Underwater Sonar Linked To Whale Deaths 187
An anonymous reader writes "A group of scientists have confirmed a link between the sonar used by Exxon Mobil to map the ocean floor for oil and the death of melon-headed whales. From the article: 'A spokesman for ExxonMobil said the company disagrees with the findings. "ExxonMobil believes the panel's finding about the multi-beam echo sounder is unjustified due to the lack of certainty of information and observations recorded during the response efforts in 2008," spokesman Patrick McGinn told AFP in an email. He added that observers employed by the Madagascar government and the oil giant "were on board the vessel and did not observe any whales in the area."'"
That's it (Score:5, Funny)
Exxon's Response (Score:3, Insightful)
"ExxonMobil believes the panel's finding about the multi-beam echo sounder is unjustified due to the lack of certainty of information and observations recorded during the response efforts in 2008"
This is a perfect example of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Well done legal team!
Re:Exxon's Response (Score:5, Funny)
Is this real or a joke? I'm looking forward to finding out how simple of a cause-effect relationship can be denied. This is basically the equivalent of finding that the neighbor's eardrums were blown out due to you setting off explosions in your back yard, so it's pretty straightforward.
Re:Exxon's Response (Score:5, Insightful)
Except there's a solid causal mechanism in play here. Whales are known to have particularly sensitive sound-receiving organs that also also known to be sensitive to extremely loud sounds like explosions and sonar. And it just so happens that someone was using a highly focused sonar in the time and space these whales turned up dead.
By your logic, a guy going into an auditorium and shooting a bunch of bullets isn't necessarily the cause of all the people found dead there with bullet-holes in them. There's just not a cause and effect relationship... sure, it's a plausible explanation, but that's far from being 'cause and effect'.
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Except that sonar is by far the loudest thing in the ocean. Your neighbor's ears are bleeding. You set off a few pounds of explosives in that back yard. You claim his child clapping must be what blew out the windows and his eardrums. San people say yeah, suuuuuuure.
Re:Exxon's Response (Score:5, Informative)
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same ac here. you sound like a navy guy so some further explaination since you're in a position to understand it: air guns work much like a depth charge or cavitation. it's the shockwave from the collapse of the compressed air bubble which is what does all the damage. and large arrays of airguns are the tool of choice for these surveys.
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There are very low and high sound frequencies that humans can not hear, but yet we can be affected by them.
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Because they canteloupe
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On another note, I like melons as do many other people I'm sure. But why in the hell are those whales heading for melons?!
Clearly, they were watermelons.
Re:That's it (Score:4, Informative)
We can only use overwater sonar from now on.
It's called a Sodar [wikipedia.org], and I've written software for them.
Re:That's it (Score:5, Informative)
The reason for the doubt is that melon-headed whales beach themselves anyway with surprising frequency.
Re:That's it (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for the doubt is that melon-headed whales beach themselves anyway with surprising frequency.
The interesting question is, how can you tell this surprisingly high frequency ist not due to sonars?
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I don't know if you actually read TFA, I didn't, but from reading this news elsewhere they found that the creatures' hearing organs were damaged. They weren't just scared into beaching themselves.
Re:That's it (Score:4, Informative)
The five-member independent scientific review panel said the vessel's MBES was "the most plausible and likely behavioral trigger for the animals initially entering the lagoon system."
There have been reports of damaged hearing organs in other cases, so you are probably thinking about news that you read about Florida. In this case, the article has no mention of ear damage.
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There's no mention of damaged hearing organs in the article.
If I expose you to infrasonic tones, something proven to cause anxiety and stress in people, over a period of time, and then you later commit suicide, an autopsy will not find anything wrong with your ears. Nonetheless, that's what killed you. Now it doesn't work on everyone, and it works to varying degrees on the people it does effect, but searching for physical signs of trauma isn't always the best way of determining a cause of death; An autopsy is only one component in a murder investigation. You still h
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It's more likely they were trying to get away from the noise and tried to enter the lagoon (which was too shallow for them) to try to get away from it.
