Solution to Navy Sonar Dilemma

Our Navy has a big public relations problem:

BACKGROUND---------

17 April 2008 - Texas - (expected next?) - A federal judge in Austin is expected to order the Navy to take additional precautions when using active sonar within 13.8 miles of the Gulf coast.

12 March 2008 - North Carolina - Citizens Voice Concerns Over Navy Sonar Use - The Department of the Navy has filed an Atlantic Fleet active sonar training (AFAST) draft environmental impact statement evaluating the potential environmental effects associated with the use of mid- and high-frequency active sonar technology for fleet activities along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico.

10 March 2008 - Hawaii - usatoday.com - Navy sonar restricted off Hawaii coast - HONOLULU — A federal judge has ordered the Navy to take additional precautions when conducting sonar exercises off Hawaii that environmentalists say can seriously injure or kill marine mammals. U.S. District Judge David Ezra said Friday the Navy cannot conduct exercises within 12 nautical miles, or 13.8 miles, of the shoreline, where species that are particularly sensitive to sonar, such as the beaked whale, are found.

7 February 2008 - California - US navy-v-dolphins judge says Bush can't overrule her - US District judge Florence Marie Cooper said the recent White House exemption allowing naval exercises to proceed despite her earlier injunction was flawed.

----------------------POSSIBLE SOLUTION ?-------------------

Doesn't the Navy have decades of experience training dolphins? This may sound far-fetched, but it is deadly serious: perhaps an informal 'home school' environment (natural interactions with humans in the dolphins native waters) would offer advantages over the current schooling method when it comes to helping clear exercise areas for the Navy's sonar training activities. Just a thought.

Moko may be exceptional because of so much informal contact with humans. Moko seems to have understood when the field worker for New Zealand Department of Conservation was ready to euthanize (shoot) the stranded sperm whales as a last resort. Interestingly, Moko is a different mammal species from the pygmy sperm whales she lead safely out to sea. Here is an incredible YouTube of that wonderful interaction:


amazing creature...

Perhaps its time we learned to communicate with more of the lower mammals than just leaders like Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez.