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I was a Navy surface officer for years. We had required reporting criteria for any marine mammal sighting at least as far back as the 1990s, and we had operatin

I was a Navy surface officer for years. We had required reporting criteria for any marine mammal sighting at least as far back as the 1990s, and we had operating restrictions on the sonar as well. There are a lot of watermen in the Navy, I'm sorry people think we just don't care. The fundamental tension is that we all love marine life, but someone has to be able to fight the war, and testing weapons and training people is an inextricable part of that. And the other side ultimately, in a sense fundamentally, has a zero tolerance policy. There's somebody out there who feels every sonar should be dismantled and recycled, never to be used again. And in a law-abiding world, that person's opinion must also be respected, and the senior officers in the Navy take their obligations to the Constitution quite seriously, probably in a rather sophisticated way, where in they have forced society to tell them how far they should go. Unfortunately, that contra-extreme position of no sonar is not going to be realized without a durable world peace where geopolitical tensions can be definitely resolved in all cases without even the threat of violence.

justizin 11y ago
> There are a lot of watermen in the Navy, I'm sorry people think we just don't care. I think that the notion is that "The Navy", as an institution, does not care, to which I would offer, "The Navy" as an institution has no capacity to care or not care, only individuals and groups of them within it do.
- superuser2 11y ago
  I think it's reasonable to comment on whether institutions "care" or not about negative externalities by looking at the policies they have in place to mitigate them.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Why don't you think institutions can be modeled as an aggregation of the participants? I have no problem seeing the behavior of ants as collectively purposeful even though individual ants make poor conversation partners. You might as well say that individual humans have no capacity to feel, only individual cells within the body are capable of reacting to stimuli. I'm not being a contrarian here; while I don't want to write a wall of text to convince you I absolutely believe in the notion of collective consciousness ass an emergent complex phenomenon that is amenable to quantitative analysis under certain circumstances (eg institutional persistence vs. ad-hoc flocking behavior in crowds).
rhodysurf 11y ago
It's not the watermen that I am talking about. Its more the Navy as a research institution. The effects were treated as taboo among the engineers because its a catch 22. It's technology that has a lot of unresolved (and almost definitely negative) effects on marine life, but at the same time the technology is extremely important to things like mapping the seafloor and autonomous navigation.
user_0001 11y ago
> but someone has to be able to fight the war, Maybe tone down the warmongering and invasions, start less wars and perhaps.....
anigbrowl 11y ago
I don't know much about marine topics, but I thought the primary benefit of sonar was maintaining a safe distance between your vessel and immovable objects that you might run aground on. Is there some qualitative difference between military sonar applications and the sort that measures more passive threats from the marine environment?
- gnu8 11y ago
  A military active sonar is going to be as loud as possible in order to get the maximum echo signal back from military submarines underwater. I imagine this would be orders of magnitude louder than navigation sonar, not just a little bit.
  - ckozlowski 11y ago
    To build on this and a number of the other comments in here: There are two general types of sonar. Active, and Passive. Passive sonar involves the process of listening for signals, categorizing their type and origin, and determining their range and bearing. This is a difficult task, though the world's most sophisticated navies can perform this well. It is the preferred method of detecting other submarines (or for submarines to detect other vessels) because it does not give away the location of itself. Passive of course, has limitations. Variations in water conditions and temperatures, silencing techniques used in adversary craft, a limitations of one's own equipment can make passive difficult, if not impossible in some conditions. And even then, it is a best guess at detection. Passive sonar will give you a pretty close approximation under good conditions and a "well, he's out there" in the worse. (In the most high-tech vessels, it's a bit better than this, but I think I have the gist) Active on the other hand, is precise. Very precise. It also means, the gig is up, because the emitting craft is heard by everyone, extremely clearly. An active ping that gives a good return can give you precise range and bearing, and in some cases, velocity. It's of limited range, so typically submarines will hunt with passive and use active in the closing stages of an engagement. Typically when I read about active sonar harming wildlife, it's in reference to the large active arrays carried by destroyers and submarines. Active is used by sonobouys, navigation equipment, and torpedoes as well, but these are typically lower power output. The active array on a warship however, is generally massive, especially on a modern attack sub. They're powerful, and will produce pings against objects at thousands of yards. (I've even read that some British subs, such as the Trafalgar class, can bounce a signal off the bottom of the seabed, and get a return on a distance object from the reflected bounce.) These massive arrays are important, because if you suspect an adversary has been tracking you passively, but you can't find them, then active scan can save you by alerting you to where they are. Tactically, it is a last ditch option, or the closing move in an engagement, and it's not unusual to see a safety cover over the switch to an active array. But it does have a purpose, and the Navy, justifiably so, does need to train with it. But it does come with a cost, and it won't take long for one to search google for images of whale and dolphins with their ears literally blown to shreds because of an active scan. I sympathize with both sides on this one, and I'm glad a settlement was reached that hopefully produces a good compromise.

