July 8, 2020 • 66 mins
Ships across the planet rely on sonar to safely navigate the world's oceans. This fascinating technology has revolutionized everything from maritime research to international trade and war -- but, somewhere along the way, experts realized sonar might have a hidden price. Listen in to learn more about sonar's effects on marine animals -- and why, for decades, it was the stuff the world's militaries didn't want you to know.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
We hope this episode finds you healthy and happy and
maybe amid grand adventure, perhaps even out on the ocean.
(00:51):
Now that so many countries are relaxing a lot of
their they're formerly draconian lockdown policies, today, we'd like to
explore the ocean along with you in a way. Uh.
The ocean is fascinating. We know less about what goes
on in the ocean now then we do about what
(01:13):
goes on on the surface of the moon. And you know,
people have very few people have been to the moon.
A lot of people have been uh on the surface
of the ocean. Uh, and a lot of people have
gone to the bottom, but far fewer people have returned
to the top. And one quick thing about that. As
we've just been learning, and as was announced by NASA today,
(01:36):
I believe we are sending a new little rover up
to the Moon called the Viper that's supposed to be
landing on the Moon and going around and looking for
water in which is pretty interesting. I believe that's all.
That kind of mission is also um at least partially
(01:57):
intended to be approving ground for or later searches on Mars.
Is that correct? Absolutely? Does it come equipped with a
little divining rod that just like kind of vibrates when
it hits water, It just kind of like sniffs around
for it. Yeah, more high wheels and then a small
protruding like spring loaded. Yeah. Well, I mean that's an
(02:19):
interesting question because, uh, it goes into the concept of
vibration and sound, which is what, uh, you know, all
sound is is vibration. And going back to the ocean,
the biggest source of water that we are experientially familiar
with as a species. We know that it is just
(02:40):
like the surface of the planet, it's riotous with life.
The thing is that the creatures in the ocean, wherever
they are in the ocean or these seas of ours,
they live a vastly different existence. In some cases, it's
almost alien like. We've often heard it said that cephalopods,
especially the sup for intelligent ones like octopuses, are the
(03:03):
closest our species has to you know, an example of
what alien life would look like. And and it's fascinating stuff,
but it's also so obscured to us. It's it's occulted
the we we don't know what is happening in the ocean. Oh,
(03:23):
I know. And if you want to get a look
at that, I really recommend the I think it's called
Blue Planet or the Planet Earth. Maybe there's an episode
about the deep deep deep, like Marianna's trench deep ocean creatures,
and they look like aliens, like the angler fish with
the little light bulb thing on their heads. And then
this one called the vampire squid that looks literally like
(03:44):
something straight out of the Gates of hell Um. But
the adaptations that happen at those depths with such little
light are absolutely fascinating. And like you said, Ben, the
closest thing to alien life that I think we were
gonna be able to ever set our eyes on in
our lifetime, at least officially. And and and the thing
is that because Um, Unfortunately, because the vast majority of
(04:08):
human exploration, invention, and ingenuity depends on you know, the
concept of a monetary economy, by far the most popular
religious belief of our age. Uh, we find ourselves in
a position where as a species, we can get down
to incredible depths in the ocean, but we have to
(04:28):
propitiate to the economic gods first. It's that means it's
look pretentiousness society. It's very, very expensive to explore the ocean.
So what we're saying, and uh, people have always been
in this push pull over whether or not it's a
good investment to explore the ocean. Militaries are one of
(04:49):
the most powerful well forget one of Militaries are the
most powerful human force on or below the surface of
the ocean. And because it is so difficult and so
expensive to get actual people down past a certain depth
for any substantial length of time, we have built tools
(05:12):
to tell us what's going on. We've built We've built
this kind of um, synthetic mimicry of a natural thing
that existed, uh the way before humans actually existed. We
invented something called sonar. It's turned every ship into the
Marvel comic book, he wrote, Daredevil, here are the facts.
(05:35):
That's a really good way to put it. That's exactly
what sonar does. It's also called, or is called stands
for sound navigation and ranging, and it's extremely common. It's
used in almost every vessel that is large enough to
travel around for any reason on on the ocean. And
just like you said, like Daredevil, it allows us to
(05:57):
see without visualizing, is using sound to essentially visualize what
exists both in the depths and out in front of
you and basically in three sixty degrees around you within
the water. And it really is fascinating that we were
able to figure out how this works, just humanity in general. Um,
(06:18):
and it it is really it's cool how it how
it mimics natural processes that a lot of other animals do. Yeah.
And and it's an old, old technology. It's much older
than you might think. Uh. A lot of people who
are perhaps in the younger demographic of our fellow listeners
may understandably think sonar is something that came about after
(06:40):
what would you say, guys, World War two? Maybe, Yeah,
it seems kind of techy. I mean, it always has
like a futuristic vibe when you think about you know,
the readouts and the way it looks like on a
submarine or enaval vessel with like the grid and like
you know, sending out the pings and being able to
recreate you know, um, you know, map topography underwater using sound.
That sounds pretty kind of brave, New world e and futuristic.
(07:03):
But we also have to remember that this is a
quote unquote technology that exists in the natural world, and
that we're kind of just mimicking that we've sort of
hijacked from, you know, organic beings like like whales and
uh and and dolphins. No, you're absolutely right. So you
can imagine how let's say someone studying animals, bats, even
(07:24):
or anyone else that's any other animal that's using echolocation,
but perhaps specifically an animal that's using sound within the water,
within the ocean to either communicate or to figure out
where it is and what's you know, what dangers lurk ahead.
So you imagine that studying animals, someone in eighteen twenty
(07:46):
two created sonar, Like imagine that there's at least the
precedent the thing that existed that became sonar. There was
a gentleman named Daniel Culloden. He stuck a bell underwater
and he was using this to calculate the speed of
sound as it's traveling through water rather than air. Like
(08:07):
if you it's very very different and it and it
does travel very differently. So that that occurred way back
in eighteen twenty two, then you do have to fast
forward a little bit further to nineteen o six, when
modern sonar as we generally understand it exists today. There's
(08:27):
a guy named Lewis Nixon who built a what we
would consider to be a sonar like device and it
was specifically made to detect icebergs. Yeah, and so it
was that a silly question. I'm not making a sound flipping,
but was that technology around the Titanic got Iceberg aheaded?
You know? It was like would they have just had
(08:48):
visual on that or like that would have been in
the late eld No, No that's not true. No, it
was after. It was after nineteen six, was after um,
the Louis Nixon invention. But the shame this is this
widespread and that's a m We could call it modern sonar,
but modern sonar is really galvanized by war like so
(09:14):
many other so many other great technological breakthroughs. It happens
as a way for people to figure out how to
kill more people or to figure out how to keep
more people from killing them. You could kind of imagine
it Ben like, oh all right, Nixon, Uh so this
thing can detect icebergs? Right? Well can it detect you know,
(09:34):
name the adversary Germans? And and you know submarines, of
course are an episode all their own in the modern day. Uh,
they're fascinating things. In World War Two there were horrible
places to be uh. And in World War One that
was even more true. But these things could be Um,
(09:58):
you know, the concern and about what submarines would be
common world War two really trigger this research. And sonar
and son are you know, not to belabor the point. Um.
Sonar works in a in a pretty straightforward way. The
way we can understand it at a high level without
getting into too much of the physics here, is that
(10:19):
it emits sound waves bing bing bing, and it measures
how long the echo of those sound waves takes to
return after it hits something. That means, for example, if
we're all on on the conspiracy cruise that's spelled s
E A, and we are using sonar and shallow water,
(10:42):
then our pins are gonna return to us more quickly
because they are traveling a shorter distance. But if we're
over a very deep part of the water, then it's
going to take longer for those sound waves to return.
And this is this is common knowledge. It's how bats
where gets out, daredevil works. There's nothing particularly scary about
(11:03):
it yet. There are two types of sonar though. Uh.
The first one is kind of what we described active
sonar makes the sound, makes the pain, waits for the pain,
and then you're like, okay, there we are. UM. In general,
the longer distance stuff is going to use much lower
frequencies and we'll probably have some automotopia here in today's episode.
(11:28):
But the lowest long distance active sonar kind of makes
this like uh, this long sound. Uh, And it's valuable. Boats,
ships need this. We used sonar for a lot of stuff.
But there's another one you need to know about, and
that is passive sonar. Yeah, passive sonar listens but doesn't
(11:50):
transmit UM. And these are often used by militaries, but
scientific research uses these systems UM as well for for
entirely different applications. Passive sonar systems usually have a large
databases of sonic information that they collect. A computer system
can use these databases to identify different classes of ships
(12:13):
or um types of actions they might be taking, like speed,
or particular type of weapon that they're releasing, and even
you know, the make and model of the ship. Uh.
Sonar is also a super valuable tool for like we
said earlier, creating kind of um, recreating topography of underwater
(12:35):
UM landscapes, nautical charts and maps, UM, locating various underwater hazards,
mapping of the sea floor, uh, looking for shipwrecks, or uh,
you know, let's just take a step further, just because
we're all dreamers here, let's call it buried treasure. Uh.
And today it's used over more than seventy of the
world's oceans. So UM, like we sort of teased earlier,
(13:01):
this is not something that man just invented out of
whole cloth, says, something that whales use as well and
other underwater creatures. Whales in particular use it to know
how to move around, to how to make sure they're
not running into any icebergs or battleships or what have you.
Are just any kind of obstacles. Now, they're large creatures, uh,
(13:23):
and fascinating ones to boot um, even more fascinating than
the whole concept we're talking about here, which is sonar.
A lot of folks out there in podcast land are
probably gonna be surprised to learn just how much we
do not understand about whales in this the year. Yeah, yeah,
we uh. We are embarrassingly cartoonishly clueless about a lot
(13:48):
of aspects of whales in general. I want to separate
a couple of things when we talk about whales and sonar.
We have to remember, first off, that there are quite
a few different type of whales. Often, I think when
we hear whales, just the term we think of the
(14:08):
largest whale, right, the blue whale. That is, that is
what's called a baleen whale. They've got those weird plates.
They swim through the ocean. They just digest a bunch
of very small things. That's yeah, that's just that's just
their bag. They stuck with it. They're very good at it,
and they're huge. And then there are toothed whales. A
(14:32):
dolphin it's like an example of a toothed whale. These
are the ones that use echolocation to move around the
ocean and echolocation like we like we said earlier, it's
the natural world's predecessor to sonar. Whales have what you
could call a language. There's a lot of research that's
(14:54):
gone into the language of different whales, the ideas of
the songs and so on. So for whales that are
using echolocation, they're communicating in high whistles and pulse bursts
of sounds and then clicks. And this is interesting, this
is something I did not know. The clicks made by
(15:15):
toothed whales are the loudest sounds made by any marine mammal,
which means that once upon a time, before the age
of the anthroposyne, they were the loudest regular sounds in
the ocean. And and it sounds hyperbolic, but it is.
It is insane, Like they can use this, uh, they
(15:40):
can use these things in a in a weaponized way too.
They're mapping the sea floors they swim, they they're mapping
underwater obstacles like you said, Matt, depth of water, shorelines,
figuring out where other animals are. And then there's this
theory that's pretty new that says maybe some of their
high intensity focused sounds are almost like um almost like
(16:05):
the weapons in Dune. Maybe they're stunning or disorienting prey.
Maybe they're attacking with sound. I mean, that's pretty crazy,
and the science is pretty compelling. It's also a very
it's a very sensitive trait. That's why you know, like
like we see that animals tend to have a primary sense,
(16:28):
sort of a lead singer in the band of their senses.
