Military Sonars

Since 1996, when an article appeared in Nature -- one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals -- on the stranding of 12 Cuvier's beaked whales across a 40-mile stretch of Greek beach, military sonars have come under increased scrutiny. In this incident, low-frequency sonar was used during NATO military exercises in the Mediterranean Sea.

In other parts of the world, when whales and dolphins started washing ashore dead with no visible injuries (Canary Islands, Puget Sound) or stranded live in shallow water (Bahamas), mid-frequency sonars were also implicated.

It must be stressed that these few incidents are ones we know about because animals happened to wash ashore where humans found them. There is no way to know how many more animals were killed or were eaten by predators and sank to the ocean bottom before they could be counted.

Since the Bahamas incident, none of the beaked whales who had been studied in the same areas for nearly 10 years have been seen again, not even those that had stranded live and were guided back to sea. It is presumed that all died.

The US Navy, in developing and testing its SURTASS-LFA (Surveillance Towed-Array Sensor System -- Low-Frequency Active, called "LFA" for short) sonar system, was caught bypassing domestic environmental laws and taken to court by environmental groups led by Natural Resources Defense Council. ACS has also been very active on this issue.

As recently as October 2003, Members of Parliament of the European Union were presented with a petition from a coalition of concerned scientists and environmental organizations from around the world in opposition to the development of LFA technology by EU member nations - to read petition: NATO-EU military sonar petition.

The single biggest problem with the use of such intense sonars -- or any other loud sound source in the marine environment -- is that the long-term effects on marine mammals, fish and sea turtles are unknown. It is this knowledge gap that needs to be addressed before not only the United States but other countries deploy these extremely loud sonars for constant use.

The US Navy alone has the capability to ensonify 80% of the world's oceans using only four ships. The controversy between the military and environmental groups arises out of the need to maintain a certain level of national security and not injure or kill every living thing in the ocean by doing so. This is not an overstatement.

From what scientific research there is available on the short-term impact of noise on marine organisms, and because of the highly variable properties of underwater sound in varying geographic habitats and under varying sea conditions, it is clear that much more study must be undertaken over a period of years and across multiple species before anyone -- scientists and military alike -- can say with any confidence there are no long-term negative effects.