Beached Whales and Navy Sonar

The lead editorial (the newspaper's view) in the Tuesday, March 8, edition of the well-respected Christian Science Monitor is headed "Beached Whales and Navy Sonar."

It opens:
"Navy subs routinely use sonar - the underwater version of radar - to navigate and to detect potential threats. But the powerful sounds harm whales and dolphins. In fact, some sonar systems can generate 235 decibels. In air, that's as loud as a Shuttle launch. Enough examples of that harm abound to suggest a better balance must be found between the military's need to use sonar and the need to protect marine life.

"Last week, more than 60 dolphins beached themselves in the Florida Keys, perhaps because of a nearby Navy sub training exercise. More than 20 have died. Last month, 37 whales of three different species died after beaching themselves in North Carolina. Though Navy officials maintain not enough conclusive evidence links sonar to that unusual mass stranding, they say ships were using sonar in nearby waters at that time. And they have acknowledged that sonar was responsible for a beaching of whales in the Bahamas in 2000."

It tells us:
"Last week, the Bush administration issued a statement opposing international efforts to curb sonar use. That, however, shouldn't rule out unilateral steps in which the Navy could restrict sonar use in training exercises. It should also work voluntarily with other nations along those lines.
"As the world's largest funder of ocean research, the Navy has an opportunity to be a better environmental steward."

You can read the whole editorial on line at:
http://csmonitor.com/2005/0308/p08s03-comv.html

and send an appreciative letter to the editor at:
http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/contactus.pl Select "letter to the editor."

Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. If you forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts, please do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)