H e l l o,  j u s t  q u  i e t l y………….……………. !

Lying on my belly on the edge of the crater at White Island some decades ago, I looked down 50m to an oval Olympic-sized pool of Martian green soup. Part way up the steep crater wall opposite, acidic super-heated steam and ash roared out an over-developed crescendo from a vent just three or four metres diameter. It was noisy alright. I was awed….and how noisy it was, I’ll never know…but relating it to other known decibel (db) levels, it may have been around 140db…. 20 below the level at which ones eardrums are instantly perforated. The definition of a decibel is a complicated subject unnecessary to discuss here, but whispering I’m told is about 25db, normal conversation 60db, a screaming child 90db, rock concert/threshhold of pain 120db, and a jet engine 140db. What this has to do with telephone greetings, whales, the European Union, the American Navy and naval exercises off the east coast of Great Barrier Island, is in varying ways all connected.

Getting the small, unimportant stuff out of the way first, the decibel is called that after Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. Bell’s first telephone exchange in New York required operators to talk to subscribers and a standard greeting word was therefore invented called ‘hello’ and from that time it has spread with the phone around the English-speaking world. What has also spread around the world from naval ships and submarines is something acoustically based but nowhere nearly so benignly beneficial.

There is compelling evidence that increasingly, intense man-made underwater noise, both regionally and ocean-wide, potentially threatens entire populations of whales and other marine mammals. (report- Scientific Committee of International Whaling Commission). 

Overwhelming evidence is now available that mid-frequency active sonar systems, used by navies around the world, especially during sonar exercises (such as is facilitated by the naval listening station off Gt Barrier?) cause mass whale stranding and mortality events.

This is where the picture darkens, because the lethality of the sonar systems has increased as they have evolved to a lower frequency and increased power. It is called low-frequency active sonar (LFAS) and is used by the US Navy to emit up to 235-decibel pulses fanning out nearly 200 miles away.   

‘In July 2002, President Bush’s administration approved a five-year exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act for the US Navy to conduct field manoeuvres with LFAS. (Two warships fitted with the sonar devices to randomly sweep 85% of the world’s oceans). The exemption of the Act allows for the ‘harassment’ of marine mammals by the Navy with the low-frequency sonar’. (J.A. Newton DiveNZ).

On October 28, 2004, the European Parliament (the elected body of the European Union, representing 400m+ people), approved a resolution which calls on its twenty-five member states to stop deploying high-intensity active naval sonar until more is known about the harm it inflicts on whales and other marine life.

The resolution sites increasing scientific and public concern over a series of documented mass strandings and mortalities of whales following military sonar exercises.  Noting a growing body of scientific research that confirms such sonar poses "a significant threat to marine mammals, fish and other ocean wildlife," the resolution calls on member states to establish a Multinational Task Force for developing international agreements on sonar and other sources of intense ocean noise; to exclude and seek alternatives to the harmful sonars used today; and to "immediately restrict the use of high-intensity active naval sonars in waters falling under their jurisdiction."