War of the whales
"The tale of a crusading attorney who stumbles on one of the U.S. Navy's best-kept secrets: a submarine detection system that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound--and drives whales onto beaches. As Joel Reynolds launches a legal fight to expose and challenge the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his research station in the Bahamas. Investigating this calamity, Balcomb is forced to choose between his conscience and an oath of secrecy he swore to the Navy in his youth"--Amazon.com.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
4mentions
2people
2015–2026years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If this article is interesting to you I highly recommend War of the Whales. It is an interesting look at Cold war science+politics and the environment. A decent part of the book is about SOSUS.
- You should check out "War of the Whales" if you are interested in the interaction between whales and naval training exercises.
- There's a pretty good book called "War of the Whales" by Joshua Horwitz that discusses the work of whale researcher Ken Balcomb to convince the Navy to limit sonar operations.
- I haven't finished the decision yet, but from what I have read it seems the Wired reporter might have gotten a little eager to conclude that world is a quiet place for whales.
The HN submitter definitely got too excited when they paraphrased the article title. The ruling does not bar the use of LFA when there is an active military conflict. SECNAV is not going to get spend a lot of time at Woods Hole polishing an environmental impact study while the pacific fleet wonders where a couple of nuclear armed enemy subs are located.
But don't take my word or the reporters word for it. The decision is here:
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/15/1...
For those wondering,yes, this is the latest development in the string of cases described in War of the Whales. The APA sounds kind of boring if you read the Wikipedia summary. But when you consider cases like this or what to do with DoC and ICANN it is actually pretty interesting, especially for technology or science questions.
