limit its plans for low-frequency sonar exercises.

The Navy is also examining dead whales and porpoises after a mass stranding last May in Everett, Wash., days after Navy sonar use.

---

(Knight Ridder Newspapers researcher Tish Wells and correspondent Glennda Chui contributed to this report.)

posted 10-09-2003 08:01 PM            

8 October 2003
Terra Daily

Naval sonar linked to mass death of whales: study

PARIS (AFP) Oct 08, 2003 -- Military sonar may be to blame for catastrophic deaths of whales, prompting the deep-diving mammals to ascend so quickly that, like divers who decompress too fast, they suffer a mortal attack of "the bends," a study says.

Powerful naval sonar has already been implicated in the stranding of whales and dolphins, perhaps by disorienting them, but this research is the first to yield clinical evidence as to exactly how the animals could be affected.

British and Spanish marine pathologists carried out autopsies on 10 out of 14 beaked whales that were stranded on the beaches of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote in the Canary Islands in September 2002.

The mammals beached about four hours after a Spanish-led naval task force nearby began using mid-frequency sonar as part of an anti-submarine exercise.

Tissue dissection showed that the whales' livers and other internal organs were filled with gas bubbles, and smaller blood vessels had been literally blown apart from inside. There was no sign of any disease.

"These lesions are consistent with acute trauma due to... bubble formation (within the body) resulting from rapid decompression," the authors, led by Paul Jepson of London's Zoological Society, report in Thursday's issue of Nature, the British science weekly.

Decompression sickness is caused by surfacing too fast from a depth. Instead of remaining dissolved in the blood, nitrogen gas expands quickly, forming bubbles that can clot or breach blood vessels.

The study suggests two possibilities for the phenomenon.

One is that the sonar's radio waves are so powerful at close range and at great depths that they excite the compressed nitrogen nuclei in certain tissues, causing the gas to expand.

Alternatively, they postulate, the sonar confuses the whales' sense of depth, causing them to surface dangerously quickly.

Previous evidence about sonars has been largely anecdotal, seeing only a statistical link between nearby naval exercises and mass strandings.

It has given rise to the theory that extremely loud sonars, especially in the low-frequency range, may disrupt whales' hearing, internal compass and the communications on which they depend for mating.

Agence France-Presse
http://www.terradaily.com/2003/031008190054.44d9282r.html

-------------------------=>

swamp gas - that is a beautiful little picture of the whales.

professor - thank you for calling attention to this horrendous situation.

We don't need "more studies." That is bullsh*t. [I beg your pardon.]

posted 10-09-2003 10:09 PM            

You asked about the court’s ruling. I believe this is the latest news:
http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/030826.asp

posted 10-13-2003 03:49 PM               

Date announced: 7 Dec 2002

Gaiacomm: To Boldly Go Where No Telecommunications Company Has Gone Before!
December 7, 2002

There has been much speculation as to the validity of Gaiacomm's claim of having developed a 4G global wireless communications technology. If one does a complete due-deligence into the claim one will find a technology that has verified the science of Quantum Physics and has discovered uses for the Terahertz band in the artful form of wireless communications.
Scientists around the world have been actively researching and developing small pockets of data around terahertz waves, infrasound, and the interfacing of low frequency waves with other higher bands. If one just listens and records the sounds of Nature one will discover the answers to these questions and soon discover the governing dynamics of wireless communications by understanding the coupling of specific frequencies to each other thus propagating them in a way that yields creditable results. A form of signal transduction except not at the cellular level.

We have discovered a way to use the dynamics of the earth's magnetic field and the surface area of the planet to rebroadcast a signal globally and with little or no loss.

We have discovered a way to use Sonar to detect and identify other objects in the oceans without impeding on the communications channels of whales and other mammals that inhabit the deep oceans.

We have discovered a method to communicate to submarines at any depth or location.

We have discovered a method to use the dormant fiber optic rings that exist worldwide to utilize our wireless broadcast system.

We have discovered a method to isolate and manipulate the ionosphere in such a way as to control the dynamics of the electrons that exist and cause isolated fusion reactions within selected regions of the earth's atmosphere, (Compton Effect).

We have discovered a method to eliminate the dependency on satellites that are too costly to maintain and "clutter" the skies with space junk.