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If I expose you to infrasonic tones, something proven to cause anxiety and stress in people...
You won't have any issues providing a citation then.
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I make fun of rednecks because I grew up with them. My co-worker makes fun of 'ghetto niggers' because he grew up with them. Is either one of those 'racism'? I suppose it depends on what definition you use.
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Re:That's it (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because the n-word has strong historic links to black people being beaten, lynched, enslaved, regarded subhuman & treated like animals (not allowed to drink from the same fountain, eat in the same restrooms, etc.) -- and white people that use or used the term are conveying that they figure that those abuses were at least somewhat justified.
The word "honky" is effectively just another mean word to call someone, as it only really refers to a subgroup of whites (not the race as a whole), and doesn't have the same history or suggest that we should be treated that way. All of the historically nasty terms for white people target nationalities, were made up by other whites, and stopped being genuinely offensive long ago. Even then, they just suggested that the new immigrants were genetically inferior, not that they should be treated like blacks were.
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You're thinking too narrow. There is a glut of news anchors when you expand your search to all news outlets. You even get premium, high-volume ones if you include Fox and MSNBC. Just remember not to use them together, because the opposing biases would cancel themselves out.
The bias of all network news (at the moment) is conflict and irresponsible speculation (first to report). Thus, Fox and MSNBC don't cancel each other out, but feed off each other.
Cognitive Errors, Courtesy Exxon (Score:5, Insightful)
"ExxonMobil believes the panel's finding about the multi-beam echo sounder is unjustified due to the lack of certainty of information and observations recorded during the response efforts in 2008," spokesman Patrick McGinn told AFP in an email. He added that observers employed by the Madagascar government and the oil giant "were on board the vessel and did not observe any whales in the area."'"
Certainty of information: Nobody requires absolute certainty in science. In fact, even the court system, sad as it is, needs it -- it requires "beyond reasonable doubt", whereas science is similarily situated at "best model that fits the facts". Type of cognitive distortion ExxonMobile uses here: All-or-nothing thinking.
Out of date observations: It's 2013 now. By carefully hand picking your data set to be only, say, 2008, or pre-2008, you are discounting everything that came after. One supposes that an extra five years' worth of observations, we'd be able to narrow in on a cause. But let's humor them and take just 2008. In February of that year, before the incident in question, the US courts found there was enough evidence that high energy sonar was killing whales to ask the military to reduce its use in naval operations [enn.com].
Impartial observers: Let me sum this one up real easy -- "Managment finds no problem with the management." The government was paid a lot of money to go along with Exxon, and employees of Exxon I think we can safely say aren't impartial observers. So one of the most basic things required for proper fact gathering went right out the window. This is, in effect, an admission that ExxonMobile has no valid data points from which to draw any conclusions whatsoever. It is, from a scientific perspective, pure speculation. "We're not wrong because, er, we saw ourselves doing nothing wrong." Okay... what about everyone else? "We didn't ask them."
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P.S. The lack of whales being observed in the area might be attributable to all the observers being in a boat, above the ocean, rather than in the ocean, where the whales live. And regardless, the piles of dead whales that started washing up on shore is a good indication that whatever methodology used was deeply flawed... Perhaps they were simply listening for the whales in between their exceptionally high power sonar tests... that may have already killed or incapacitated them.
So again, this is "cover my as
We saw none, therefore we did not drive them away. (Score:2)
Re:We saw none, therefore we did not drive them aw (Score:4, Insightful)
Exxon-Mobil's argument that saw no whales only fortifies the suspicion that they were driving the whales away.
Dude, stop using basic deductive reasoning. It'll get you into trouble on this website. Judging by the moderation on this thread, you need to swear more, use exclaimation points, and call everyone a moron -- this is apparently how you win arguments now.
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Exxon-Mobil's argument that saw no whales only fortifies the suspicion that they were driving the whales away.
I have this rock that keeps bears away that I'm willing to sell you. It works because I don't see any bears around here.