For humans were a visual creature, right, we we have
taste and smell and sound and stuff, and they're all
very important, but we like to see stuff. And for
many of these animals, their their protagonists in their their
(16:50):
gang of senses. The leader of their sensory higst crew
is sound. Is this echolocation, which makes sense because you
can't you can't see very well as or in depths
of the ocean, right, it's more difficult um. And so
of course it's going to be those instruments on their
bodies are going to be more sensitive. The same way
that dogs are primarily um olfactory creatures. They live by
(17:13):
their sense of smell. That's why you don't if you
don't want to be a jerk, don't bop a dog
or a cat on the nose. They will be infuriated
with you. That's a really interesting thing to talk about.
There have been just about how sensitive the sensors are
on them on toothed whales, but also just the different
(17:33):
uses of sounds that they emanate. And you know, we're
talking about those clicks and being able to almost weaponize
them as like a an audio flash bang or something
to to be able to use like that. They've also
got sounds um, and not just toothed whales. You can
also think about a couple of their different kinds um,
(17:54):
gray whales, bowhead whales. They have they have behaviors that
are considered to be avoidance behaviors or like escape behaviors,
and the sounds that they can emanate when essentially distressed.
UM are extremely loud and some of the some of
the louder, the other louder things that would have existed
(18:16):
in the ocean. UM. Just again, fascinating creatures. We have
a ton to learn. And you know we're talking mostly
about tooth whales here, but if you go back to
the balien whales, it's not as though they're just silently
trawling the waters and going around. These are the animals
that you would hear if you've ever heard anyone talk
(18:39):
about a whale song, or if you've heard any recordings
perhaps of something that would be called a whale song. Uh.
These whales do make a lot of sounds, and they
communicate uh through through these sounds with each other. Um
and against the same kind of thing we would talk about, um,
where is the food? Where are we going? Where? Where
(19:01):
are you here? I am at least that's our current understanding,
and we can only assume that it gets much much
more complicated than that. We just don't have a way
to translate. We do know that there are dialogue or
accent differences in different groups of of certain whales. We
know that some of these communications seem intergenerational, right that
(19:25):
they are taught to their young. There's also a heartbreaking
story of a one tone deaf whale that was excluded
from from its community. But we'll leave that heartbreak to
you to find, dear listener, Fellow conspiracy realists. Uh, Noel,
I think you said you found a pretty good automotopack
(19:47):
description of what a whale song was is like written out?
Is that correct? Yeah? It was. It was pretty remarkable
to see it on paper, and I tried to uh,
pronounce it out for you guys. Off Mike, I'm going
to give it ano shot here. I'm not gonna do
an impressionable way. I was gonna kind of do it
like a human reading on a monopeia. Uh. It's something
along the lines of blur wah, wah wah. That was beautiful.
(20:18):
You can also find recordings, of course, of of whales
songs I believe from different uh like different years, different
parts of the ocean. Very well aware of this. There
is not at this point. There's one of the questions
I would ask if I were hearing this for the
first time. There's not at this point. Uh. What we
(20:38):
would understand is a good translation, right, there's not. Um.
They're having attempts to communicate with whales through through technological means. Um.
But right now, sadly enough, one of the most effective
ways that humans have communicated with whales is through sonar.
We have to talk about how these process as he's interact. Okay,
(21:01):
so we understand echolocation, we understand sonar. Right, I've got
the the I've got the basics. So a man with
two thought experiments, imagine you're walking in a dim, gigantic
room you're trying to find your way to the door
to a negress all of a sudden, thousands of laser
lights or shining into your eyes or thousands of flashlights.
(21:25):
What they're doing is whomever is using those lights is
illuminating the room for themselves, but they are blinding you
in the process. As part of the reason that police
and intimidation tactics will make sure to keep a light
on your eyes, it puts the person getting the light
shone on them at a tremendous disadvantage. It's a it's
(21:48):
a very similar thing with whales or since we're talking
about sound right, rather than talking about um site, imagine
that you're hanging out with with the four of us
at an Applebe's. I say the four of us because
Paul is of course there too. Oh to be in
an Applebee's right now, the apps right, and we're having
(22:12):
a chat. You know maybe um, maybe Matt is going
up to uh, I don't know, do something important. We'll
write the script later, uh. And then know you're you're
gonna say something to him like, hey, don't forget the uh,
you know, make it make that too margarite Margarita's or something.
But right Esnal is gonna say that somebody we don't know,
(22:36):
maybe never will meet again, burst into the lobby and
they blast sound, so much sound that it's like when
you can feel the base in your votes bones times twenty.
Forget trying to tell Matt about that, Margharita. Our ear
drums are bleeding. We're like, we're starting to lose consciousness,
and then when the sound passes, we we are damaged. Yeah,
(23:01):
I mean, any any crossover listeners to Ridiculous History will
remember an episode we did UM with a pre eminent
expert on underwater explosions named Dr Rachel lance and we
talked about the sinking of the Hunley, which is a
super rudimentary uh or like civil war submarines wi I
didn't even know was a thing, but it's like basically
like a flint Stone's car submarine that you crank with
(23:24):
your feet, really really dangerous. Every time they did a
test runt of it, people died and then it actually
did single worship. But Dr lance Um her area of
expertise was talking about the way these underwater shock waves
affect our bodies and our internal organs and they can
cause serious internal damage to our viscera. And that's kind
(23:45):
of what we're talking about here, right, Yeah, And with
those two ideas, this at the very least complicates things.
So that's our question today. What is happening here, what's
happening under the surface of the ocean, and how are
you complicit? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.
(24:15):
Here's where it gets crazy. Sonar is massively Paul, please
edit me here. We have to say it. Sonar is
massively in up whales. People knew about it before the
public did. And even when it was open secret. Uh,
the militaries of the world, which were and and you know,
shipping interests, uh, did some stuff that was similar to
(24:39):
the actions of oil companies when they knew about climate change.
It kind of fought against this right and they did
it for um, they did it pretty successfully, and they
did it for what they would see is compelling reasons,
what they would see as once again one of the
great boogeymen of history, the greater good. So what happened,
(25:02):
So if we go back to the early nineteen hundreds,
when we would consider that era to be the beginning
of sonar, let's say, you know, around World War One,
really then we would have to go much further. We're
talking sixty something years to get to around nineteen seventy one,
(25:24):
which is what we would say is the beginning of
academic concerns about what sonar is doing to wildlife, the
effects that it's having on whales and other creatures and
animals in the ocean. And there were there were two
men that we're looking into this, Roger Payne and Douglas Webb.
(25:44):
They went on to prove that before humans had ships,
small ships, large ships, massive ships just go traveling across
the ocean and within the ocean. Before we were doing that,
the tones from creatures called thin whales, so it's a
specific type of whale. The tones that they were generating
(26:07):
and the processes we've talked about prior to this. They
could travel as far as four thousand miles within the
ocean and still be discernible against just the ambient general
background noise that exists when you're in the ocean. Four
thousand miles the approximate distance of the Amazon River from
(26:29):
the beginning from the mouth to the end. So they
could say, uh, what up, I'm I'm a cool, cool
whale from the mouth of the Amazon River. Looking for
a cool while that to hang out with. And then
even if they were on the very far end of
the Amazon River four thousand miles away, Uh, these other
(26:51):
whales could hear them. Yeahs terrible example. Well, I mean
it's it's pretty close to the Internet when you think
about just how large the ocean is and how far
away that is. If you're talking about four thousand miles
in every direction. Yeah, that's a good point. Mat A
lot of people don't realize that. Uh, the Internet is
four thousand miles long. That is a that is a
(27:13):
hard limit that has been put into place. We did
not make the rules. We just want to armu you
with the information. But there's a there's another stat there
that is um I think even even more amazing. You
mentioned background noise, right, the ocean is like if you've
if you've ever been in a forest when nothing bad
(27:35):
is happening, then you realize that it is a It
is cacophonous. You know, there there's so much noise going on,
and if you don't hear a lot of noise, it's
either because you're there or because something worse than you
was there. So be careful. And it's amazing when you
think about it, if you look at what the Animal
(27:57):
Welfare Institute as well as the n O a A
and a couple of other organizations, um at least what
they have on their websites, what they say the research
is uh and this isn't completely accurate, but you can
you can look a little further into this if you wish.
But the relative sound level and intensity per decibels of
(28:17):
ambient ocean noise levels are it's a range from around
fifty five to eight five decibels, just as a standing
and if you compare that two what the effective levels
of l F A sonar are, that's that's around two
dred and thirty and higher decibels. So just if you
(28:41):
if you can go ahead and imagine that that's what
we're talking about here, I mean, that's that I think
is a stunning difference there. It also it also reminds
me that we know that in the days before propeller
driven watercraft, which obviously predates so are these uh, these
(29:02):
whale noises and sounds could travel even further, were even
louder because you know, of course these propellers make noise
pollution as well. The whales in the era the halcyon
days of pre propeller ocean, they could make sounds that
would travel thirteen thousand miles. That's an estimate. Uh. And
(29:25):
the reason it's an estimate is because that's more than
the diameter of Earth. So imagine being able to communicate
so well if you're you know, we're whales were swimming
around and we yell hey. Then later behind us we
hear ourselves saying hey. I mean, that's not gonna have
because there are a lot of obstacles and land and stuff.
(29:46):
But if there were an uninterrupted sphere, that would be possible.
It's crazy. It's the the shot heard around the world
probably came from a whale instead of a person. It
does make you think that maybe maybe creatures that exist
in the water, just you know, as it is a
water planet, we're the ones that were meant to be, uh,
(30:07):
the intelligent species that evolved. Uh huh. That's that's gonna
take me down a rabbit hole for another another time.
It's like the Yeah, it's like the old Mitchell and
Webb sketch, you know, where these two Nazis are looking
at each other and one of them goes, are we
the batties are are we right, right, So we know
(30:32):
that they're just like there are different types of whales,
just like there are different types of ships, they're different
types of sonar. So maybe let's talk a little bit
about something called mid frequencies sonar. There's been research on this.
You know, think of low frequency, high frequency, mid frequency.
It's the goldilocks of sonar. It's not to be confused
with like mid century sonar, which is very clean lines
(30:55):
and you know, really aesthetically pleasing, um, but not particularly
trouble um. Okay, that was a bad dad joke. But
I'm furnishing my new house, so that's where my mind
is at right now. Uh So, Yeah, but there was
evidence of something called mid frequency sonar uh and how
it affects whales back as far as the nineties, which
compared to the invention of sonar itself is pretty recent.
(31:19):
In fact, whalers are the ones who actually figured it
out and used it to the detriment of these giant
and majestic creatures um and among whales. By Roger Payne,
who we mentioned earlier, he notes that whalers figured out
that uh, a frequency of three thousand hurts sent whales
(31:40):
into like panic mode. It caused them just to freak
out and to surface for air, maybe when they didn't
even need it, because the stress probably robbed them of
oxygen and they were breathing more rapidly, and so they
would come up to the surface more often, and this
allowed them more opportunities to shoot them. So they had
these essential essentially sonar weapons on their boats that they
(32:04):
would use to to you know, deploy that frequency into
the water and reap the rewards. Yeah, it was less useful.
