- November 22,
1999
-
- Sirius
Institute to NMFS Re: Navy LFAS "Take"
Permit
-
- REQUEST FOR
PUBLIC HEARING
- DEMAND FOR
THE REJECTION OF THE NAVY PERMIT
APPLICATION
-
-
- Ms. Donna
Wieting, Chief
- Marine
Mammal Conservation Division
- Office of
Protected Resources
- National
Marine Fisheries Service
- 1315
East-West Highway
- Silver
Spring, MD 20910-3226
- FAX (301)
713-0376
-
- Re: Advance
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Take of Small
Numbers of Marine Mammals by Harassment Incidental to
Navy Operations of Surveillance Towed Array Sensor
System (SURTASS) Low-Frequency Active Sonar
(LFA)
-
- Dear Ms.
Wieting:
-
- Regarding
the request of the US Navy for a "small take"
exemption for its LFAS deployment.
-
- The
deployment by the US Navy of the LFAS is potentially a
vast, sweeping threat to our oceans and perhaps the
most significant single threat to ocean life that we
have yet devised. It has the potential of harming or
killing many species of whales, seals, turtles, and
fish, as well as potentially changing ecological
conditions of coastal, benthic, and reef ecosystems.
The potential effects are so pervasive, so widely
distributed, so massive, that any "small take"
exemption is, on its face, ludicrous.
-
- Therefore,
we demand that this application be denied and full and
open investigation into the LFAS and all its
ramifications be begun by investigators free of Navy
influence.
-
- Because of
its widespread effects over 80% of the world's oceans,
it is proper that there be full review by the UN and
other global regulatory bodies. This proposal goes
beyond national boundaries and must be opened to full
discussions by all peoples of the Earth, fully
including the Cetaceans affected by
it.
-
- It is quite
likely that LFAS can be considered an acoustic weapon,
a weapon of mass destruction and a means of genocide
of the Cetaceans and other creatures.
-
- Our view is
that the Cetaceans, who are conscious, sentient, with
their own cultures and language, are, therefore, in
fact, a "people", the "Cetacean Nations", and are as
fully entitled to the rights and protection of the law
as are any people on Earth.
-
- The LFAS has
the potential of decimating Cetaceans and humans in
the water. Therefore, according to international laws
and treaties, it may be a weapon of mass destruction
and is, therefore, against the law. (Like the Trident
submarine, recently ruled against the law in Scotland)
Acoustic weapons are also outlawed by the Geneva
Convention.
-
- Given that
the Cetaceans are accepted as a "people" it follows
that NMFS, which treats them as "stocks" subject to
sustainable "harvest" is promulgating the fiction that
the Cetaceans are to be treated in the same category
as fish, when in fact, they are the oldest and most
intelligent sentient creatures on Earth and fully
worthy of our protection and respect.
-
- Any action
by the NMFS or any other body to approve the LFAS or
aid the Navy in its quest for "legal" approval must be
considered, at best, ill-conceived, and a sign of
willful ignorance on the part of regulators like NMFS.
Should the Navy's application be approved on the basis
of the documents submitted, with all their lies of
omission and commission, then the NMFS and any other
party to this travesty will be doing the bidding of
the Navy.
-
- NMFS will
then have obviously submitted to pressure from the
Navy. At worst, approval of this application will
signal that NMFS has allowed a full and willing
abrogation of NMFS fiduciary duty to uphold our laws.
Perhaps this is a criminally negligent act, and
signals the need and duty of our people to reverse and
abrogate your decisions, reorganize the enforcement of
the MMPA and other laws and remove those individuals
responsible. If you approve the Navy's application,
you are refusing to do your job, and in our view, are
breaking the law.
-
- Approval of
the Navy application will signal NMFS abrogation of
their sworn responsibility and duty to enforce the
MMPA and other environmental regulations. Approval of
the Navy application is, in my view, tantamount to
being a full and willing accomplice to the Navy's
criminally negligent acts intended to ramrod a
strategic weapons system into deployment while lying
and pretending that LFAS is merely a "research"
project that is "safe" and with "negligible" impacts
on our world's ecosystems.
-
- Is NMFS
going to cave in and let the Navy sweep all this under
the rug and help them to placate all of us who see the
reality of the profound impacts of LFAS? We are
attempting to warn the planet as to what is
happening.