We have discovered a method to effectively broadcast a signal to any location on planet earth to digital devices (cell phones, handheld PDA's), computers, and other frequency specific devices.

We have discovered a method to construct an isotropic type antenna array thus allowing for a 360-degree footprint. The projected radiated signal footprint is 5 million sq. surface miles per antenna.

We have discovered a method to use the earth as a "transponder" and take advantage of the spherical wave-guide that exists globally.
We have discovered a method to keep control of the cost of operation down thus passing a significant savings to the ratepayer far cheaper than any telecommunications provider can offer worldwide. In addition, we have designed a pricing structure that will allow global customers to participate with our service and have money to spare.

We ask that all of you follow Gaiacomm's struggle to present its technology to the scientific academia and "push" its way to the front of the telecommunications industry by offering a wireless communications technology that functions and functions well by taking into account the needs of others on this tiny planet and offering reliable quality service, creating global employment, and assisting in developing revenue streams for industry and countries, in short "jump starting" various economies worldwide thus reducing the depend ices on "Super Power" control and manipulation.

Please view our website at www.gaiacomm.org and see the progress we are making with our affiliations with other organizations on our quest to become the leader in wireless communications and Homeland Security.

posted 10-14-2003 12:41 PM               

Is this the same part of the spectrum presently cutting edge in respect of medical imaging and other research for customs and law enforcement since it goes through pretty much everything except metals i believe? The URL below is for a page typical of a number that a 'google'on terahertz waves will pull up.

Isn't this a portion of the spectrum also mysteriously used in conjunction with sensory systems for guidance and so on by various species. (Certainly insects--the work of Phil Callahan with moth antenna and a modern version of the so called 'russian infra-red machine' comes to mind) If that is the case are you confidant that high power (?) emissions in this area will not damage creatures which use this part of the spectrum in a subtle way, or are your researches to investigate this type of question?
http://optics.org/articles/ole/7/9/5/1

To chuck another wacky idea out there in the light (or obscurity) of my post on the other thread abot this which you started. Do you suppose that the emissions (?) from orgonite are a phenomena in this terahertz band also? I have wondered this for some time so the question is not frivolous for me.

posted 10-14-2003 01:52 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by orgonote:
Hello Gaeacomm.
The terahertz band you mention here, is that the tiny band between the infra-red and the microwave portions of the spectrum? (YES)

Is this the same part of the spectrum presently cutting edge in respect of medical imaging and other research for customs and law enforcement since it goes through pretty much everything except metals i believe?(YES, EXCEPT IT CAN PENATRATE ALL METALS) The URL below is for a page typical of a number that a 'google'on terahertz waves will pull up.

Isn't this a portion of the spectrum also mysteriously used in conjunction with sensory systems for guidance and so on by various species. (SOMEWHAT)(Certainly insects--the work of Phil Callahan with moth antenna and a modern version of the so called 'russian infra-red machine' comes to mind) If that is the case are you confidant that high power (?) emissions in this area will not damage creatures which use this part of the spectrum in a subtle way, or are your researches to investigate this type of question? ( WE FOUND A WAY TO USE A PORTION OF THE TERAHERTZ BAND THAT WILL ALLOW FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION IN A NON-INVASIVE WAY!)
http://optics.org/articles/ole/7/9/5/1

To chuck another wacky idea out there in the light (or obscurity) of my post on the other thread abot this which you started. Do you suppose that the emissions (?) from orgonite are a phenomena in this terahertz band also?(NOT SURE YET! ALSO I WILL BE RESPONDING TO YOUR OTHER POST!) I have wondered this for some time so the question is not frivolous for me.

Thanks
phil

---

posted 10-14-2003 03:06 PM            

Judge temporarily blocks Navy sonar plan
Friday, November 1, 2002 Posted: 6:05 PM EST (2305 GMT)

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SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Navy from deploying a new high-frequency sonar system amid concern it could endanger whales and other marine animals.

Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte, however, said Thursday that the Navy may use the sonar to detect enemy submarines during wartime and must be allowed to train with it beforehand.

She ordered both sides back to court Nov. 7 to begin work on a plan that would balance environmental and military concerns.

The case stems from a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental organizations that sought to stop the Navy from training in most of the world's waters with a powerful sonar system the groups maintain can harm marine mammals.