It was designed to help them track whales, but as
soon as they found that sweet spot frequency, the real
reason they would use it. Their primary reason became just
what you're saying, you'll, uh make the whales do something
called panting. So when they panic, they release air and
(32:28):
and you know, like you said, they can stand in
the water a long time as long as they have
the air stored up, and they had to they had
to surface and then the whalers would get them. So
so at least some members of humanity figured out there
were ways that sonar clearly affected whales. Uh. But but
it goes beyond that. Aside from sonar being used by whalers,
(32:50):
which is an example of which more people knew. And
aside from it obviously hampering communication in the in the
gigantic applebee's of the ocean, how else does it affect
these creatures. The answer is something we've all heard of,
We've all seen pictures of it. It's called beachy. Yes
(33:10):
in men named Alexandro's Francis proved that twelve Couviiers beaked
whales beached themselves. They beat themselves alive. It wasn't as
though they were deceased and then washed up. They swam ashore. Uh.
They did that along the coast of Greece. According to
(33:32):
Alexandro's these whales did that while NATO was testing an
active sonar system and they were using two different kinds
that we've already talked about, both mid range and low
frequency transducers. Uh. So he essentially just kind of was
able to, in Alexandro's Francis, to point to it and say, hey,
(33:54):
look look at these beached whales. Look at there's there's
twelve them there. They were beached when this sonar system
was being tested, to actually point to it, not not
maybe for the first time, but to really show it.
And the article was published to get this two years
after This occurred in Nature Nature magazine in I like
(34:17):
they differentiated in Nature Nature Magazine, y, yeah exactly, Uh yeah.
And it did a fine job of of of proving
a link, establishing a link between these mass beachings of
wales and the use of military grades sonar. UH. In
order to do that, they concluded that although you know,
(34:41):
you can't completely rule out pure coincidence, UM, there was
greater than a ninete chance that sonar testing caused that UM,
that situation. UH. And the idea that a low power
sonar could just keep in mind, this was not operating
a full capacity. A low power sonar could cause this
(35:04):
level of of chaos UH was really disturbing UM and
and pointing to how dangerous the technology could actually be
within these populations of whales. And by that point, most
of the research has been focused on the possibility of
figuring out a way to soften these signals or mask
them in some way, because it's you know, it's obviously
(35:27):
like like they're in you know, the whalers were using
the sonar to actually mess with the whales. But the
military grade sonar isn't intended to hurt whales. It's just
sort of an unfortunate byproduct like birds getting caught in
wind turbines and the like. UM, so they were looking
into some possibilities of masking them to prevent situations like this,
also to prevent interference with things like mating calls and
(35:49):
other you know, functional uses of sonar by whales, like
avoiding giant obstructions, not crashing into sea walls or whatever
you want to call that. I just want to reiterate
here before we continue forward that you said it there
and all that we've known about what is called here
or what we're calling here atypical you know, uh, landings
(36:13):
or beaching of whales at least a large numbers of them.
We've known about that for a long time. We've been
observing that. You probably remember as a kid seeing stories
about that, or maybe pictures and newspapers or something. I
certainly do. UM just want to just point out there
that it wasn't until uh in ninety six that it
(36:35):
was really known that this stuff was causing these pretty
terrible occurrences shocked pokemon face dot gift. Honestly, I mean
that sounds cynical, but look at the timeline. People people
knew the tough thing about being you know, um on
(36:56):
the side of science is that you have to have
the facts on your side as well, so you have
to conduct this research. But to me, it's weird that
the scientific community it was being surprised by that even
though we already knew that sonar in general could cause
this stuff. As a matter of fact, honestly, I understand
(37:16):
why a typical mass stranding or beaching is a technically
correct term, but it is pretty misleading because mass beaching
in general should be pretty a typical. I get like
English is such a tricky language and we put so
many unnecessary things on there, like drug free school zone.
(37:38):
Really I don't know, and that's a different problem for
another day. But should not these all be a typical?
I completely agree, And imagine what's happening to that creature.
Really imagine we we talked about it earlier on about
being you know, in an environment where something comes along
with just the most massive sound that it's just there's
(38:03):
no way for you to get out and away from
this sound, because that sound is just traveling wherever you go,
and it's permeating the air no matter you know, we're
thinking about going inside of a house or something, or
in a structure. But imagine if that sound, if you're
on the desert or something, and it's a sound that
you can only continue to run in that desert. But
(38:25):
it's the sound isn't leaving. It's just as loud as
it was as you're trying to escape it. That's what
these creatures are going through in the water, and that's
why the beaching occurs, because there's just they're going until
they can't go. It's just a tough thing to tough
thing to think about. Yeah, that's I mean, that's a
powerful way to put it. The ocean is one big
(38:46):
room without a door to close, and that that is terrifying.
So here, here's where we're at, kind of a um
a watershed moment, the lid of Pandora's time jars unscrewed.
People know what's happening. Maybe not everybody, but uh, academics
(39:06):
know what's happening. Scientists know what's happening. The military certainly
is I strongly suspective military was much more aware of
this much earlier. But it gets fast forward year two thousand,
this issue receives more widespread attention outside of the scientific
and environmentalist community. When a mass stranding occurs in the Bahamas.
(39:31):
Three different types of whales wash up on the beach.
It's crazy. The public backlash is huge. Eventually Uncle Sam says, Okay,
this might have maybe just maybe have something to do
with a little bit what aspect of the sonar UH
(39:54):
stuff that we're doing, which is super necessary. And then
later they came back and they were like, Okay, it
was us. Still this is super necessary stuff to do.
It's for the greater good. Um. And now as we
move forward past two thousand and more research is conducted,
both on events from two thousand to two thousand twenty
(40:16):
and retroactively on previously unexplained events from before then, we
see that the list of species whose mass strandings are
linked to naval exercises just keeps growing. It's more and
more yes uh. And that includes beaked whales, doorf whales,
pygmy whales, sperm whales, pilot whales UH, several species of
(40:40):
dolphin UH, and also harbor porpoises. We've seen several mass
strandings in the Northern Indian Ocean that also coincide with
naval UH tests and exercises involving sonar, and then includes
one of the largest ever recorded two hundred to two
hundred and fifty dolphins UH stranded beached that still hasn't
(41:04):
really gotten a whole lot of press or attention in
the medium. Yeah. I mean, it's not like the whales
uh are go into court. Court is a human invention.
A legal system is a human invention, and so humans
would have to participate if they wanted to help the
whales in a legal sense. We're gonna pause for a
(41:27):
word from our sponsor and then come back with hopefully
some good news on that front. We're back dom law
and order maritime. In response to lawsuits bought by multiple
environmental groups, the U. S. Navy created a protocol regarding
(41:52):
the use of sonar and whales. The basic idea is
that before using certain sonar tools or devices, you check
to see whether there are animals around that would be affected,
and if there are, you can only turn your sonar
setting up to X degree, like X level of power, etcetera. UM.
(42:14):
This is not a perfect system because it's it's pretty
much defined as uh, we'll get to it, but it's
pretty much defined as what will not permanently damage these creatures.
One of the biggest problems that exists within the technology.
Then the Navy has is their long Range Sonar UM
and it's the thing it's it's a tool called surveillance
(42:36):
towed a ray sensor system low frequency active UH that
the WU is not at the end. That's also known
it's also known as curtas l F A or surtas
l F A and UM. Once once lowered from the
massive reel, which is okay, you have to imagine this
thing being lowered down into the water a bit um
(43:00):
one of these massive spools of like heavy wire. So
it's this thing that you lower down into the water.
And this system has what what they're what are what
are called or what they're calling source projectors. UH, they're
eighteen of them. There are these huge you can think
of them like if you're don't let's imagine I'm just
(43:23):
thinking about a car maybe with subwhiffers in it or something.
Or if you're in a concert and you see the
big speakers that are designed specifically to send out the
low frequency stuff. Imagine that there are eighteen of those
attached to this thing and they just begin emitting the
loudest low frequency tones that you can imagine. And the
(43:45):
big problem with all of that is that the frequencies,
those the low ones that they're emanating there UM around
a hundred to five hundred hurts also happened to be
the sweet spot by what what you'd call the goldilocks
zone for a lot of marine life. It's not too high,
it's not too low. It's right where they want it,
and we're just embarding that frequency level with our stuff.
(44:08):
That's where they communicate, right, Yes, it's it's like um
if you think with humans. Noel correcting me if I'm
wrong here, but the audible human vocal range has a
pretty sweet you know, it's it goes from pretty low
too pretty high. When it's it's one hundred to one
(44:28):
hundred and twenty hurts specifically, is where that part of
our that's the frequency range that our voices fill up
and that we are able to hear. And and that's
something we think about when we're producing podcasts. Um is
we eq things, you know, a k A filter out
and boost certain frequencies to make things as intelligible as
(44:49):
possible on various systems and from far away. So we
tend to scoop out a lot of those low frequencies
can create kind of mud and make it a little
hard to understand. But it would be the equivalent of
if that sweet spot of a hundred hurts that we
need to be able to hear for the human voice
to have conversations. Something was just generating that frequency at
(45:10):
a loud volume to the point where we couldn't hear
over it, and it was just clogging up our communications ability,
and it was happening constantly, like some form of tenitis
that we all had in our ears at the same time.
It would make you go insane. You would become an
insane person. It would be chaos, absolute misery. I would
also put it this way, imagine you don't know where
(45:32):
these things are coming from. You have no idea. You
you know that there are odd things that look like
creatures on the surface of the water or under the surface,
and you know that they're very loud and they're admitting
these things. Right. Um, but yeah, to the insanity. If
you don't see that stuff, or if you don't have
(45:53):
another sensory input confirming that, it's almost like you're hearing voices.
Oh wow, Yeah, an understanding of like what that is, right,
I mean, Um, that's wow. That's a really rough way
to look at it. But well that's why, that's why
some experts have said, you know, marine mammals perceived the
(46:16):
noises from this CERTs lf A thing as a threat,
and they react as if it's a threat. Understandably. Right now,
environmentalists want the Navy to limit what they call explosions
and sonar in areas where it's known that marine animals
will gather annually at certain parts of the year. We
(46:38):
have to point out that these are these are not
son are activities that are used in acts of war
or hot conflicts. The vast majority of these things come
about from testing or or scenario gaming. Well that makes sense.
You got to try it out on you know, a
sustained basis or trying different like you said, like different scenarios. Um.
(47:01):
It's interesting to Ben because the idea of limiting this
and regulating this, it's sort of a philosophical one where
you have to like weigh is it worth killing some
whales for the progress of military supremacy, you know, is
it worth killing some birds to have cleaner energy? You know,
I mean it's always you know, weighing these things. But
(47:22):
it does feel like with the current administration that we're
in philosophically, protecting wildlife is going to uh, you know,
pale in comparison to you know, having the the best
military and the most powerful military on the planet. So
you know, stuff like that I could see going by
(47:42):
the wayside. And to your point, Ben, it already seems
to be going by the wayside, right, I mean, I
think that's a very good Pointnell. I would also say
that we have to be we have to be careful
and realize that the US military UH tends to go
about business as usual pretty often, regardless of who is,
(48:07):
regardless of which political party is empower in a lot
of ways, that that machine continues to run, and it
is a philosophical thing. Just to throw in some specifics.
In two thousand seven, the US government did publish guidelines
for the level of noise for injury. UH. To be
on the record, they considered impulsive sounds at the level
(48:29):
of two hundred thirty decibels is the uppermost safe exposure
limit for all marine mammals, including beak toils. I was
just gonna jump in here and say, um, you know,
you know you were commenting on the current administration when
thinking about this, but I would just say, these concerns
go way beyond any administration when you're thinking about the
(48:51):
national security of a country, any country, but specifically the
United States, UM can when considering military might versus wildlife conservation.