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Just to be clear, you are saying this entire section is wrong?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_sounding#Hydrography [wikipedia.org]
Although I couldn't find anything definitive on the hearing ranges for this type of whale, it is reasonable that that can hear up to 50 or 60 kHx:
http://www.hmmc.org/MarMammSpp/Peponcephala/Peponcephala.html [hmmc.org]
Beluga whales can hear double that at the high end, and both are well within the range for some of the lower frequencies used for multibeam sounders.
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Re:Cognitive Errors, Courtesy Exxon (Score:4, Informative)
Look, as somebody who actually works in this industry
... And whose identity is "Anonymous"
, multibeam sounders operate on very high frequencies, way over what whales can perceive.
And yet, I can take away your hearing by emitting ultrasound if it's powerful enough. You won't hear yourself going deaf, you'll just go deaf. Actually, I can even kill you [wikipedia.org] with exposure of 180dB of ultrasound. But, working (anonymously) in the industry, you'd know that frequency is only part of the equation.
What's hilarious here is that the Slashdot circle-jerkers are already screaming EXXON...BAAAAD!
Statements like these definately add to your credibility. By making juvenile sexual jokes, it's immediately obvious to everyone that this is a man who makes six figures in the field of Oceanography.
But do you know what kind of sonar does make whales' ears bleed?
Yes: The very loud kind. Just like any other animal's ears. In fact, whale's ears are more suseptible to damage due to high decibel emissions than humans because in the human ear, air waves hit a membrane behind which there is a liquid-filled area, thus the energy of the wave can be dissipated; Pressure waves travelling through air are much less powerful than underwater, because of the density of the medium. Whales, unfortunately, have inner ears filled with the same liquid is its surrounding environment, and at the same pressure... meaning there is no transitive barrier to protect them.
The big fucking' spherical and cylindrical arrays you find in the tips of the bulbous dicks of ships and submarines.
Well, without knowing which ship was involved in a 6 year old incident, it's impossible to know whether any phallic-shaped devices were mounted to the ship. However, while lacking your literary ability in the many uses of the word 'fuck', an independent science team, perhaps with less impressive credentials than yours, found the ships' activities were the likely cause [huffingtonpost.com] of the sudden displacement and eventual death of the whales. Oh, and the names of the members of that scientific team were the International Whaling Commission, the US Marine Mammal Commission, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production (Northern Madagascar) Ltd, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Government of Madagascar. They all think you're full of crap, but what would over a hundred scientists know compared to someone who swears like a sailor anonymously on slashdot?
Have you even seen a fucking multibeam? The transducer array is roughly the size of a shoebox.
You must have very big feet then [noaa.gov]. That's a picture of the NOAA's multibeam echosounder, an ER60 [kongsberg.com]. It is a low-power model, and in this case is being used to track the migratory movements of fish, and is of limited range. The kind that several sources have indicated were used by ExxonMobile inject high pressure air into the water; These are considerably larger, and more powerful, than these systems, which modulate a diaphram. It's the difference between your laptop's speakers, and a pneumatically-driven organ like those seen at older churches. Needless to say, the organ is much louder.
Idiots. I'm surrounded by goddamn idiots!
Yeah... I know this feeling well. Look at how often I get downmodded for providing factual and relevant commentary, instead of simp
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Nobody requires absolute certainty in science. In fact, even the court system, sad as it is, needs it -- it requires "beyond reasonable doubt", whereas science is similarily situated at "best model that fits the facts".
"Proven beyond any reasonable doubt" is the standard for conviction in a US criminal court, where the jury is expected to come to a decision based on the weight of the evidence, not their opinion of the defendant. You can never be certain, you can only go with what you have.