"It is undisputed that marine mammals, many of whom depend on sensitive hearing for essential activities like finding food and mates and avoiding predators, and some of whom are endangered species, will at a minimum be harassed by the extremely loud and far-traveling ... sonar," Laporte wrote.

However, she said the Navy showed the technology "is likely to significantly increase our ability to timely detect very quiet submarines."

Joel Reynolds, a NRDC attorney, said the group wants the sonar tests carried out far from coastlines, and away from mammals' feeding, migrating and breeding areas. A Navy spokeswoman said only that the decision was being reviewed.

Earlier this week, a federal judge in San Francisco, California ordered the National Science Foundation to stop firing high-intensity sonic blasts into the Gulf of California because they harm whales.

The sonar at issue can send signals hundreds of miles and as loud as 215 decibels -- the equivalent of standing next to a twin-engine F-15 fighter jet as it takes off. The Navy was planning to begin testing the system throughout the world and had agreed to exclude polar waters and areas within 12 miles of any coast.

Environmentalists sued, pointing to a different sonar used by the Navy in March 2000. Hours after it was deployed, at least 16 whales and two dolphins beached themselves on islands in the Bahamas. Eight whales died and scientists found hemorrhaging around their brains and ear bones, injuries consistent with exposure to loud noise.

posted 10-14-2003 04:46 PM            

Web address didn't connect, here's the article found on Google

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Navy agrees to limit use of sonar system
Scientists say this may benefit whales

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Tuesday, October 14, 2003

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Hoping to settle a long controversy with environmentalists, the Navy has agreed to limit the use of its new underwater sound system to small areas of the far western Pacific Ocean in order to avoid possible harm to whales and other sensitive marine species.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and five other groups had sued the Navy in federal court two years ago, charging that the far-ranging sonar system designed to detect and track silent submarines could deafen, disorient or even kill mammals with its powerful sound waves.

Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte of U.S. District Court in San Francisco issued an injunction last August halting the Navy from using its powerful new sonars, but she ordered the contending groups to negotiate a compromise that would enable the Navy to conduct sonar tests in a limited ocean area where whales are less likely to be affected.

The Navy had planned to use its "low-frequency array" sonar surveillance instruments by towing them from ships deployed across more than 75 percent of the world's oceans, according to Joel Reynolds, an attorney and director of the NRDC's Marine Mammal Protection Project.

Under the new agreement, which must still be approved by Laporte, the Navy would confine tests to ocean areas along the eastern seaboard of Asia, including the East and South China Seas, the Philippine sea, the Sea of Japan, and the Pacific 30 to 60 miles off China and North Korea.

The Navy also agreed not to test the sonars in areas likely to be visited by the whales during their annual migrations. Nor will naval ships use the devices around the Hawaiian Islands, according to the agreement, which was signed by lawyers for both the Navy and the NRDC.

However, the Navy is free to use the system without restrictions if war threatens.

Despite the agreement, however, Congress is now considering legislation empowering the Navy to pursue testing and deploying its new sonar surveillance system anywhere in the world -- legislation that Reynolds called "unnecessary, unwise and unjustified."

A Navy official who asked that his name not be used declined to comment on the negotiated compromise Monday, saying he wanted to wait for the judge's final ruling. He maintained, however, that continued monitoring of the early high-frequency sonar tests showed there had been no harmful effects on any whales or other marine mammals.

"The use of the new low frequency arrays is absolutely critical to the Navy's anti-submarine efforts,'' he said, because modern submarines have become increasingly silent and undetectable by conventional sonar. The Navy has earmarked a total of $7 million for marine mammal research in its budget for the coming fiscal year, he said.

During a press conference Monday in Santa Monica, Reynolds said the agreement with the Navy "demonstrates again that environmental protection and preparedness for our national defense are not inconsistent but can be balanced -- just as they have been for decades.''

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had originally issued a permit for the Navy to conduct full-scale ocean tests of the high-powered sonar system anywhere in the world, based on an environmental impact statement from the Navy contending there was no evidence the systems would damage marine mammals, and that was the permit the environmental groups challenged in court.

In the past three years, groups of beaked whales have stranded themselves on beaches in the Bahamas, Greece and the Canary Islands, apparently disoriented and damaged immediately after sonar pulses were emitted by navy ships from various allied nations.

Those sonar operations, however, were at different frequencies and much lower intensities than those used by the Navy's new system, the ones that were challenged by the environmental groups.