I think we all know where, you know, the status
quo that exists within any administration, where where the priorities
(49:12):
would lie you may getting reelected. Yeah, well, and that
I clearly agree with you about, you know, the military
being always kind of the the priority. And I think
when I was referring to the current administration, I was
maybe thinking more along the lines of rolling back some
environmental controls and uh care for wildlife that I feel
like that philosophy can bleed even into the military stuff
(49:36):
and potentially make it even more of a double downing
on stuff like this. Just with that attitude in mind,
that's I think what I was. I was I was
trying to say, but completely agree with you that you know,
this stuff is never going to be as much of
a primary concern or even enough in the public eye
as we'll see with some court stuff that we're going
to discuss in just a minute, right to quote, uh
to quote H. G. Wells from one of his non
(49:59):
plagiarized works. Yes, I'm throwing some shade there at him. Uh.
Like they say in the Island of Dr Moreau, are
we not men? Meaning? Does this species not live within
a framework of law meant to make in theory everything
good for the most amount of living things possible. Well,
(50:20):
that came to a head on July fift a little
bit of victory for the maritime members of the Spaceship
Earth when the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in
San Francisco, UH finally shot down the Navy's pretty self
serving interpretation as something called the National Marine Protections Act
(50:41):
that that act is supposed to prohibit any US citizen,
agency or organization from harming, knowingly harming, or through negligence
harming the creatures we've been talking about whales, dolphins. Let's
basically saying, look, don't club seals that that kind of stuff,
stuff that I think most people can get on board with.
(51:05):
But they had to go to court for it. Yes. Uh.
There is a wonderful article about the subject by Alessandra
Potenza from the verge Um talking about this very court case,
and they found that the sonar used across more than
seventy of the oceans in the entire world that we discussed,
this low frequency sonar was operating under essentially an improper
(51:31):
let's license permit whatever I mean. You know, it's sort
of seems to me like almost a formality that the
military even needs a permit, you know, to contend with
these pesky wildlife you know, organizations that are just trying
to you know, save the whales and all that bunch
of hippies as far as the generals are concerned. And
(51:52):
I am, of course editorializing here, but the court found
that a body of the government called the National Marine
Fisheries Service, which was the authorizing you know body for
the these tests, UM, wasn't doing enough to mitigate the
harm against marine animals, against this underwater wildlife. UM. There
(52:15):
is a law in question here called the Marine Mammal
Protection Act UM. To quote the act itself and and
the verge article UH is meant to provide for the
quote least practicable adverse impact on marine animals and their
habitats UM. And that the federal agency in question here,
(52:38):
the n m f S, was not acting by the
letter of the law in the way that they were
overseeing these tests. They gave this kind of blanket license
and then they sort of said, go with God and
and uh, you know, kill as many whales as as
you as you deem fit Uncle Sam in service of
our great, great country. Uh. You know, they didn't really
say that, but that's sort of what the outcome was,
(52:59):
because certainly seemed like there was very little oversight in
any of this. And so in theory, it's good that
it got shut down or that they were called to
task for it. Many militaries around the world have committed
to investigating, and we're I guess the most diplomatic word
would be mitigating their activities to protect marine animals because
(53:21):
of course, again we're at the loggerhead here, we're at
the uh, we're what one politician awkwardly called the decision point.
And I think in his own autobiography, so do we
do we stop this stuff completely and therefore engage in
(53:41):
an enormous trustfaul the like of which humanity has never seen. Uh.
And the idea being like, hey, let's all just stop
trying to spy on each other and kill each other
with submarines and the weapons we can carry on board.
Probably not gonna happen. I'm not a big fan of gambling,
but even I wouldn't put money on that. So it
takes exist to the future. This is where we are at.
(54:03):
What do we prioritize? I guarantee you it is utopian
to think that, uh, and I'm using that in the
correct sense of the word. Is utopian to think that
every nation in the world would agree to even hard
limits on sonar going forward. Because if everybody puts those
hard limits on and you're the one country that cheats
(54:24):
or or you know, bends the rules, then you have
an immediate and significant advantage. Therefore, it would logically be
dumb for you not to do that. Well, it's the
same with like, you know, if if if everyone else
in the Olympics is using steroids and you're the country
that takes a stand against steroids and then you lose,
then you you look like a sucker. You know. It
kind of requires fair play on all sides to level
(54:47):
the playing field. And we have no guarantees ever that
that's the case. So we have to be as nasty
as we think are enemies are being. I don't know,
it's it's a it's a hard How do you how
do you act as a good steward of the environment
and as a good steward of science, I guess, while
also staying on the cutting edge of what everybody else
(55:10):
is doing, knowing that you're not always going to be
the good guy. And not to say that that's even
an impulse in our country, but it's a question that
I have, and I wonder, how do you do that?
Or the countries are good? What if you're not even
concerned with your enemies and you're just concerned with your
global trading partners. Because there is so much shipping that
(55:32):
occurs across the oceans every day, with these giant vessels
that are terribly loud, like we're thinking supertankers, all kinds
of different large ships that are carrying the goods that
you probably use every day, that I know I use
all the time, they get shipped across the oceans. Yeah,
(55:55):
let's not forget the word shipping refers to ships in
the sea. I mean, we're not like, you know, you
might get some special delivery freight that comes in a plane,
but by and large, the way you can carry the
largest amount of freight across that long a distance is
with massive, massive ships loaded down with shipping containers. That also, Uh,
(56:17):
that also remained the most cost effective method of shipping,
which is which is key here. I'm glad you brought
up the commercial aspects, Matt. Uh. Those are arguably a
little easier to regulate, but in practice much more difficult,
because that's another level of global cooperation. I just want
to reiterate, going on record, I don't want to miss
this point whenever it's brought up. I think there should
(56:40):
be two separate Olympics. I think there should be one
where everybody signs a waiver, they're allowed to do the drugs,
take the enhancements that they want. Does that make me
a bad person? Debatable? Am I rights? Would it be
massively successful? One million percent? I did the math. Remember
how happy that statement made Spencer on Harmontown. I think
(57:05):
he said we needed to stop the recording and erase
all of that so that you could take that idea
and then make it happen. We could make it happen.
The future is now. I mean, let's let's try not
to destroy each other and try not to destroy the whales,
uh and and the brilliant marine animals. But this is like, ah,
(57:27):
I just I want to see superhumans devil's advocate here
that guys who really cares about whales? I'm sorry, I'm
obviously joking. Keep it. Yeah, no, but but I mean
you can see how that could you know, from the
most callous business minded person. What are the whales contributing
(57:47):
to us? What are the whales contributing to the ecosystem?
I'm sure there's many things, but again, like you said,
there's a lot we don't know about whales. Um. I
just could see that conversation happening in a back room
and the idea of shutting down the hippie you know,
marine protectionists. Uh. And how how dare they try to
stand in the way of our progress and our shipping
and our ability to you know, detect enemy vessels? Uh,
(58:11):
you know, as efficiently as humanly possible. And unfortunately that's
gonna be a thing. Uh. It's hard to change that side,
if if, if you can't figure out a way to
sell them or to co modify them in some way.
The very fact that they're majestic and you know, rare
and beautiful and just isn't gonna do it for a
lot of those types of folks. I'm just extremely happy
(58:33):
that as of now, the whales haven't figured out how
to create and wield weaponry because they would have a
pretty good case for revenge against all of humanity. Uh.
Just putting that out, there were at least a couple
of thousand years away from the man whale wars, so
(58:53):
that at least makes me feel safer. So I had
an idea. Um, they there's some things we have to
cut for time here. But I have a thought experiment,
a concept I want to give get your thoughts on,
and I didn't put it in the notes because I
want to surprise you. But it's less crazy than it sounds.
(59:14):
So the big problem right seems to be this dichotomy.
Do we do we risk sacrificing military superiority a ka
ultimately human lives? Uh? To save wales? Are these two? Is?
Is saving one hurting the other? That's that's kind of
the gist of the argument. But there is a third way.
(59:36):
There are several third ways. One of those would be
finding a viable, less harmful alternative to sonar. Sonar was
a very easy branch, an easy fruit on a low
hanging branch to grab. I guess something like that. Horticulture
is correct me. But but the there's something else we
could do. It's one of the reasons I wanted to
(59:58):
keep hitting the point that the technology we call sonar
already existed in the natural world. What if we made
these marine animals valuable to the military as a viable
replacement for sonar technology. What if there's a world where
beaked whales would do all the things that a sub
(01:00:21):
that a sonar device would do. I mean, they're they're
super significant problems with that. First off, that's very close
to talking about whales slavery unless there's some kind of
symbiotic relationship we can find. But secondly, governments have already
been experimenting with using smaller cetaceans for any number of
(01:00:43):
task So what if there's a world where we can
interact with the natural capabilities that already exists. What if
we stop building ships and start hiring whales? Bowland be
familiar with the arm Sure you are been the artist
Mobius French comic book artists. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, does
(01:01:03):
a lot of surrealists kind of like future escape kind
of imagery. Um, he's got some images with like future
whales where they're like harnessed with crazy weapons or things
like that, and The idea of this whale war is
fascinating to me, but UM definitely recommend people check out
Mobius if you're into weird art. I'm just imagining the
(01:01:24):
horizon zero down version of whales, where there are these
robotic creatures that do kind of what you're talking about,
but also serve some other purpose for humanity. UM, because
I don't, I don't know, I don't. I am pessimistic
that we'd be able to change enough to actually truly
(01:01:46):
save the world's population. Of of citations, some are, some
are on the rebound, though. A couple of species of
whales have been documented to have their population in cre seen.
That stuff is always kind of depressing, though, because it's like, oh,
the tiger population in X region more than doubled. What
(01:02:08):
does that mean? Well, now there are three Like that's
it's It's an example. I'm just making up. But I mean,
we don't want to sound like we're doing anything other
than acknowledging this enormous dilemma. Is there a good answer?
I don't really think there is. If one country stops
using this, or if if one trading company stops using this,
(01:02:30):
the other trading companies are just gonna take take advantage
of that power vacuum. I don't know, Well, it didn't
mean this to end on such a down note. I mean, no,
You're right about Mobis. Those are great comics. I love it.
Maybe maybe less future whales than I remembered, but he
definitely has some stuff with whales in them. But uh,
that is a motif. You see a lot though, like
(01:02:51):
whales flying through the sky, you know, and like with
like saddles or something like that, and like lasers. And
then there was that thing in Futurama's too believe there
was a space whale in one of those movies that
they put out, um near the end of the run
of that show. But uh, whales are no whales. Check
out Mobius The Air Tight Garage is a really cool collection. UM.
(01:03:13):
And he also he didn't he he did. He collaborated
with Alejandro Jodorowski on a version of Dune that never
saw the light of day. There's actually a documentary about
that called Jodarowski's Dune, and Mobius did the conceptual art
behind that. You can also see. Um. I've got some
of his table top books, or got one of them
(01:03:35):
that I would recommend. I think he's I can't remember
if he's the guy who also did this sort of
space whale thing, but he is. Uh. He he did
design some of the ideas behind a bunch of films
people have seen, including Space Jam and Fifth Element right,
so those are his bona fides. If that's what you
(01:03:56):
were looking for, folks, if you if you doubted us
here uh while yea Space jamma is in fact a
stone called piece of American cinema garbage. Sorry, you watch
your mouth, sir, and that's our show. We want to
hear from you. What do you think? What is the
(01:04:18):
solution to this intertwined Gordian knots of concerns, problems and crises.
Let us know. You can find us on Facebook. You
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(01:05:01):
there's a lot to talk about on this is Why
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let me google that for you. Sorry, I don't mean
to get aggressive. Okay, I feel better now. We also
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(01:05:24):
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
We hope this episode finds you healthy and happy and
maybe amid grand adventure, perhaps even out on the ocean.
