Navy 1, Whales 0
By Jamie Henn - Nov 12th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Not that I really thought an underwater creature would triumph over the United States military, but today’s Supreme Court decision is still a bummer. The court ruled that the Navy could continue to blast a special type of sonar (mid-frequency active sonar) around the oceans off Southern California even though, in the words of Justice Ginsburg:
Sonar is linked to mass strandings of marine mammals, hemorrhaging around the brain and ears, acute spongiotic changes in the central nervous system, and lesions in vital organs.
“But wait!” the Navy lawyers say, “National security! National security!”
Siding with the Navy, Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority decision, “active sonar is the only reliable technology for detecting and tracking enemy diesel-electric submarines.” Diesel-electric submarines? Last time I checked, Al Qaeda wasn’t investing a lot in submarine warfare. In an era of global terrorism, spending millions of dollars in Navy sonar-training exercises rather than putting that money into improving our intelligence and securing our cities is misguided.
And in an era of global environmental instability, killing off another major part of the ocean ecosystem by blasting it with sonar is completely insane. Humans depend on the oceans for a large percentage of our food –more than 60 percent of the world’s population lives in a major coastal area or along a river system that feeds into the ocean.
With those points in mind, I’m thinking that whales might be a lot more important than Navy sonar to our future security.
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