Last week British and Spanish scientists reported in the scientific journal Nature that the Canary Island whales had apparently suffered from decompression sickness marked by bubbles of nitrogen suffusing their tissues - - a phenomenon similar to the "bends" that scuba divers suffer if they surface too rapidly after a dive.

Reynolds also announced that together with scores of other international environmental groups, his organization will start a campaign to persuade other nations to "stop the accelerating proliferation of high-intensity sonar in our oceans."

Navy agrees to limit use of sonar system
Scientists say this may benefit whales

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Tuesday, October 14, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hoping to settle a long controversy with environmentalists, the Navy has agreed to limit the use of its new underwater sound system to small areas of the far western Pacific Ocean in order to avoid possible harm to whales and other sensitive marine species.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and five other groups had sued the Navy in federal court two years ago, charging that the far-ranging sonar system designed to detect and track silent submarines could deafen, disorient or even kill mammals with its powerful sound waves.

Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte of U.S. District Court in San Francisco issued an injunction last August halting the Navy from using its powerful new sonars, but she ordered the contending groups to negotiate a compromise that would enable the Navy to conduct sonar tests in a limited ocean area where whales are less likely to be affected.

The Navy had planned to use its "low-frequency array" sonar surveillance instruments by towing them from ships deployed across more than 75 percent of the world's oceans, according to Joel Reynolds, an attorney and director of the NRDC's Marine Mammal Protection Project.

Under the new agreement, which must still be approved by Laporte, the Navy would confine tests to ocean areas along the eastern seaboard of Asia, including the East and South China Seas, the Philippine sea, the Sea of Japan, and the Pacific 30 to 60 miles off China and North Korea.

The Navy also agreed not to test the sonars in areas likely to be visited by the whales during their annual migrations. Nor will naval ships use the devices around the Hawaiian Islands, according to the agreement, which was signed by lawyers for both the Navy and the NRDC.

However, the Navy is free to use the system without restrictions if war threatens.

Despite the agreement, however, Congress is now considering legislation empowering the Navy to pursue testing and deploying its new sonar surveillance system anywhere in the world -- legislation that Reynolds called "unnecessary, unwise and unjustified."

A Navy official who asked that his name not be used declined to comment on the negotiated compromise Monday, saying he wanted to wait for the judge's final ruling. He maintained, however, that continued monitoring of the early high-frequency sonar tests showed there had been no harmful effects on any whales or other marine mammals.

"The use of the new low frequency arrays is absolutely critical to the Navy's anti-submarine efforts,'' he said, because modern submarines have become increasingly silent and undetectable by conventional sonar. The Navy has earmarked a total of $7 million for marine mammal research in its budget for the coming fiscal year, he said.

During a press conference Monday in Santa Monica, Reynolds said the agreement with the Navy "demonstrates again that environmental protection and preparedness for our national defense are not inconsistent but can be balanced -- just as they have been for decades.''

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had originally issued a permit for the Navy to conduct full-scale ocean tests of the high-powered sonar system anywhere in the world, based on an environmental impact statement from the Navy contending there was no evidence the systems would damage marine mammals, and that was the permit the environmental groups challenged in court.

In the past three years, groups of beaked whales have stranded themselves on beaches in the Bahamas, Greece and the Canary Islands, apparently disoriented and damaged immediately after sonar pulses were emitted by navy ships from various allied nations.

Those sonar operations, however, were at different frequencies and much lower intensities than those used by the Navy's new system, the ones that were challenged by the environmental groups.

Last week British and Spanish scientists reported in the scientific journal Nature that the Canary Island whales had apparently suffered from decompression sickness marked by bubbles of nitrogen suffusing their tissues - - a phenomenon similar to the "bends" that scuba divers suffer if they surface too rapidly after a dive.

Reynolds also announced that together with scores of other international environmental groups, his organization will start a campaign to persuade other nations to "stop the accelerating proliferation of high-intensity sonar in our oceans."

posted 10-15-2003 05:44 AM               

When you consider that Decibels are units on a logarithmic scale and that were you to stand in front of the speakers at a Led Zeppelin concert you might encounter an ear shattering 110 perhaps-------the prospect of these animals with their highly evolved and essential hearing getting subjected to 215 decibels, well, it is beyond ghastly!