(00:51):
Now that so many countries are relaxing a lot of
their they're formerly draconian lockdown policies, today, we'd like to
explore the ocean along with you in a way. Uh.
The ocean is fascinating. We know less about what goes
on in the ocean now then we do about what
(01:13):
goes on on the surface of the moon. And you know,
people have very few people have been to the moon.
A lot of people have been uh on the surface
of the ocean. Uh, and a lot of people have
gone to the bottom, but far fewer people have returned
to the top. And one quick thing about that. As
we've just been learning, and as was announced by NASA today,
(01:36):
I believe we are sending a new little rover up
to the Moon called the Viper that's supposed to be
landing on the Moon and going around and looking for
water in which is pretty interesting. I believe that's all.
That kind of mission is also um at least partially
(01:57):
intended to be approving ground for or later searches on Mars.
Is that correct? Absolutely? Does it come equipped with a
little divining rod that just like kind of vibrates when
it hits water, It just kind of like sniffs around
for it. Yeah, more high wheels and then a small
protruding like spring loaded. Yeah. Well, I mean that's an
(02:19):
interesting question because, uh, it goes into the concept of
vibration and sound, which is what, uh, you know, all
sound is is vibration. And going back to the ocean,
the biggest source of water that we are experientially familiar
with as a species. We know that it is just
(02:40):
like the surface of the planet, it's riotous with life.
The thing is that the creatures in the ocean, wherever
they are in the ocean or these seas of ours,
they live a vastly different existence. In some cases, it's
almost alien like. We've often heard it said that cephalopods,
especially the sup for intelligent ones like octopuses, are the
(03:03):
closest our species has to you know, an example of
what alien life would look like. And and it's fascinating stuff,
but it's also so obscured to us. It's it's occulted
the we we don't know what is happening in the ocean. Oh,
(03:23):
I know. And if you want to get a look
at that, I really recommend the I think it's called
Blue Planet or the Planet Earth. Maybe there's an episode
about the deep deep deep, like Marianna's trench deep ocean creatures,
and they look like aliens, like the angler fish with
the little light bulb thing on their heads. And then
this one called the vampire squid that looks literally like
(03:44):
something straight out of the Gates of hell Um. But
the adaptations that happen at those depths with such little
light are absolutely fascinating. And like you said, Ben, the
closest thing to alien life that I think we were
gonna be able to ever set our eyes on in
our lifetime, at least officially. And and and the thing
is that because Um, Unfortunately, because the vast majority of
(04:08):
human exploration, invention, and ingenuity depends on you know, the
concept of a monetary economy, by far the most popular
religious belief of our age. Uh, we find ourselves in
a position where as a species, we can get down
to incredible depths in the ocean, but we have to
(04:28):
propitiate to the economic gods first. It's that means it's
look pretentiousness society. It's very, very expensive to explore the ocean.
So what we're saying, and uh, people have always been
in this push pull over whether or not it's a
good investment to explore the ocean. Militaries are one of
(04:49):
the most powerful well forget one of Militaries are the
most powerful human force on or below the surface of
the ocean. And because it is so difficult and so
expensive to get actual people down past a certain depth
for any substantial length of time, we have built tools
(05:12):
to tell us what's going on. We've built We've built
this kind of um, synthetic mimicry of a natural thing
that existed, uh the way before humans actually existed. We
invented something called sonar. It's turned every ship into the
Marvel comic book, he wrote, Daredevil, here are the facts.
(05:35):
That's a really good way to put it. That's exactly
what sonar does. It's also called, or is called stands
for sound navigation and ranging, and it's extremely common. It's
used in almost every vessel that is large enough to
travel around for any reason on on the ocean. And
just like you said, like Daredevil, it allows us to
(05:57):
see without visualizing, is using sound to essentially visualize what
exists both in the depths and out in front of
you and basically in three sixty degrees around you within
the water. And it really is fascinating that we were
able to figure out how this works, just humanity in general. Um,
(06:18):
and it it is really it's cool how it how
it mimics natural processes that a lot of other animals do. Yeah.
And and it's an old, old technology. It's much older
than you might think. Uh. A lot of people who
are perhaps in the younger demographic of our fellow listeners
may understandably think sonar is something that came about after
(06:40):
what would you say, guys, World War two? Maybe, Yeah,
it seems kind of techy. I mean, it always has
like a futuristic vibe when you think about you know,
the readouts and the way it looks like on a
submarine or enaval vessel with like the grid and like
you know, sending out the pings and being able to
recreate you know, um, you know, map topography underwater using sound.
That sounds pretty kind of brave, New world e and futuristic.
(07:03):
But we also have to remember that this is a
quote unquote technology that exists in the natural world, and
that we're kind of just mimicking that we've sort of
hijacked from, you know, organic beings like like whales and
uh and and dolphins. No, you're absolutely right. So you
can imagine how let's say someone studying animals, bats, even
(07:24):
or anyone else that's any other animal that's using echolocation,
but perhaps specifically an animal that's using sound within the water,
within the ocean to either communicate or to figure out
where it is and what's you know, what dangers lurk ahead.
So you imagine that studying animals, someone in eighteen twenty
(07:46):
two created sonar, Like imagine that there's at least the
precedent the thing that existed that became sonar. There was
a gentleman named Daniel Culloden. He stuck a bell underwater
and he was using this to calculate the speed of
sound as it's traveling through water rather than air. Like
(08:07):
if you it's very very different and it and it
does travel very differently. So that that occurred way back
in eighteen twenty two, then you do have to fast
forward a little bit further to nineteen o six, when
modern sonar as we generally understand it exists today. There's
(08:27):
a guy named Lewis Nixon who built a what we
would consider to be a sonar like device and it
was specifically made to detect icebergs. Yeah, and so it
was that a silly question. I'm not making a sound flipping,
but was that technology around the Titanic got Iceberg aheaded?
You know? It was like would they have just had
(08:48):
visual on that or like that would have been in
the late eld No, No that's not true. No, it
was after. It was after nineteen six, was after um,
the Louis Nixon invention. But the shame this is this
widespread and that's a m We could call it modern sonar,
but modern sonar is really galvanized by war like so
(09:14):
many other so many other great technological breakthroughs. It happens
as a way for people to figure out how to
kill more people or to figure out how to keep
more people from killing them. You could kind of imagine
it Ben like, oh all right, Nixon, Uh so this
thing can detect icebergs? Right? Well can it detect you know,
(09:34):
name the adversary Germans? And and you know submarines, of
course are an episode all their own in the modern day. Uh,
they're fascinating things. In World War Two there were horrible
places to be uh. And in World War One that
was even more true. But these things could be Um,
(09:58):
you know, the concern and about what submarines would be
common world War two really trigger this research. And sonar
and son are you know, not to belabor the point. Um.
Sonar works in a in a pretty straightforward way. The
way we can understand it at a high level without
getting into too much of the physics here, is that
(10:19):
it emits sound waves bing bing bing, and it measures
how long the echo of those sound waves takes to
return after it hits something. That means, for example, if
we're all on on the conspiracy cruise that's spelled s
E A, and we are using sonar and shallow water,
(10:42):
then our pins are gonna return to us more quickly
because they are traveling a shorter distance. But if we're
over a very deep part of the water, then it's
going to take longer for those sound waves to return.
And this is this is common knowledge. It's how bats
where gets out, daredevil works. There's nothing particularly scary about
(11:03):
it yet. There are two types of sonar though. Uh.
The first one is kind of what we described active
sonar makes the sound, makes the pain, waits for the pain,
and then you're like, okay, there we are. UM. In general,
the longer distance stuff is going to use much lower
frequencies and we'll probably have some automotopia here in today's episode.
(11:28):
But the lowest long distance active sonar kind of makes
this like uh, this long sound. Uh, And it's valuable. Boats,
ships need this. We used sonar for a lot of stuff.
But there's another one you need to know about, and
that is passive sonar. Yeah, passive sonar listens but doesn't
(11:50):
transmit UM. And these are often used by militaries, but
scientific research uses these systems UM as well for for
entirely different applications. Passive sonar systems usually have a large
databases of sonic information that they collect. A computer system
can use these databases to identify different classes of ships
(12:13):
or um types of actions they might be taking, like speed,
or particular type of weapon that they're releasing, and even
you know, the make and model of the ship. Uh.
Sonar is also a super valuable tool for like we
said earlier, creating kind of um, recreating topography of underwater
(12:35):
UM landscapes, nautical charts and maps, UM, locating various underwater hazards,
mapping of the sea floor, uh, looking for shipwrecks, or uh,
you know, let's just take a step further, just because
we're all dreamers here, let's call it buried treasure. Uh.
And today it's used over more than seventy of the
world's oceans. So UM, like we sort of teased earlier,
(13:01):
this is not something that man just invented out of
whole cloth, says, something that whales use as well and
other underwater creatures. Whales in particular use it to know
how to move around, to how to make sure they're
not running into any icebergs or battleships or what have you.
Are just any kind of obstacles. Now, they're large creatures, uh,
(13:23):
and fascinating ones to boot um, even more fascinating than
the whole concept we're talking about here, which is sonar.
A lot of folks out there in podcast land are
probably gonna be surprised to learn just how much we
do not understand about whales in this the year. Yeah, yeah,
we uh. We are embarrassingly cartoonishly clueless about a lot
(13:48):
of aspects of whales in general. I want to separate
a couple of things when we talk about whales and sonar.
We have to remember, first off, that there are quite
a few different type of whales. Often, I think when
we hear whales, just the term we think of the
(14:08):
largest whale, right, the blue whale. That is, that is
what's called a baleen whale. They've got those weird plates.
They swim through the ocean. They just digest a bunch
of very small things. That's yeah, that's just that's just
their bag. They stuck with it. They're very good at it,
and they're huge. And then there are toothed whales. A
(14:32):
dolphin it's like an example of a toothed whale. These
are the ones that use echolocation to move around the
ocean and echolocation like we like we said earlier, it's
the natural world's predecessor to sonar. Whales have what you
could call a language. There's a lot of research that's
(14:54):
gone into the language of different whales, the ideas of
the songs and so on. So for whales that are
using echolocation, they're communicating in high whistles and pulse bursts
of sounds and then clicks. And this is interesting, this
is something I did not know. The clicks made by
(15:15):
toothed whales are the loudest sounds made by any marine mammal,
which means that once upon a time, before the age
of the anthroposyne, they were the loudest regular sounds in
the ocean. And and it sounds hyperbolic, but it is.
It is insane, Like they can use this, uh, they
(15:40):
can use these things in a in a weaponized way too.
They're mapping the sea floors they swim, they they're mapping
underwater obstacles like you said, Matt, depth of water, shorelines,
figuring out where other animals are. And then there's this
theory that's pretty new that says maybe some of their
high intensity focused sounds are almost like um almost like
(16:05):
the weapons in Dune. Maybe they're stunning or disorienting prey.
Maybe they're attacking with sound. I mean, that's pretty crazy,
and the science is pretty compelling. It's also a very
it's a very sensitive trait. That's why you know, like
like we see that animals tend to have a primary sense,
(16:28):
sort of a lead singer in the band of their senses.
For humans were a visual creature, right, we we have
taste and smell and sound and stuff, and they're all
very important, but we like to see stuff. And for
many of these animals, their their protagonists in their their
(16:50):
gang of senses. The leader of their sensory higst crew
is sound. Is this echolocation, which makes sense because you
can't you can't see very well as or in depths
of the ocean, right, it's more difficult um. And so
of course it's going to be those instruments on their
bodies are going to be more sensitive. The same way
that dogs are primarily um olfactory creatures. They live by
(17:13):
their sense of smell. That's why you don't if you
don't want to be a jerk, don't bop a dog
or a cat on the nose. They will be infuriated
with you. That's a really interesting thing to talk about.
There have been just about how sensitive the sensors are
on them on toothed whales, but also just the different
(17:33):
uses of sounds that they emanate. And you know, we're
talking about those clicks and being able to almost weaponize
them as like a an audio flash bang or something
to to be able to use like that. They've also
got sounds um, and not just toothed whales. You can
also think about a couple of their different kinds um,
(17:54):
gray whales, bowhead whales. They have they have behaviors that
are considered to be avoidance behaviors or like escape behaviors,
and the sounds that they can emanate when essentially distressed.
UM are extremely loud and some of the some of
the louder, the other louder things that would have existed
(18:16):
in the ocean. UM. Just again, fascinating creatures. We have
a ton to learn. And you know we're talking mostly
about tooth whales here, but if you go back to
the balien whales, it's not as though they're just silently
trawling the waters and going around. These are the animals
that you would hear if you've ever heard anyone talk
(18:39):
about a whale song, or if you've heard any recordings
perhaps of something that would be called a whale song. Uh.
These whales do make a lot of sounds, and they
communicate uh through through these sounds with each other. Um
and against the same kind of thing we would talk about, um,
where is the food? Where are we going? Where? Where
(19:01):
are you here? I am at least that's our current understanding,
and we can only assume that it gets much much
more complicated than that. We just don't have a way
to translate. We do know that there are dialogue or
accent differences in different groups of of certain whales. We
know that some of these communications seem intergenerational, right that
(19:25):
they are taught to their young. There's also a heartbreaking
story of a one tone deaf whale that was excluded
from from its community. But we'll leave that heartbreak to
you to find, dear listener, Fellow conspiracy realists. Uh, Noel,
I think you said you found a pretty good automotopack
(19:47):
description of what a whale song was is like written out?
Is that correct? Yeah? It was. It was pretty remarkable
to see it on paper, and I tried to uh,
pronounce it out for you guys. Off Mike, I'm going
to give it ano shot here. I'm not gonna do
an impressionable way. I was gonna kind of do it
like a human reading on a monopeia. Uh. It's something
along the lines of blur wah, wah wah. That was beautiful.
(20:18):
You can also find recordings, of course, of of whales
songs I believe from different uh like different years, different
parts of the ocean. Very well aware of this. There
is not at this point. There's one of the questions
I would ask if I were hearing this for the
first time. There's not at this point. Uh. What we
(20:38):
would understand is a good translation, right, there's not. Um.
They're having attempts to communicate with whales through through technological means. Um.
But right now, sadly enough, one of the most effective
ways that humans have communicated with whales is through sonar.
We have to talk about how these process as he's interact. Okay,
(21:01):
so we understand echolocation, we understand sonar. Right, I've got
the the I've got the basics. So a man with
two thought experiments, imagine you're walking in a dim, gigantic
room you're trying to find your way to the door
to a negress all of a sudden, thousands of laser
lights or shining into your eyes or thousands of flashlights.
(21:25):
What they're doing is whomever is using those lights is
illuminating the room for themselves, but they are blinding you
in the process. As part of the reason that police
and intimidation tactics will make sure to keep a light
on your eyes, it puts the person getting the light
shone on them at a tremendous disadvantage. It's a it's
(21:48):
a very similar thing with whales or since we're talking
about sound right, rather than talking about um site, imagine
that you're hanging out with with the four of us
at an Applebe's. I say the four of us because
Paul is of course there too. Oh to be in
an Applebee's right now, the apps right, and we're having
(22:12):
a chat. You know maybe um, maybe Matt is going
up to uh, I don't know, do something important. We'll
write the script later, uh. And then know you're you're
gonna say something to him like, hey, don't forget the uh,
you know, make it make that too margarite Margarita's or something.
But right Esnal is gonna say that somebody we don't know,
(22:36):
maybe never will meet again, burst into the lobby and
they blast sound, so much sound that it's like when
you can feel the base in your votes bones times twenty.
Forget trying to tell Matt about that, Margharita. Our ear
drums are bleeding. We're like, we're starting to lose consciousness,
and then when the sound passes, we we are damaged. Yeah,
(23:01):
I mean, any any crossover listeners to Ridiculous History will
remember an episode we did UM with a pre eminent
expert on underwater explosions named Dr Rachel lance and we
talked about the sinking of the Hunley, which is a
super rudimentary uh or like civil war submarines wi I
didn't even know was a thing, but it's like basically
like a flint Stone's car submarine that you crank with
(23:24):
your feet, really really dangerous. Every time they did a
test runt of it, people died and then it actually
did single worship. But Dr lance Um her area of
expertise was talking about the way these underwater shock waves
affect our bodies and our internal organs and they can
cause serious internal damage to our viscera. And that's kind
(23:45):
of what we're talking about here, right, Yeah, And with
those two ideas, this at the very least complicates things.
So that's our question today. What is happening here, what's
happening under the surface of the ocean, and how are
you complicit? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.
(24:15):
Here's where it gets crazy. Sonar is massively Paul, please
edit me here. We have to say it. Sonar is
massively in up whales. People knew about it before the
public did. And even when it was open secret. Uh,
the militaries of the world, which were and and you know,
shipping interests, uh, did some stuff that was similar to
(24:39):
the actions of oil companies when they knew about climate change.
It kind of fought against this right and they did
it for um, they did it pretty successfully, and they
did it for what they would see is compelling reasons,
what they would see as once again one of the
great boogeymen of history, the greater good. So what happened,
(25:02):
So if we go back to the early nineteen hundreds,
when we would consider that era to be the beginning
of sonar, let's say, you know, around World War One,
really then we would have to go much further. We're
talking sixty something years to get to around nineteen seventy one,
(25:24):
which is what we would say is the beginning of
academic concerns about what sonar is doing to wildlife, the
effects that it's having on whales and other creatures and
animals in the ocean. And there were there were two
men that we're looking into this, Roger Payne and Douglas Webb.
(25:44):
They went on to prove that before humans had ships,
small ships, large ships, massive ships just go traveling across
the ocean and within the ocean. Before we were doing that,
the tones from creatures called thin whales, so it's a
specific type of whale. The tones that they were generating
(26:07):
and the processes we've talked about prior to this. They
could travel as far as four thousand miles within the
ocean and still be discernible against just the ambient general
background noise that exists when you're in the ocean. Four
thousand miles the approximate distance of the Amazon River from
(26:29):
the beginning from the mouth to the end. So they
could say, uh, what up, I'm I'm a cool, cool
whale from the mouth of the Amazon River. Looking for
a cool while that to hang out with. And then
even if they were on the very far end of
the Amazon River four thousand miles away, Uh, these other
(26:51):
whales could hear them. Yeahs terrible example. Well, I mean
it's it's pretty close to the Internet when you think
about just how large the ocean is and how far
away that is. If you're talking about four thousand miles
in every direction. Yeah, that's a good point. Mat A
lot of people don't realize that. Uh, the Internet is
four thousand miles long. That is a that is a
(27:13):
hard limit that has been put into place. We did
not make the rules. We just want to armu you
with the information. But there's a there's another stat there
that is um I think even even more amazing. You
mentioned background noise, right, the ocean is like if you've
if you've ever been in a forest when nothing bad
(27:35):
is happening, then you realize that it is a It
is cacophonous. You know, there there's so much noise going on,
and if you don't hear a lot of noise, it's
either because you're there or because something worse than you
was there. So be careful. And it's amazing when you
think about it, if you look at what the Animal
(27:57):
Welfare Institute as well as the n O a A
and a couple of other organizations, um at least what
they have on their websites, what they say the research
is uh and this isn't completely accurate, but you can
you can look a little further into this if you wish.
But the relative sound level and intensity per decibels of
(28:17):
ambient ocean noise levels are it's a range from around
fifty five to eight five decibels, just as a standing
and if you compare that two what the effective levels
of l F A sonar are, that's that's around two
dred and thirty and higher decibels. So just if you
(28:41):
if you can go ahead and imagine that that's what
we're talking about here, I mean, that's that I think
is a stunning difference there. It also it also reminds
me that we know that in the days before propeller
driven watercraft, which obviously predates so are these uh, these
(29:02):
whale noises and sounds could travel even further, were even
louder because you know, of course these propellers make noise
pollution as well. The whales in the era the halcyon
days of pre propeller ocean, they could make sounds that
would travel thirteen thousand miles. That's an estimate. Uh. And
(29:25):
the reason it's an estimate is because that's more than
the diameter of Earth. So imagine being able to communicate
so well if you're you know, we're whales were swimming
around and we yell hey. Then later behind us we
hear ourselves saying hey. I mean, that's not gonna have
because there are a lot of obstacles and land and stuff.
(29:46):
But if there were an uninterrupted sphere, that would be possible.
It's crazy. It's the the shot heard around the world
probably came from a whale instead of a person. It
does make you think that maybe maybe creatures that exist
in the water, just you know, as it is a
water planet, we're the ones that were meant to be, uh,
(30:07):
the intelligent species that evolved. Uh huh. That's that's gonna
take me down a rabbit hole for another another time.
It's like the Yeah, it's like the old Mitchell and
Webb sketch, you know, where these two Nazis are looking
at each other and one of them goes, are we
the batties are are we right, right, So we know
(30:32):
that they're just like there are different types of whales,
just like there are different types of ships, they're different
types of sonar. So maybe let's talk a little bit
about something called mid frequencies sonar. There's been research on this.
You know, think of low frequency, high frequency, mid frequency.
It's the goldilocks of sonar. It's not to be confused
with like mid century sonar, which is very clean lines
(30:55):
and you know, really aesthetically pleasing, um, but not particularly
trouble um. Okay, that was a bad dad joke. But
I'm furnishing my new house, so that's where my mind
is at right now. Uh So, Yeah, but there was
evidence of something called mid frequency sonar uh and how
it affects whales back as far as the nineties, which
compared to the invention of sonar itself is pretty recent.
(31:19):
In fact, whalers are the ones who actually figured it
out and used it to the detriment of these giant
and majestic creatures um and among whales. By Roger Payne,
who we mentioned earlier, he notes that whalers figured out
that uh, a frequency of three thousand hurts sent whales
(31:40):
into like panic mode. It caused them just to freak
out and to surface for air, maybe when they didn't
even need it, because the stress probably robbed them of
oxygen and they were breathing more rapidly, and so they
would come up to the surface more often, and this
allowed them more opportunities to shoot them. So they had
these essential essentially sonar weapons on their boats that they
(32:04):
would use to to you know, deploy that frequency into
the water and reap the rewards. Yeah, it was less useful.
It was designed to help them track whales, but as
soon as they found that sweet spot frequency, the real
reason they would use it. Their primary reason became just
what you're saying, you'll, uh make the whales do something
called panting. So when they panic, they release air and
(32:28):
and you know, like you said, they can stand in
the water a long time as long as they have
the air stored up, and they had to they had
to surface and then the whalers would get them. So
so at least some members of humanity figured out there
were ways that sonar clearly affected whales. Uh. But but
it goes beyond that. Aside from sonar being used by whalers,
(32:50):
which is an example of which more people knew. And
aside from it obviously hampering communication in the in the
gigantic applebee's of the ocean, how else does it affect
these creatures. The answer is something we've all heard of,
We've all seen pictures of it. It's called beachy. Yes
(33:10):
in men named Alexandro's Francis proved that twelve Couviiers beaked
whales beached themselves. They beat themselves alive. It wasn't as
though they were deceased and then washed up. They swam ashore. Uh.
