It seems that whales, dolphins and the like tend to do a lot of navigating by the use of sonar. Sort of their second pair of eyes in the water, if you will.
The navy also uses sonar quite a bit when hunting for submarines. Lots of it, at a high frequency.
When exposed to man-made sonar, such as the navy is using, it virtually blinds marine mammals from using their own sonar at all. They will get lost, be unable to communicate, and can potentially run up on shore. To date, there have been about 37 whale deaths and 5 instances of whales running on up on the beach that have been directly related to the naval use of sonar.
In February, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that when a whale or dolphin is detected in the area of navy ships doing exercises using sonar, they must limit their exercises until it leaves. The navy has appealed the decision, but decided to work with the restriction in the meantime and have already completed more than half of their scheduled anti-submarine exercises.
Recently, President Bush has made the case that, in the case of an emergency (such as we are in), he has the right to override the court's decision and authorize the navy to work without the restriction.
The Supreme Court seems pretty divided on this issue, and we won't get a ruling until next spring, but I thought that this was an interesting issue. I know when many people hear a case pitting any branch of the armed forces vs. the environmentalists, they automatically assume that the environmentalists are in the wrong without actually hearing what the argument is about.
We have been given a great responsibility in our stewardship of this earth, and anytime that we make a decision that would endanger or harm those creatures under our stewardship, we must take it very seriously.
I'm not going to make a statement and say which side I believe is right or wrong, but I do want you to look at this issue critically and think about it from both points of view.
Let me know what your thoughts are.
2 comments:
There are so many comprimises available in this issue, It's kinda hard to say you are on one side or another, but here's a couple things that popped into my mind when I read your post, Sam.
Obviously, we shouldn't be killing whales for no reason, but the Bible makes it very clear that a human life is worth more than the life of an animal, and when it comes to the military, they could very well be saving many human lives by practicing these anti-sub maneuvers.
I think that the Navy should come up with it's own conclusions about the whales needs and use it's sonar equipment accordingly. if either side of this argument is at all concerned about whale populations, they would voice their concerns and not just go around suing each other.
I'm sure there's a hole in my argument somewhere, but these are just my quick thoughts on it.
Great post Sam!
Hi Graydon,
I think that in this situation it would be pretty safe to assume that if the Navy were left to itself, the whale-related regulations concerning it's sonar use would be minimal to nil.
This is actually a problem I was reading about today in Biology. The lesson was on ecosystems, and how forests have such an essential part in them, including, among other things, the regulation of the nutrients that run off with the water from rainfall.
In recent years, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest have been logged off by both the people and the governments of third world countries such as Brazil and India.
Although in the short term this raises easy money for them, any ecologist can tell you that in the long term this indiscriminate logging will cause irreparable damage to the local ecosystems, including, but not limited to, the the complete loss of nutrients from the land.
So, the question is what to do about it? Left to themselves these countries would log entire rain-forests and reap the consequences years from now. Or someone who can see the long-term effects must step in and regulate this logging.
I guess my stand right now is to view government like cod liver oil: Take as little of it as you can get away with, but be prepared to recognize when it is necessary to use it.
But when is it necessary?
You've got to decide that for yourself.
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