-
- Is NMFS
going to help the Navy lie to the American people and
the people of the world? Are you going to help the
Navy damage the oceans further? To approve this
application is a violation of your position in which
it is mandatory that you enforce the laws of the
United States. Defenses such as "the Navy ordered me
to do it" are ruled out by the Nuremberg
Accords.
-
- In the
United States, the military are servants of the
people. By your actions, you seem to think it is the
other way around.
-
- Is this what
you wish to tell your children and grandchildren you
did with your lives? How will you answer them should
the whale, seal, fish and other populations die off?
How will you answer to Congress and to the American
people?
-
- "What
happened to the whales, Daddy? Where are they? I
thought it was your job to protect them? What happened
to the fish? Why are we hungry? What happened to the
reefs? What happened to all those people who used to
make their living fishing?
-
- "Oh, well,
daughter, I did what the Navy thought best for the
country, so I just let it pass. Well, we have a great
defense against submarines, and the oceans are so much
"cleaner" now that the fish and whales are gone. It's
easier for the Navy to see their targets. They
certainly "cleaned up" the oceans. So, I helped in
that process." Is this what you want to have on your
conscience when you go into eternity?
-
- After all,
for the Navy "Every day is Earth Day". (Their current
motto) I think they should live up to
that.
-
- Many other
commentators to this Navy application (e.g. NRDC, Dr.
Lee Tepley, Dr. Marsha Green et al.) have clearly
exposed the deploring lack of data and truthfulness of
the Navy in its DEIS, its activities and documents
regarding their proposed deployment of LFAS over 80%
of the planet's oceans.
-
- From a
conservative point of view, and taking into account
our abysmal and abyssal ignorance of our oceans and
their inhabitants, and taking into account that fish,
reefs, even plants, as well as marine mammals will be
affected, the Navy's request to be allowed to "take"
marine mammals must be denied.
-
- In so doing,
NMFS will protect 80% of the world's oceans and their
inhabitants.
-
- Obviously,
the wide spread deployment of the LFAS can have
disastrous effects on both the marine mammals and
other species, including those we harvest for food.
Those who fish, those who make their livings in and
from the sea, divers in the water, whale watchers and
other forms of ocean tourism... all can be changed and
damaged by the death or disruption of our oceans that
LFAS can accomplish.
-
- I would like
to address the strategic import of this project which,
while one could speculate in the past, has now become
public knowledge with the publication of the November,
Scientific American article on "time reversed
acoustics". I commend this article to you and all
other evaluators of LFAS, because it shows the overall
picture the Navy wishes to hide with their
spin-information and public relations
campaigns.
-
- As is well
known, the power of the United States is based on sea
power, on control of the seas, and global projection
of force. During the Cold War era, there has been the
"triad" of defense, with strategic bombers, ballistic
missiles, and the ballistic missile submarines. The
bombers are mostly grounded, the effectiveness of the
ballistic missiles now blunted by the technologies of
the Strategic Defense Initiative. Now, the submarines
are quieter, and the technology for hiding in the
ocean continues to improve, threatening the
effectiveness of the one remaining leg of the triad,
the ballistic missile submarine force. Into this
situation, one introduces the LFAS.
-
- What has
been ignored in the LFAS debate is that the system is
a phased array device. What is now demonstrated by the
Scientific American article is that the Navy is doing
tests leading to a phase-conjugate device -- an
amplifying, phase-conjugate, time reversed acoustic
system. The difference between a LFAS detection device
and a weapon is only a matter of the power
employed.
-
- The admitted
power of the LFAS projector array is some 240 to 247
dB. Now, 235 dB is about 1000 watts of power. Three dB
is roughly a power of ten increase. Therefore, as
shown below, the power levels of one LFAS, 18
projector array range from a lowest level of 215dB to
a high of some 247dB which corresponds to some 10
Megawatts of power, as seen from the calculations
below.
-
- Lowest
Estimate:
for One projector (which weighs some 50,000 lbs?) 215
dB maximum output reported.
