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Background on LFAS                                  July 20, 2002
Low Frequency Active Sonar is a device used to detect silent running submarines. What they do is blast noise into the ocean and then listen for a ping that returns. This distinctive ping is created when the sound bounces off a submarine. The problem lies in the amount of noise they blast into the ocean. The amount of noise is 240db (deci-bels) which is equivalent to standing 20 feet away from a Saturn rocket at take off.

At a 1 mile radius from the ship the noise only dissipates to 180 db which causes a bubbling effect in marine mammals' blood stream which creates embolisms. At 100 mile radius from the ship the noise only drops to 160 db which causes shearing of the tissues in the air sack behind whales' and dolphins' brain. This air sack is highly sensitive since it is used in echo location. This shearing of tissue then causes hemorhaging in their brains.

Fish have little hairs in their ears that transmit sound waves from their ear canals to their central nervous system. The 160 db level shears these hair right off. Granted they grow back in 2 weeks, but they are deaf and are more likely to be picked off by predators and can't find food. Any fish or marine mammals caught in this "death zone" would have to swim 100 miles to escape the noise and pain.

In a radius of the ship the size of Texas the sound only goes down to 110-120 db which changes migratory patterns, causes defensive behaviors and changes song patterns. It has been noted that mother and calf humpback pairshave been separated due to the sound since they couldn't hear each other over the noise.

The Navy wants to deploy this system in 80% of the world's oceans. Because the Navy is meeting great resistance from some GREAT environmental groups (list is long: NRDC, CSI, Earth Island, etc) the Bush Administration is taking on new tactics. The military is pushing for exemptions from certain environmental laws such as the MMPA, ESA, Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, NEPA, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. If you are like us you can see that giving the military a blank check with no accountability is a VERY dangerous thing.

We are very much in favor of national security, but if we kill off the oceans we will have nothing to defend. The Navy currently has a Passive Listening System that is just as effective and causes no damage to the environment.

Because of the catastrophic impact this system can have on fish and marine mammals we are currently pushing to have this system banned from Washington State waters. We are also pushing to have H.R.1160 supported by Congress. H.R. 1160 was a bill that was introduced in January 2001 that would stop LFA from being deployed. One of the sponsors of this bill was our own Congressman McDermott from Washington State. Currently the bill sits in the Armed Services Committee and is awaiting input from the Department of Transportation.

National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in all it's finite wisdom approved LFA for deployment despite the above PROVEN information. NMFS once again proves that they are about political protection and have nothing to do with science. NMFS= Not Much Factual Science.

Sandra Abels  U.S. Citizens Against Whaling
"Saving Our Oceans One Whale At A Time"
www.usagainstwhaling.org   ph/fax 206-361-0736



Noisy Oceans Shrink Whales' World
ITHACA, New York, June 19, 2002 (ENS) - "There are 100 year old whales alive today who can probably remember when the ocean was a much quieter place, and they could communicate with colleagues across grand expanses of ocean," says bioacoustic scientist Christopher Clark in a new report showing that machine made noise may be blocking whale recovery. The very low frequency courtship songs of fin whales and blue whales are the most powerful biological sounds in the oceans. But the artificial noise created by ships and other human sources could be interfering with whale reproduction and population recovery, Clark and his team of marine scientists report in the June 20 issue of the journal "Nature." 

Scientists from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Cornell University, Mexico's Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur, and the California Academy of Sciences studied fin whale courtship songs in frequencies far below the range of human hearing.

"We hypothesize that whale songs evolved to take advantage of the ocean's sound channel, especially for some of their most important kinds of communication, including finding a mate," says Clark, who is the I.P. Johnson Director of the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "Only male fin whales sing loud songs."

"Twenty to 25 million years of evolution are being undone in a hundred
years," Clark says.  The discovery about whales' courtship songs occurred in a relatively quiet part of the seas, Loreto Bay in Mexico's Gulf of California, where finwhales aggregate to feast on swarms of krill and sing.

Special computer software, developed at the Cornell bioacoustics lab and installed onboard a converted fishing boat that was towing an array of hydrophones, helped biologists determine which whale in the bay was singing.

Once a singer was located, scientists in an inflatable boat collected a small sample of that whale's skin. Genetic analysis of the samples revealed the sex of the whales. The DNA analysis found that during the month long study of the whales in the bay in the winter of 2000, there were 21 males and 22 females. Only the males were singing the very low frequency song.

The study was funded by the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research, which had supported previous studies by the Cornell Bioacoustics Research Program into a new type of sonar, low frequency active (LFA) sonar, that might possibly interfere with marine mammal communications. That sonar study concluded that LFA sound does not alter marine mammal behavior, although the animals can detect it.

But older types of military sonar are among contributors to disturbing background noise in the oceans, along with commercial ships and seismic surveys, according to the marine scientists.

Clark says. "These are animals that roam the world's oceans, and they breed only every two to three years. In their lifetimes, the oceans have become incredibly noisy. Their world, which is so dependent on sound, is shrinking as a result of human noise."

Gray whale population estimates indicate decline
Preliminary population estimates of the Eastern North Pacific gray whale show that their populations are no longer increasing and may have declined.  Scientists consider such fluctuations to be normal, however, and within the natural course of events.  There have been several dips in population estimates during the 30-year population recovery.

NOAA Fisheries whale counters tallied 2,800 whales migrating south past Granite Canyon, near Carmel, Calif., during 532 hours of systematic searching between December 12, 2001, and March 5, 2002. This resulted in a preliminary  estimate of about 17,500 whales. This estimate must be peer-reviewed by the International Whaling Commission's scientific committee.  For more information visit:
http://www.fakr.noaa.gov

This came from NOAA's website. In court yesterday the NOAA attorney stated to the Judge that the numbers of gray whales was at +ACI-26,000 and climbing.  It's not like they are declining.+ACI- Well, the article states that last year the estimate was at 18,800 and this year was at 17,500, a significant decline.  The EA has proven that NOAA isn't good at science.  Looks like we can add math to the list.

from  Sandra Abels U.S. Citizens Against Whaling     www.usagainstwhaling.org

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