They did that along the coast of Greece. According to
(33:32):
Alexandro's these whales did that while NATO was testing an
active sonar system and they were using two different kinds
that we've already talked about, both mid range and low
frequency transducers. Uh. So he essentially just kind of was
able to, in Alexandro's Francis, to point to it and say, hey,
(33:54):
look look at these beached whales. Look at there's there's
twelve them there. They were beached when this sonar system
was being tested, to actually point to it, not not
maybe for the first time, but to really show it.
And the article was published to get this two years
after This occurred in Nature Nature magazine in I like
(34:17):
they differentiated in Nature Nature Magazine, y, yeah exactly, Uh yeah.
And it did a fine job of of of proving
a link, establishing a link between these mass beachings of
wales and the use of military grades sonar. UH. In
order to do that, they concluded that although you know,
(34:41):
you can't completely rule out pure coincidence, UM, there was
greater than a ninete chance that sonar testing caused that UM,
that situation. UH. And the idea that a low power
sonar could just keep in mind, this was not operating
a full capacity. A low power sonar could cause this
(35:04):
level of of chaos UH was really disturbing UM and
and pointing to how dangerous the technology could actually be
within these populations of whales. And by that point, most
of the research has been focused on the possibility of
figuring out a way to soften these signals or mask
them in some way, because it's you know, it's obviously
(35:27):
like like they're in you know, the whalers were using
the sonar to actually mess with the whales. But the
military grade sonar isn't intended to hurt whales. It's just
sort of an unfortunate byproduct like birds getting caught in
wind turbines and the like. UM, so they were looking
into some possibilities of masking them to prevent situations like this,
also to prevent interference with things like mating calls and
(35:49):
other you know, functional uses of sonar by whales, like
avoiding giant obstructions, not crashing into sea walls or whatever
you want to call that. I just want to reiterate
here before we continue forward that you said it there
and all that we've known about what is called here
or what we're calling here atypical you know, uh, landings
(36:13):
or beaching of whales at least a large numbers of them.
We've known about that for a long time. We've been
observing that. You probably remember as a kid seeing stories
about that, or maybe pictures and newspapers or something. I
certainly do. UM just want to just point out there
that it wasn't until uh in ninety six that it
(36:35):
was really known that this stuff was causing these pretty
terrible occurrences shocked pokemon face dot gift. Honestly, I mean
that sounds cynical, but look at the timeline. People people
knew the tough thing about being you know, um on
(36:56):
the side of science is that you have to have
the facts on your side as well, so you have
to conduct this research. But to me, it's weird that
the scientific community it was being surprised by that even
though we already knew that sonar in general could cause
this stuff. As a matter of fact, honestly, I understand
(37:16):
why a typical mass stranding or beaching is a technically
correct term, but it is pretty misleading because mass beaching
in general should be pretty a typical. I get like
English is such a tricky language and we put so
many unnecessary things on there, like drug free school zone.
(37:38):
Really I don't know, and that's a different problem for
another day. But should not these all be a typical?
I completely agree, And imagine what's happening to that creature.
Really imagine we we talked about it earlier on about
being you know, in an environment where something comes along
with just the most massive sound that it's just there's
(38:03):
no way for you to get out and away from
this sound, because that sound is just traveling wherever you go,
and it's permeating the air no matter you know, we're
thinking about going inside of a house or something, or
in a structure. But imagine if that sound, if you're
on the desert or something, and it's a sound that
you can only continue to run in that desert. But
(38:25):
it's the sound isn't leaving. It's just as loud as
it was as you're trying to escape it. That's what
these creatures are going through in the water, and that's
why the beaching occurs, because there's just they're going until
they can't go. It's just a tough thing to tough
thing to think about. Yeah, that's I mean, that's a
powerful way to put it. The ocean is one big
(38:46):
room without a door to close, and that that is terrifying.
So here, here's where we're at, kind of a um
a watershed moment, the lid of Pandora's time jars unscrewed.
People know what's happening. Maybe not everybody, but uh, academics
(39:06):
know what's happening. Scientists know what's happening. The military certainly
is I strongly suspective military was much more aware of
this much earlier. But it gets fast forward year two thousand,
this issue receives more widespread attention outside of the scientific
and environmentalist community. When a mass stranding occurs in the Bahamas.
(39:31):
Three different types of whales wash up on the beach.
It's crazy. The public backlash is huge. Eventually Uncle Sam says, Okay,
this might have maybe just maybe have something to do
with a little bit what aspect of the sonar UH
(39:54):
stuff that we're doing, which is super necessary. And then
later they came back and they were like, Okay, it
was us. Still this is super necessary stuff to do.
It's for the greater good. Um. And now as we
move forward past two thousand and more research is conducted,
both on events from two thousand to two thousand twenty
(40:16):
and retroactively on previously unexplained events from before then, we
see that the list of species whose mass strandings are
linked to naval exercises just keeps growing. It's more and
more yes uh. And that includes beaked whales, doorf whales,
pygmy whales, sperm whales, pilot whales UH, several species of
(40:40):
dolphin UH, and also harbor porpoises. We've seen several mass
strandings in the Northern Indian Ocean that also coincide with
naval UH tests and exercises involving sonar, and then includes
one of the largest ever recorded two hundred to two
hundred and fifty dolphins UH stranded beached that still hasn't
(41:04):
really gotten a whole lot of press or attention in
the medium. Yeah. I mean, it's not like the whales
uh are go into court. Court is a human invention.
A legal system is a human invention, and so humans
would have to participate if they wanted to help the
whales in a legal sense. We're gonna pause for a
(41:27):
word from our sponsor and then come back with hopefully
some good news on that front. We're back dom law
and order maritime. In response to lawsuits bought by multiple
environmental groups, the U. S. Navy created a protocol regarding
(41:52):
the use of sonar and whales. The basic idea is
that before using certain sonar tools or devices, you check
to see whether there are animals around that would be affected,
and if there are, you can only turn your sonar
setting up to X degree, like X level of power, etcetera. UM.
(42:14):
This is not a perfect system because it's it's pretty
much defined as uh, we'll get to it, but it's
pretty much defined as what will not permanently damage these creatures.
One of the biggest problems that exists within the technology.
Then the Navy has is their long Range Sonar UM
and it's the thing it's it's a tool called surveillance
(42:36):
towed a ray sensor system low frequency active UH that
the WU is not at the end. That's also known
it's also known as curtas l F A or surtas
l F A and UM. Once once lowered from the
massive reel, which is okay, you have to imagine this
thing being lowered down into the water a bit um
(43:00):
one of these massive spools of like heavy wire. So
it's this thing that you lower down into the water.
And this system has what what they're what are what
are called or what they're calling source projectors. UH, they're
eighteen of them. There are these huge you can think
of them like if you're don't let's imagine I'm just
(43:23):
thinking about a car maybe with subwhiffers in it or something.
Or if you're in a concert and you see the
big speakers that are designed specifically to send out the
low frequency stuff. Imagine that there are eighteen of those
attached to this thing and they just begin emitting the
loudest low frequency tones that you can imagine. And the
(43:45):
big problem with all of that is that the frequencies,
those the low ones that they're emanating there UM around
a hundred to five hundred hurts also happened to be
the sweet spot by what what you'd call the goldilocks
zone for a lot of marine life. It's not too high,
it's not too low. It's right where they want it,
and we're just embarding that frequency level with our stuff.
(44:08):
That's where they communicate, right, Yes, it's it's like um
if you think with humans. Noel correcting me if I'm
wrong here, but the audible human vocal range has a
pretty sweet you know, it's it goes from pretty low
too pretty high. When it's it's one hundred to one
(44:28):
hundred and twenty hurts specifically, is where that part of
our that's the frequency range that our voices fill up
and that we are able to hear. And and that's
something we think about when we're producing podcasts. Um is
we eq things, you know, a k A filter out
and boost certain frequencies to make things as intelligible as
(44:49):
possible on various systems and from far away. So we
tend to scoop out a lot of those low frequencies
can create kind of mud and make it a little
hard to understand. But it would be the equivalent of
if that sweet spot of a hundred hurts that we
need to be able to hear for the human voice
to have conversations. Something was just generating that frequency at
(45:10):
a loud volume to the point where we couldn't hear
over it, and it was just clogging up our communications ability,
and it was happening constantly, like some form of tenitis
that we all had in our ears at the same time.
It would make you go insane. You would become an
insane person. It would be chaos, absolute misery. I would
also put it this way, imagine you don't know where
(45:32):
these things are coming from. You have no idea. You
you know that there are odd things that look like
creatures on the surface of the water or under the surface,
and you know that they're very loud and they're admitting
these things. Right. Um, but yeah, to the insanity. If
you don't see that stuff, or if you don't have
(45:53):
another sensory input confirming that, it's almost like you're hearing voices.
Oh wow, Yeah, an understanding of like what that is, right,
I mean, Um, that's wow. That's a really rough way
to look at it. But well that's why, that's why
some experts have said, you know, marine mammals perceived the
(46:16):
noises from this CERTs lf A thing as a threat,
and they react as if it's a threat. Understandably. Right now,
environmentalists want the Navy to limit what they call explosions
and sonar in areas where it's known that marine animals
will gather annually at certain parts of the year. We
(46:38):
have to point out that these are these are not
son are activities that are used in acts of war
or hot conflicts. The vast majority of these things come
about from testing or or scenario gaming. Well that makes sense.
You got to try it out on you know, a
sustained basis or trying different like you said, like different scenarios. Um.
(47:01):
It's interesting to Ben because the idea of limiting this
and regulating this, it's sort of a philosophical one where
you have to like weigh is it worth killing some
whales for the progress of military supremacy, you know, is
it worth killing some birds to have cleaner energy? You know,
I mean it's always you know, weighing these things. But
(47:22):
it does feel like with the current administration that we're
in philosophically, protecting wildlife is going to uh, you know,
pale in comparison to you know, having the the best
military and the most powerful military on the planet. So
you know, stuff like that I could see going by
(47:42):
the wayside. And to your point, Ben, it already seems
to be going by the wayside, right, I mean, I
think that's a very good Pointnell. I would also say
that we have to be we have to be careful
and realize that the US military UH tends to go
about business as usual pretty often, regardless of who is,
(48:07):
regardless of which political party is empower in a lot
of ways, that that machine continues to run, and it
is a philosophical thing. Just to throw in some specifics.
In two thousand seven, the US government did publish guidelines
for the level of noise for injury. UH. To be
on the record, they considered impulsive sounds at the level
(48:29):
of two hundred thirty decibels is the uppermost safe exposure
limit for all marine mammals, including beak toils. I was
just gonna jump in here and say, um, you know,
you know you were commenting on the current administration when
thinking about this, but I would just say, these concerns
go way beyond any administration when you're thinking about the
(48:51):
national security of a country, any country, but specifically the
United States, UM can when considering military might versus wildlife conservation.
I think we all know where, you know, the status
quo that exists within any administration, where where the priorities
(49:12):
would lie you may getting reelected. Yeah, well, and that
I clearly agree with you about, you know, the military
being always kind of the the priority. And I think
when I was referring to the current administration, I was
maybe thinking more along the lines of rolling back some
environmental controls and uh care for wildlife that I feel
like that philosophy can bleed even into the military stuff
(49:36):
and potentially make it even more of a double downing
on stuff like this. Just with that attitude in mind,
that's I think what I was. I was I was
trying to say, but completely agree with you that you know,
this stuff is never going to be as much of
a primary concern or even enough in the public eye
as we'll see with some court stuff that we're going
to discuss in just a minute, right to quote, uh
to quote H. G. Wells from one of his non
(49:59):
plagiarized works. Yes, I'm throwing some shade there at him. Uh.