-
- Computing
the intensity of 215dB:
-
- 235-215 =
20dB difference;
- 20/3 = 6
orders of magnitude difference =
- a factor of
1 x 10^6 or 1,000,000 softer than 1000 Watts
- or 1 x 10^3
Watts x 1 x 10^-6 = 1 x 10^-3 Watts =
- 1/1000th of
a horsepower, roughly.
-
- Medium
Estimate:
240 dB maximum reported (for 18 projectors, in a
linear array, vertical under the support ship) (From
the Navy Draft EIS according to Dr. Lee
Tepley)
-
- Computing
estimated intensity levels compared to
235dB:
-
- 240dB -
235dB = 5 dB
- 5/3 = 1.66
orders of magnitude
- so this is
an increase by a factor of say, 20 greater than the
1000 Watt level or about: 20 Kilowatts of
energy
-
- Highest
Estimate:
The highest reported thus far for estimated maximum
power is: 247 dB: (from the Navy's application to NMFS
according to Dr. Lee Tepley)
-
- Computing
the difference in intensity as compared to 235 dB:
- 247-235 = 12
dB difference
- 12dB/3dB per
order of magnitude = 4 orders of magnitude greater
than 235dB
-
- or some
10,000 Kilowatts;
- or about
7700 horsepower;
- or
10,000,000 Watts;
- or 10
Megawatts of acoustic power. This is a lot of
power.
-
- Added to
this, the LFAS is deployed in a deep-water wave-guide
channel that allows constructive addition of powers
with reflection and refraction. Therefore, the power
of the final device can be much greater than the power
of any single source or array of
sources.
-
- Added to
this, there is proposed to be some 3 to 30 such
systems in the planned deployment, plus the systems of
other NATO forces, plus whatever systems other nations
develop to oppose US and NATO efforts. This amount of
power is more sound energy than has ever been created
in the ocean.
-
- NMFS must
reject the Navy argument that this amount of energy is
"negligible", or safe.
-
- It is also
clear from the above that this system could be used as
a powerful weapon against all targets in the
water.
-
- LFAS is, in
short, a Strategic Defense system for the oceans. It
may be capable of detecting and almost automatically
destroying any target detected.
-
- This is
because, in addition to being a time-reversed,
phase-conjugate system, it is capable of being an
"amplifying" system, whose gain, or ultimate power is
a matter of engineering and will.
-
- Obviously,
the Navy considers LFAS crucial to the defense of the
Nation and the planet. It may be. As may be, it must
still be subjected to open, public debate, just as
nuclear weapons and the SDI were subjected to open
public debate. The "fallout" of the LFAS system can be
vast and devastating to our oceans.
-
- Please check
these figures with your advisors, as these estimates
are "back of the envelope" figures that can be worse
or better depending on many factors. What is relevant
here is that our oceans are at great risk; our foods,
our whales, our coastlines, are now hostage to LFAS.
Ecosystems will be affected, fish killed, whales
decimated, should this be allowed to
continue.
-
- Perhaps
there are some accommodation and mitigation methods
that can improve this situation. Because LFAS is
strategic, the Navy will push hard for it. You, as an
involved regulatory body, must decide, with knowledge
and wisdom. We would suggest that the project is
already more vast than your mandate, and as such, you
should notify Congress and the UN that this is a
matter for strategic, open and global
concern.
-
- Your wisdom
and full consideration of the short and long term
effects of LFAS is required. Pull the plug on the Navy
LFAS now.
-
- Again, we
offer our cooperation, in whatever way, to protect and
preserve our oceans and their inhabitants, especially,
our old, wise, gentle helpers, our brothers and
sisters of the sea, the conscious, sentient,
large-brained Cetacea, the dolphins and the whales,
who have ever been, and are, our
friends.
-
-
- Sincerely,
in the Spirit of Aloha,
-
-
- Michael T.
Hyson, Ph.D.
- Research
Director, Co-Founder, Sirius Institute
- Paradise
Newland, Co-Founder, Sirius Institute
- Puna,
Hawai'I
-
- (Note:
this letter is amended in the calculation section
above for increased clarity. The rest of the letter,
our conclusions, and recommendations remain exactly
the same as the original letter sent to
NMFS)
|
Vol.
2 No. 3 13JUL2000
*PlanetPuna*,
Sirius
Institute
&
Sirius
Connection
420