For over a decade now, news sources have been reporting on mass deaths in dolphin and whale communities. Since the effect was first discovered, it has been well linked to be naval and mining sonars, which plumb great depths with powerful sound discharges.
What does this mean? Since dolphins and whales normally navigate using echolocation, powerful interference from human sonar is enough to disorient them and cause them to behave erratically, making swift ascents and descents. When this happens, these mammals are likely to experience the bends (decompression sickness) as nitrogen normally dissolved in their blood forms bubbles due to a rapid pressure change. When these bubbles lodge in the body, they create joint pain, headaches, and sometimes a loss of consciousness or even death.
While sonar tech has been instrumental in the recovery of crude oil from undersea reservoirs, its power in recent years has grown enormously, and now resembles a threat similar to the military’s LRAD sonic weapon. One might imagine that an animal sensitive to sound waves would be in living hell when struck by high-powered sonar waves.
Due to a recent explosion of dolphin deaths in the Gulf Coast, some sonar activities have been halted:
With sick and dead dolphins turning up along Louisiana’s coast, federal regulators are curbing an oil and natural gas exploration company from doing seismic tests known to disturb marine mammals.
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has told Global Geophysical Services Inc. to not conduct deep-penetration seismic surveys off the Louisiana coast until May when the bottlenose dolphin calving season ends. The agency says the surveys are done with air-guns that can disrupt mother and calf bonding.
The company says it laid off about 30 workers because of the restriction, which it called unnecessary.
Environmental groups are suing BOEM over the use of underwater seismic equipment and say the restrictions should be extended to surveyors across the Gulf of Mexico.
This article sourced from CBS News.
The real causes are disputed, as the die off coincides with the recent BP oil spill, but humans remain the prime suspects.
Incidents have been reported over the past decade in Britain, through most recently in Cape Cod, which occurred only a month ago.
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