The charge did at one point instruct that to convict, guilt must be found beyond a reasonable doubt; but it then equated a reasonable doubt with a ''grave uncertainty'' and an ''actual substantial doubt,'' and stated that what was required was a ''moral certainty' 'that the defendant was guilty. It is plain to us that the words ''substantial'' and ''grave,'' as they are commonly understood, suggest a higher degree of doubt than is required for acquittal under the reasonable doubt standard. When those statements are then considered with the reference to ''moral certainty,'' rather than evidentiary certainty, it becomes clear that a reasonable juror could have interpreted the instruction to allow a finding of guilt based on a degree of proof below that required by the Due Process Clause.
Tommy CAGE v. LOUISIANA. [cornell.edu]
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In a civil matters the burden is weighed by the preponderance of the evidence.
Re:Cognitive Errors, Courtesy girlintraining (Score:2)
Exxon is not requiring absolute certainty. I don't see a reviewed paper anywhere, just a report that says Exxon was "the most plausible and likely behavioral trigger". That is far from certainty. The court system is irrelevant, no sense talking about that since 1) I don't know the legal requirements of Madagascar, where the whales got beached and 2) there is no court case.
You are guilty of the "all or nothing" here, not Exxon.
Exxon Mobile's new mission statement (Score:5, Insightful)
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"We're no worse than anyone else and you can't prove otherwise"
It is perhaps fortunate then that we use different standards of evidence in the courts and in science than self-rating one's behavior. Because if we did that, we'd all be above average drivers. It's always the other guy's fault.
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More like "We can get away with it - we're not limeys!".
Disgusted at humans :-( (Score:3, Insightful)
If some enlightened alien race came to earth and wiped us out after having looked at the atrocious way we treat other humans and all life on this planet, I'd understand. We don't deserve to live here.
Re:Disgusted at humans :-( (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are these hypothetical aliens always so judgmental and intolerant? What did they ever do for anyone? They have the energy to get here from other planets, but they've left us here, alone, digging in the sand for something to burn to keep from freezing in the winter. And now they want to sit on their thrones and second-guess our choices? Fuck them.
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Please learn the meaning of tolerance in the political context, it's not the same as in the mechanical context.
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Tolerance:
a permissive or liberal attitude toward beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own : sympathy or indulgence for diversity in thought or conduct : breadth of spirit or of viewpoint
Please explain how he used the word incorrectly.
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Tolerance of intolerance is just pandering.
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That definition is correct but oversimplified. Tolerance in the political context is closer to the meaning of anti-discrimination - it involves disallowing prejudice, not simply allowance as the dictionary definition might suggest. This is why tolerating intolerance is anti-tolerance - otherwise the concept could indeed be made to collapse with a simple logic trick as many seem to think.
Re:Disgusted at humans :-( (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past the whales had been able to sing to each other across whole oceans, even from one ocean to another because sound travels such huge distances underwater. But now, again because of the way in which sound travels, there is no part of the ocean that is not constantly jangling with the hubbub of ships’ motors, through which it is now virtually impossible for the whales to hear each other’s songs or messages.
So fucking what, is pretty much the way that people tend to view this problem, and understandably so, thought Dirk. After all, who wants to hear a bunch of fat fish, oh all right, mammals, burping at each other?
But for a moment Dirk had a sense of infinite loss and sadness that somewhere amongst the frenzy of information noise that daily rattled the lives of men he thought he might have heard a few notes that denoted the movements of gods.
Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, 1988
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And this is precisely the sort of preciously absurd statement that would make me agree with you.
Why would you assume humans are special? We're naked apes that have learned some clever tricks with tools so we can build Lamborghinis and rocket ships.
Aside from that, our behaviors aren't demonstrably different. EVERY SPECIES THAT EVER EXISTED breeds to overpopulation, if possible. Every one will cheerfully out-compete and annihilate neighboring competitor or prey species without a second glance. Alligators
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What about your fellow humans, and their kids, you psychopathic nut?
No! Not At All. (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the actual report [iwc.int], you'll see these statements:
"There is no uneqiovocal and easily identifiable single cause of this event,"
"This is the first known such marine mammal mass stranding event closely associated with relatively high-frequency mapping sonar systems,"
"MBES systems (similar) to the 12 kHz source used in this case are in fact commonly used in hydrographic surveys around the world over large areas without such events being previously documented."