justizin 11y ago

> There are a lot of watermen in the Navy, I'm sorry people think we just don't care. I think that the notion is that "The Navy", as an institution, does not care, to which I would offer, "The Navy" as an institution has no capacity to care or not care, only individuals and groups of them within it do.

superuser2 11y ago
I think it's reasonable to comment on whether institutions "care" or not about negative externalities by looking at the policies they have in place to mitigate them.
anigbrowl 11y ago
Why don't you think institutions can be modeled as an aggregation of the participants? I have no problem seeing the behavior of ants as collectively purposeful even though individual ants make poor conversation partners. You might as well say that individual humans have no capacity to feel, only individual cells within the body are capable of reacting to stimuli. I'm not being a contrarian here; while I don't want to write a wall of text to convince you I absolutely believe in the notion of collective consciousness ass an emergent complex phenomenon that is amenable to quantitative analysis under certain circumstances (eg institutional persistence vs. ad-hoc flocking behavior in crowds).

rhodysurf 11y ago

It's not the watermen that I am talking about. Its more the Navy as a research institution. The effects were treated as taboo among the engineers because its a catch 22. It's technology that has a lot of unresolved (and almost definitely negative) effects on marine life, but at the same time the technology is extremely important to things like mapping the seafloor and autonomous navigation.

user_0001 11y ago

> but someone has to be able to fight the war, Maybe tone down the warmongering and invasions, start less wars and perhaps.....

anigbrowl 11y ago

I don't know much about marine topics, but I thought the primary benefit of sonar was maintaining a safe distance between your vessel and immovable objects that you might run aground on. Is there some qualitative difference between military sonar applications and the sort that measures more passive threats from the marine environment?

gnu8 11y ago
A military active sonar is going to be as loud as possible in order to get the maximum echo signal back from military submarines underwater. I imagine this would be orders of magnitude louder than navigation sonar, not just a little bit.
- ckozlowski 11y ago
  To build on this and a number of the other comments in here: There are two general types of sonar. Active, and Passive. Passive sonar involves the process of listening for signals, categorizing their type and origin, and determining their range and bearing. This is a difficult task, though the world's most sophisticated navies can perform this well. It is the preferred method of detecting other submarines (or for submarines to detect other vessels) because it does not give away the location of itself. Passive of course, has limitations. Variations in water conditions and temperatures, silencing techniques used in adversary craft, a limitations of one's own equipment can make passive difficult, if not impossible in some conditions. And even then, it is a best guess at detection. Passive sonar will give you a pretty close approximation under good conditions and a "well, he's out there" in the worse. (In the most high-tech vessels, it's a bit better than this, but I think I have the gist) Active on the other hand, is precise. Very precise. It also means, the gig is up, because the emitting craft is heard by everyone, extremely clearly. An active ping that gives a good return can give you precise range and bearing, and in some cases, velocity. It's of limited range, so typically submarines will hunt with passive and use active in the closing stages of an engagement. Typically when I read about active sonar harming wildlife, it's in reference to the large active arrays carried by destroyers and submarines. Active is used by sonobouys, navigation equipment, and torpedoes as well, but these are typically lower power output. The active array on a warship however, is generally massive, especially on a modern attack sub. They're powerful, and will produce pings against objects at thousands of yards. (I've even read that some British subs, such as the Trafalgar class, can bounce a signal off the bottom of the seabed, and get a return on a distance object from the reflected bounce.) These massive arrays are important, because if you suspect an adversary has been tracking you passively, but you can't find them, then active scan can save you by alerting you to where they are. Tactically, it is a last ditch option, or the closing move in an engagement, and it's not unusual to see a safety cover over the switch to an active array. But it does have a purpose, and the Navy, justifiably so, does need to train with it. But it does come with a cost, and it won't take long for one to search google for images of whale and dolphins with their ears literally blown to shreds because of an active scan. I sympathize with both sides on this one, and I'm glad a settlement was reached that hopefully produces a good compromise.