aeinews.org

Scientists Call Strongly for More Stringent Safety Thresholds for Sonar Exposure

This is an AEI lay summary of the following academic paper: Parsons, Dolman, Wright, Rose, Burns. Navy sonar and cetaceans: Just how much does the gun need to smoke before we act? Marine Pollution Bulletin 56 (2008) 1248–1257. This paper represents a clarion call by several biologists who are convinced that we ...

AEI News in Context: Supreme Court Sonar Ruling

What does it mean? How will this ruling affect the ongoing debate as the Navy rolls out its regional EISs to govern sonar training in offshore ranges around the US coastlines and Pacific ocean? It's interesting to note that the Navy did not appeal two aspects of the lower courts' ...

Navy Wins Supreme Court Sonar Case

This week, the Supreme Court ruled in the Winter v. NRDC case, finding that that the District Court "failed properly to defer to senior Navy officers' specific, predictive judgments" about how the Court-imposed additional safety measures would impact the Navy's ability to effectively train its personnel. The case addressed only ...

Wind Turbine Setback Requirements Vary Widely: From 300m to 1.5km

Underlying the spreading controversy about noise and health effects of wind turbines is the "million dollar question" for wind farm developers: how large a buffer must they leave between turbine towers and homes? In the US, pressure is on local and state authorities who are scrambling to write regulations to ...

Park Service Proposes First Real Limits on Snowmobiles at Yellowstone Since Guided Tours Provision

Responding to a September Federal Court ruling that tossed the 3rd Yellowstone Winter Use Plan on the cusp of a new winter season, Park managers have released a proposed interim plan that will, for the first time since the original Clinton-era plan, reduce the actual numbers of snow machines in ...

Wind Turbine Noise Spurs Health Complaints, Force Residents to Move

The spread of wind turbines into quiet rural areas is leading to increasing complaints that they make more noise than residents were led to believe. While simple annoyance and sleep disturbance are the most common effects, in some cases, nearby residents are reporting health problems that they associate with the ...

Supreme Court Hears Navy Sonar Case, Transcript Available

For two hours on Wednesday, the long-running dispute between the Navy and NRDC over mid-frequency active sonar had its day in the Supreme Court, and while the Justices did broach some questions about the relative likelihood of harm to cetaceans or Navy training, the legal case itself rests on more ...

Increasing Ocean Acidification Will Allow Sound/Noise to Travel Further

AEI laymans summary of the following paper: Hester, Peltzer, Kirkwood, Brewer. Unanticipated consequences of ocean acidification: A noisier ocean at lower pH. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 35, L19601. This is a theoretical, rather than field research, study that calculates the likely current and future decreases in sound absorption caused by increasing ocean ...

Jetskis Trigger Immediate Responses in Dolphins

Miller, Solangi, Kuczaj II. Immediate reponse of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins to high-speed personal watercraft in the Mississippi Sound. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom (2008), 88:1139-1143 [ABSTRACT, CONTACT AUTHOR] This study, using opportunistic observations in the Mississippi Sound (a 90-mile intercoastal waterway, between the coast and a series ...

Six Years Later, Canary Island Strandings Still Spur Questions

The BBC has run a three-story series that reflects on the stranding deaths of six beaked whales during NATO sonar training exercises in late September 2002. Coming two years after a similar incident in the Bahamas during a US Navy sonar training exercise, the Canaries stranding cemented a growing concern ...

Supreme Court to Hear Sonar Case October 8

Oral arguments on the California sonar case will take place before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, October 8, in the culmination of perhaps the most convoluted sonar challenge to date. The case began as a simple NEPA challenge to routine Naval sonar training off the Southern California coast in early ...

Undersea Warfare Training Range DEIS Moves Site to Florida, Near Right Whale Calving Area

A new Draft Overseas EIS released by the Navy shifts the preferred site for a long-planned sonar training range from North Carolina to Florida, near Jacksonville. The 575 square mile Undersea Warfare Training Range would be outfitted with a grid of instrumentation which is designed to provide detailed feedback during ...

Third Yellowstone Snowmobile Plan Tossed by Federal Court

The eternal cycle of Yellowstone Winter Use Plans looks to continue for at least one more round, as the third "final" National Park Service rule governing snowmobile access to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks has been tossed out by a Federal District Court after challenges form a consortium of ...

Multi-year Sperm Whale Study in GOM Shows Lack of Avoidance at Long-Range, Possible Foraging Changes

LAY SUMMARY OF THE FOLLOWING RESEARCH REPORT: Jochens, A., D. Biggs, K. Benoit-Bird, D. Engelhaupt, J. Gordon, C. Hu, N. Jaquet, M. Johnson, R. Leben, B. Mate, P. Miller, J. Ortega-Ortiz, A. Thode, P. Tyack, and B. Würsig. 2008. Sperm whale seismic study in the Gulf of Mexico: Synthesis report. U.S. ...

5-Year Study Finds Little Impact on Sperm Whales From Distant Seismic Surveys, With Some Indications of Closer Range Effects

The Minerals Management Service has released the final report of the Sperm Whale Seismic Study, which lasted five years and used acoustic D-tags that track the movements of whales while also recording received sound levels. Unfortunately, few of the 98 whales that were successfully tagged during the study came any ...

AEI FactCheck: Navy/NRDC Battle of the Soundbites

Been wondering what's up with the great "Sonar Kills Whales"/"Everything's Fine, Just Go Away" rhetorical battle between NRDC and the Navy? As you might suspect, the reality is not nearly so neatly defined as either of them might suggest....and if you're up for digging into it more deeply, the ...

US Navy Agrees to Geographical Limits on LFAS

A federal district court has approved a settlement between the Navy and a NRDC-led coalition of environmental groups that will limit training missions using Low-Frequency Active Sonar to several specific regions in the Paciific Ocean. Negotiations were ordered by the court after NRDC challenged the legality of permits the Navy ...

US Researchers Observe Whale Reactions to Sonar; UK Report Suggests “Significant” Behavioral Responses

As a new UK Navy report suggests that beaked whales made "potentially very significant" behavioral changes in response to mid-frequency active sonar signals, a team of scientists has just completed a pilot study that involved monitoring the detailed behavior of whales during a major Naval exercise. The UK military report ...

Beaked Whale Stranding at End of Month-long Navy Exercises

As the US Navy approaches the end of the month-long multinational RIMPAC training exercise in waters around Hawaii, a single Cuvier's beaked whale has turned up on a Maui beach. After several hours of near-shore struggle, it was euthenized and taken to Hawaii Pacific University for a necropsy, to attempt ...

UK Wind Farm Plan Abandoned; Developer Cites Responsibility to Avoid Noise Problems for Neighbors

Plans for a modest-sized wind farm in rural Wales have been abandoned after one of the developers decided that it would have to be cut in half to meet local noise standards. While energy company E.On had hoped to build a 10 megawatt, 8-turbine wind farm, their analysis showed that ...