"There may well be a very low probability that the operation of such sources will induce marine mammal strandings,"
Right (Score:2)
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Can you see how whack your reply is?
Yes, a group was using their sonar. Yes, whales were injured. No, we do not know what caused it. Why? Because BOTH sonar systems could be active at the same time. Because a third factor could be active. Because someone could be lying.
Regardless of the case... (Score:3, Insightful)
who in their right mind would believe an oil company? Out of all the sociopathic entities known as corporations, oil companies are the lying, destructive ringleaders.
Exxon asked the whales... (Score:2, Funny)
Exxon asked a representative of the whales to come in for an interview and fill out a form detailing the effects --if any-- that the sonar had on their habitat and ecosystem. Exxon even sent out a 30 day compliance notice. Not one, --NOT ONE-- whale even bothered to show up for the information seminars. Clearly the whales are either not concerned, or are going about doing one of those 'Environmental Protests' that you hear about. Exxon gave the whales a chance, and they missed it, so now Exxon can do wh
Some reference (Score:5, Informative)
Typical sonars are about 160-200 dB re 1 uPa 1 m. The US Navy sonar which caused all the controversy years ago was 226 dB if I remember right. Yes these are loud, but remember it's measured at 1 meter. At 100 meters, it will have attenuated by -40 dB.
Yes those are loud, but I'm a little skeptical of all these claims of sonar harming whales because as most of you know, whales and dolphins use sonar themselves. It's typically 170-190 dB re 1 uPa 1m, with peaks over 220 dB [google.com]. They're at different frequencies though (100+ kHz for dolphins, 10-25 kHz for most depth finders, 3 kHz for the Navy sonar), and higher frequencies attenuate more quickly in the water.
Seems pretty clear (Score:3)
Whales weren't dying with hemorrages in their ears/heads before the new fangled sonar came out - and now they are.
Get in the water (Score:2)
Exxon seem confident. Then they should go for a dive in the same water and be subject to Sonar. What's not harmful to whales and other sea life could hardly be bad for humans.
Melon-headed whales (Score:3, Funny)
The whales are already having a tough time of it, what with the dying. There's no need to insult them as well.
surprised ? (Score:4, Insightful)
A spokesman for ExxonMobil said the company disagrees with the findings.
When is the last time you heard a corporation agree with any kind of information that threatens its profits? Did it ever happen? Is there a recorded case in the history of mankind of a corporation agreeing with some kind of new information without having to be pressured into doing so?
As a shipboard oceanographic technician... (Score:5, Informative)
I spent three years sailing on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography research vessels, mostly the Revelle, and the Melville. One of my primary responsibilities was operating the multibeam sonar [wikipedia.org] and other acoustic instruments. Working on ship is interesting, it's sort of like college, where you live in one small floating building housing the dorms, labs, cafeteria, and plant, with 40 people, except you cannot leave the building for 50 days at a stretch. It's like being on a reality show living and working with scientists of all types, and some other colorful characters.
None of the 50 or so marine biologists that I ever sailed with ever had the slightest concern about the multibeam's impact on marine life. And belive me they were very interested in sonar's effects on marine mammals. Anytime we would perform SEISMIC survey ops [wikipedia.org] we were required by law to have a marine mammal observer on watch. If they sighted any whales in the area, we shut down the air guns. In the old days they used sticks of dynamite, now they use 3000psi air guns. Loud.
Bear in mind our ship cost up to $50,000 per DAY to operate. And that's just for the ship, crew, and technicians, not the scientists and who or what ever they bring. Commercial vessels probably cost much more to operate; the greatest cost is diesel; ships burn thousands of gallons per day; we bought ours from the Navy. But the MMO's were professional scientists and took their jobs seriously and we respected them and I would call them my friends. The idea that any of the other acoustic instruments could harm marine mammels was never broached. Another time I sailed with a large group of marine biologists who were basically pinging whales with high powered sonar to see what would happen because they were concerned with high powered sonars effects on whales. They never brought up any of the ships other acoustic instruments.
