In the Navy’s latest environmental impact statement draft, they admit that the sonar exercises planned for 2014-2018 may unintentionally “harm marine mammals 2.8 million times over five years.” This estimate is up about 150,000 instances a year from their EIS statement of 2009-2013. Included in this estimate are two million incidents of “temporary hearing loss,” and 2,000 are targeted for permanent hearing loss.
So is that how it went? How have things gone in the ten years since this article was written?
There are no noise-cancelling headphones to stop the U.S. Navy’s 235-decibel pressure waves of unbearable pinging and metallic shrieking. At 200 Db, the vibrations can rupture your lungs, and above 210 Db, the lethal noise can bore straight through your brain until it hemorrhages that delicate tissue. If you’re not deaf after this devastating sonar blast, you’re dead.
Fun fact, sperm whales can generate a sonar click at 230dB. Decibels are a logarithmic scale so increasing by only a few dB is basically double the volume.
A sperm whale may swim past you, think you’re interesting and give a little click to scan you, and basically stun or kill you instantly.
I couldn’t find any report of a death but here is a credible source that it’s possible. Sperm whales are particularly rare of course, and intelligent enough to probably know it’s deadly, so it’s no surprise it’s rare.
So what’s the effect? Hearing loss?
Yes. But in the same way being hit by a train causes hearing loss.
200+ decibel pressure wave.
So about half the volume of my upstairs neighbours
Lucky bastard.
So is that how it went? How have things gone in the ten years since this article was written?
We’ve been heating up the oceans so all the marine life will die and not have to worry about sonar anymore.
On account of being dead? Yeah.
That’s one of the symptoms, yes.
ded
Yes, we won’t be hearing from them again.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/killing-with-sound_b_2744864
Fun fact, sperm whales can generate a sonar click at 230dB. Decibels are a logarithmic scale so increasing by only a few dB is basically double the volume.
A sperm whale may swim past you, think you’re interesting and give a little click to scan you, and basically stun or kill you instantly.
Wow. For real ???
You learn something new everyday.
But yeah, I never saw divers getting stunned/ killed even when diving near whales.
It could be that it never happened, but that’s like such a high variance to have never happened.
Is there any example? I’ve never heard an organism (fish?) killed by whale sound wave like this
I couldn’t find any report of a death but here is a credible source that it’s possible. Sperm whales are particularly rare of course, and intelligent enough to probably know it’s deadly, so it’s no surprise it’s rare.