Like they say in the Island of Dr Moreau, are
we not men? Meaning? Does this species not live within
a framework of law meant to make in theory everything
good for the most amount of living things possible. Well,
(50:20):
that came to a head on July fift a little
bit of victory for the maritime members of the Spaceship
Earth when the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in
San Francisco, UH finally shot down the Navy's pretty self
serving interpretation as something called the National Marine Protections Act
(50:41):
that that act is supposed to prohibit any US citizen,
agency or organization from harming, knowingly harming, or through negligence
harming the creatures we've been talking about whales, dolphins. Let's
basically saying, look, don't club seals that that kind of stuff,
stuff that I think most people can get on board with.
(51:05):
But they had to go to court for it. Yes. Uh.
There is a wonderful article about the subject by Alessandra
Potenza from the verge Um talking about this very court case,
and they found that the sonar used across more than
seventy of the oceans in the entire world that we discussed,
this low frequency sonar was operating under essentially an improper
(51:31):
let's license permit whatever I mean. You know, it's sort
of seems to me like almost a formality that the
military even needs a permit, you know, to contend with
these pesky wildlife you know, organizations that are just trying
to you know, save the whales and all that bunch
of hippies as far as the generals are concerned. And
(51:52):
I am, of course editorializing here, but the court found
that a body of the government called the National Marine
Fisheries Service, which was the authorizing you know body for
the these tests, UM, wasn't doing enough to mitigate the
harm against marine animals, against this underwater wildlife. UM. There
(52:15):
is a law in question here called the Marine Mammal
Protection Act UM. To quote the act itself and and
the verge article UH is meant to provide for the
quote least practicable adverse impact on marine animals and their
habitats UM. And that the federal agency in question here,
(52:38):
the n m f S, was not acting by the
letter of the law in the way that they were
overseeing these tests. They gave this kind of blanket license
and then they sort of said, go with God and
and uh, you know, kill as many whales as as
you as you deem fit Uncle Sam in service of
our great, great country. Uh. You know, they didn't really
say that, but that's sort of what the outcome was,
(52:59):
because certainly seemed like there was very little oversight in
any of this. And so in theory, it's good that
it got shut down or that they were called to
task for it. Many militaries around the world have committed
to investigating, and we're I guess the most diplomatic word
would be mitigating their activities to protect marine animals because
(53:21):
of course, again we're at the loggerhead here, we're at
the uh, we're what one politician awkwardly called the decision point.
And I think in his own autobiography, so do we
do we stop this stuff completely and therefore engage in
(53:41):
an enormous trustfaul the like of which humanity has never seen. Uh.
And the idea being like, hey, let's all just stop
trying to spy on each other and kill each other
with submarines and the weapons we can carry on board.
Probably not gonna happen. I'm not a big fan of gambling,
but even I wouldn't put money on that. So it
takes exist to the future. This is where we are at.
(54:03):
What do we prioritize? I guarantee you it is utopian
to think that, uh, and I'm using that in the
correct sense of the word. Is utopian to think that
every nation in the world would agree to even hard
limits on sonar going forward. Because if everybody puts those
hard limits on and you're the one country that cheats
(54:24):
or or you know, bends the rules, then you have
an immediate and significant advantage. Therefore, it would logically be
dumb for you not to do that. Well, it's the
same with like, you know, if if if everyone else
in the Olympics is using steroids and you're the country
that takes a stand against steroids and then you lose,
then you you look like a sucker. You know. It
kind of requires fair play on all sides to level
(54:47):
the playing field. And we have no guarantees ever that
that's the case. So we have to be as nasty
as we think are enemies are being. I don't know,
it's it's a it's a hard How do you how
do you act as a good steward of the environment
and as a good steward of science, I guess, while
also staying on the cutting edge of what everybody else
(55:10):
is doing, knowing that you're not always going to be
the good guy. And not to say that that's even
an impulse in our country, but it's a question that
I have, and I wonder, how do you do that?
Or the countries are good? What if you're not even
concerned with your enemies and you're just concerned with your
global trading partners. Because there is so much shipping that
(55:32):
occurs across the oceans every day, with these giant vessels
that are terribly loud, like we're thinking supertankers, all kinds
of different large ships that are carrying the goods that
you probably use every day, that I know I use
all the time, they get shipped across the oceans. Yeah,
(55:55):
let's not forget the word shipping refers to ships in
the sea. I mean, we're not like, you know, you
might get some special delivery freight that comes in a plane,
but by and large, the way you can carry the
largest amount of freight across that long a distance is
with massive, massive ships loaded down with shipping containers. That also, Uh,
(56:17):
that also remained the most cost effective method of shipping,
which is which is key here. I'm glad you brought
up the commercial aspects, Matt. Uh. Those are arguably a
little easier to regulate, but in practice much more difficult,
because that's another level of global cooperation. I just want
to reiterate, going on record, I don't want to miss
this point whenever it's brought up. I think there should
(56:40):
be two separate Olympics. I think there should be one
where everybody signs a waiver, they're allowed to do the drugs,
take the enhancements that they want. Does that make me
a bad person? Debatable? Am I rights? Would it be
massively successful? One million percent? I did the math. Remember
how happy that statement made Spencer on Harmontown. I think
(57:05):
he said we needed to stop the recording and erase
all of that so that you could take that idea
and then make it happen. We could make it happen.
The future is now. I mean, let's let's try not
to destroy each other and try not to destroy the whales,
uh and and the brilliant marine animals. But this is like, ah,
(57:27):
I just I want to see superhumans devil's advocate here
that guys who really cares about whales? I'm sorry, I'm
obviously joking. Keep it. Yeah, no, but but I mean
you can see how that could you know, from the
most callous business minded person. What are the whales contributing
(57:47):
to us? What are the whales contributing to the ecosystem?
I'm sure there's many things, but again, like you said,
there's a lot we don't know about whales. Um. I
just could see that conversation happening in a back room
and the idea of shutting down the hippie you know,
marine protectionists. Uh. And how how dare they try to
stand in the way of our progress and our shipping
and our ability to you know, detect enemy vessels? Uh,
(58:11):
you know, as efficiently as humanly possible. And unfortunately that's
gonna be a thing. Uh. It's hard to change that side,
if if, if you can't figure out a way to
sell them or to co modify them in some way.
The very fact that they're majestic and you know, rare
and beautiful and just isn't gonna do it for a
lot of those types of folks. I'm just extremely happy
(58:33):
that as of now, the whales haven't figured out how
to create and wield weaponry because they would have a
pretty good case for revenge against all of humanity. Uh.
Just putting that out, there were at least a couple
of thousand years away from the man whale wars, so
(58:53):
that at least makes me feel safer. So I had
an idea. Um, they there's some things we have to
cut for time here. But I have a thought experiment,
a concept I want to give get your thoughts on,
and I didn't put it in the notes because I
want to surprise you. But it's less crazy than it sounds.
(59:14):
So the big problem right seems to be this dichotomy.
Do we do we risk sacrificing military superiority a ka
ultimately human lives? Uh? To save wales? Are these two? Is?
Is saving one hurting the other? That's that's kind of
the gist of the argument. But there is a third way.
(59:36):
There are several third ways. One of those would be
finding a viable, less harmful alternative to sonar. Sonar was
a very easy branch, an easy fruit on a low
hanging branch to grab. I guess something like that. Horticulture
is correct me. But but the there's something else we
could do. It's one of the reasons I wanted to
(59:58):
keep hitting the point that the technology we call sonar
already existed in the natural world. What if we made
these marine animals valuable to the military as a viable
replacement for sonar technology. What if there's a world where
beaked whales would do all the things that a sub
(01:00:21):
that a sonar device would do. I mean, they're they're
super significant problems with that. First off, that's very close
to talking about whales slavery unless there's some kind of
symbiotic relationship we can find. But secondly, governments have already
been experimenting with using smaller cetaceans for any number of
(01:00:43):
task So what if there's a world where we can
interact with the natural capabilities that already exists. What if
we stop building ships and start hiring whales? Bowland be
familiar with the arm Sure you are been the artist
Mobius French comic book artists. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, does
(01:01:03):
a lot of surrealists kind of like future escape kind
of imagery. Um, he's got some images with like future
whales where they're like harnessed with crazy weapons or things
like that, and The idea of this whale war is
fascinating to me, but UM definitely recommend people check out
Mobius if you're into weird art. I'm just imagining the
(01:01:24):
horizon zero down version of whales, where there are these
robotic creatures that do kind of what you're talking about,
but also serve some other purpose for humanity. UM, because
I don't, I don't know, I don't. I am pessimistic
that we'd be able to change enough to actually truly
(01:01:46):
save the world's population. Of of citations, some are, some
are on the rebound, though. A couple of species of
whales have been documented to have their population in cre seen.
That stuff is always kind of depressing, though, because it's like, oh,
the tiger population in X region more than doubled. What
(01:02:08):
does that mean? Well, now there are three Like that's
it's It's an example. I'm just making up. But I mean,
we don't want to sound like we're doing anything other
than acknowledging this enormous dilemma. Is there a good answer?
I don't really think there is. If one country stops
using this, or if if one trading company stops using this,
(01:02:30):
the other trading companies are just gonna take take advantage
of that power vacuum. I don't know, Well, it didn't
mean this to end on such a down note. I mean, no,
You're right about Mobis. Those are great comics. I love it.
Maybe maybe less future whales than I remembered, but he
definitely has some stuff with whales in them. But uh,
that is a motif. You see a lot though, like
(01:02:51):
whales flying through the sky, you know, and like with
like saddles or something like that, and like lasers. And
then there was that thing in Futurama's too believe there
was a space whale in one of those movies that
they put out, um near the end of the run
of that show. But uh, whales are no whales. Check
out Mobius The Air Tight Garage is a really cool collection. UM.
(01:03:13):
And he also he didn't he he did. He collaborated
with Alejandro Jodorowski on a version of Dune that never
saw the light of day. There's actually a documentary about
that called Jodarowski's Dune, and Mobius did the conceptual art
behind that. You can also see. Um. I've got some
of his table top books, or got one of them
(01:03:35):
that I would recommend. I think he's I can't remember
if he's the guy who also did this sort of
space whale thing, but he is. Uh. He he did
design some of the ideas behind a bunch of films
people have seen, including Space Jam and Fifth Element right,
so those are his bona fides. If that's what you
(01:03:56):
were looking for, folks, if you if you doubted us
here uh while yea Space jamma is in fact a
stone called piece of American cinema garbage. Sorry, you watch
your mouth, sir, and that's our show. We want to
hear from you. What do you think? What is the
(01:04:18):
solution to this intertwined Gordian knots of concerns, problems and crises.
Let us know. You can find us on Facebook. You
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You can find us as individuals, not just the show
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(01:04:41):
exclusively where I am at how Now Noel Brown. You
can find me at Matt Frederick Underscore iHeart and you
can ask me directly, hey, why didn't you talk about
air Gonna raise in this episode? And I will reply
back to you cordially. We ran out of time because
(01:05:01):
there's a lot to talk about on this is Why
are you asking so many questions? Just minds your own business. Yeah,
let me google that for you. Sorry, I don't mean
to get aggressive. Okay, I feel better now. We also
have a phone number if if you know your opprobrium
and them over over air, gut array and over the
(01:05:24):
current research we didn't get to uh just doesn't quite
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(01:05:47):
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(01:06:08):
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The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.