It's possible that MB has an effect. You could hear our MB all over the ship. We ran a Simrad EM-120 [google.com] at 12khz, which I can hear pretty well. It sounded like a really loud bird chirping. And sometimes you could even hear the tinkling echos off the seabed. I can see how it MIGHT annoy whales. And I bet the commercial ships run a much higher-power sonar. They drag like 12 airguns when we drag one or two. I think a lot of it also depends on where you're operating. Most of the ocean is surprisingly empty and devoid of higher life forms. Perhaps greater percautions are needed close to whale populations. It's just surprising because as a member of the oceanographic community I for one was not aware that this issue was even on the radar (no pun intended).
MB sonar is generally a "good thing". We can only get very coarse bathymetry via satellite. MB is necessary to map the seabed in any detail and seabed maps are critical to earth science. I just hope this doesn't turn into some sort of sonar hysteria where we are unecessarily restricting good scence based on bad science.
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Sigh. The irony continues. If you read the original report, air guns were NOT involved. The popular press has confused discussion of the echosounder survey with a seismic survey in the area, which was several days *after* the stranding and therefore eliminated as a possible cause. Both of them are discussed in the report. Only one of them is relevant because it was occurring before the stranding.
Inversion. (Score:3)
Consider the source (Score:4, Interesting)
Once upon a time I would have assumed that the claims of whales dying were made in good faith.
Not anymore.
The environmental movement is so overrun with watermelon-marxists (green on the outside, red on the inside) that any claims have to be carefully screened to ensure that they are not an anti-capitalist scam masquerading as environmental concern.
That the target of this claim is an oil company looking for new sources of petroleum, makes me highly suspicious.
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Even if wind turbines do kill birds, they are still far less damaging than coal or gas.
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My liberal educators taught me that the ends don't justify the means. You can't be for killing one species of animal, and against killing another.
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You can't be for killing one species of animal, and against killing another.
Whales don't poop on my car! And... and... STAR TREK IV!!!
More seriously, I agree with your educators... but then, I love education so...
Re:Anti-oil propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue is not whether an individual member of the species is harmed, but instead whether the species as a whole is driven to extinction. Killing Deer? Fine by me. Killing Rhinos? Serious problem.
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A wind farm, improvidently sited, could theoretically interfere with the migration of a threatened, or endangered species. That's no reason to ban wind farms, but scientists have an obligation to see if those theoretical concerns will amount to a serious threat to the survival of a particular species.
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Interfere with, perhaps, but significantly interfere? Windmills need to be spaced pretty far apart or they'll interfere with each other, and the blades themselves comprise a very small percentage of the disk area, although I suppose it could be a little more if you consider the area swept in the time it takes a migrating bird to traverse its thickness.
The chance of a bird strike is surely proportional to the area blocked by rotors compared to the area birds actually fly through. It would take a huge popul
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In the real world we make trade offs. Cars result in thousands of deaths a year, but are too useful to give up on.
If we gave up on electricity far more people would die.
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Did your liberal educators give you no insight into situations where all decisions have what would normally be unacceptable consequences, or did they just suggest you stick your head between your legs and hope it goes away?
Many absolutely can be in favour of a decision that leads to deaths if it avoids something worse, if that is something you are unwilling or unable to do then let us hope that you are never put in a situation where it
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Re:Anti-oil propaganda (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong.
http://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mortality/ [sibleyguides.com]
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm [howstuffworks.com]
Sorry, but you are wrong... (Score:2, Informative)
As much as you like to pretend wind energy has no cost, it very much in fact does kill birds, including eagles [huffingtonpost.com].
The problem for you and your fellow revisionists is that people can actually see wind farms killing birds. So you can bring up all the studies you like but it doesn't change what actually happens in real life.
Re:Sorry, but you are wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
There are now approx' 200,000 bald eagles.
"Only nine bald eagle collisions with turbine blades have been recorded nationally" Ever?
So, what is your point?
"Of 1,428 individuals from across the range necropsied by National Wildlife Health Center from 1963 to 1984, 329 (23%) eagles died from trauma, primarily impact with wires and vehicles; 309 (22%) died from gunshot; 158 (11%) died from poisoning; 130 (9%) died from electrocution; 68 (5%) died from trapping; 110 (8%) from emaciation; and 31 (2%) from disease; cause of death was undetermined in 293 (20%) of cases."
Windmills are the least of their problems.
Man-made structure/technology Associated bird deaths per year (U.S.) :-
Feral and domestic cats : Hundreds of millions [source: AWEA]
Power lines : 130 million -- 174 million [source: AWEA]
Windows (residential and commercial) : 100 million -- 1 billion [source: TreeHugger]
Pesticides : 70 million [source: AWEA]
Automobiles : 60 million -- 80 million [source: AWEA]
Lighted communication towers : 40 million -- 50 million [source: AWEA]
Wind turbines : 10,000 -- 40,000 [source: ABC]
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I don't have a dog in this fight, but it's obvious you didn't follow his links. The argument there isn't that windmills never kill birds. The argument is that windmills kill several orders of magnitude fewer birds than windows or power lines, etc.
Now you can claim that's false (or point to national structure density), but you should at least address the response as he framed it. That would lead to intelligent discussion, and not merely angry retorts.
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Maybe they already sound very similar to the sounds whales make, and maybe that's why the whales get disoriented and stranded.
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1. They wouldn't be loud enough, they need very powerful sound for this mapping, that's what damaged the whales' hearing.
2. Don't you think mimicking whale calls might confuse the whales?
Re:Already knew this. (Score:4, Interesting)
They use "air guns" or something to map underwater oil deposits. Basically make an extremely loud noise and listen for it to bounce back from *beneath* the bottom of the ocean. That's got to deafen the shit out of whales and all the other creatures in the ocean.
Indeed they do, but it's standard practice to "soft start", i.e. start with low intensity pulses and gradually increase in order to give marine mammals chance to keep enough distance. Also there are observers on the ships to look out for any creatures that might be affected and stop if necessary.
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Do you have any idea how well sound travels through water? Because of the much higher density it travels much further, much faster than it does through air.
That is true, but doesn't change the inverse square law (or just inverse law if we're talking about amplitude). And the energy is mostly directed downwards due to interference with the reflection from the water surface and the design of the airgun array. It could travel a long way by repeatedly reflecting off the water bottom and the surface, but again this will weaken it considerably. The net result is that is only very loud close to the source.
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How can the sea form a waveguide? Even if the water bottom was perfectly reflecting (it's not), there's still the spreading in the horizontal directions. IIRC, the level typically drops to less than 170 dB at 1 km from the source. Blue whales can produce nearly 190 dB and sperm whales well over 200.
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Pretty much all of them do...looks like you'll have to become a voodoo witch-doctor. And avoid any of the natural cures they used that modern scientists have found to actually work.
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2. A typical sonar will be about 180-200 dB re 1 uPa 1 m, with the powerful one the US Navy was using being about 226 dB. That isn't because the sound is louder (measured as how much your eardrum moves). It's becau
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You are actually both right - corpses left alone in the sea will first sink, then rise again hours later due to those gases you mention. I dont have any data on how long it takes for a whale to go through that process, IIRC it's generally around a day for a human, depending on the weather (warm weather faster, cooler weather slower.)
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The local teenagers setup a mobile rave outside your house and start pumping out One Direction and Ke$ha at 120db.
Unable to do anything to get them to move you decide to pack your family in your car and get out of the area for a while.
While driving you get lost in the rain and trying to find out where you are you lose control of the car and crash into a pole killing your kids and putting your wife in hospital.
Obviously the teenagers driving you out of your home are in no way to blame.
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So renaming shouldn't be a problem. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
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Wait a minute, no its not. They are both LYING.
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