🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2mnrda$b12@galaxy.ucr.edu> baez@guitar.ucr.edu (john baez) writes:
>Ahem, ignore that previous post please.  Today I read in the paper that
>some jerks at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego want
>to put a loudspeaker in the Pacific off Big Sur and Kauai that will
>broadcast a 195-decibel sound underwater every four hours for *twenty
>minutes* from now until 2004!!!  This is in the March 22nd LA Times.  As
>you know, whales communicate by sound and can, I think, hear pretty
>well, and it is already believed that underwater noise from ships cause
>whales and other marine life problems.  As you also know, whales like to
>migrate along the California coast.  This crappy idea was invented by
>Walter Munk of Scripps and is being funded by the Defense Department.
>The goal is to see how long it takes the sound to go from its point of
>origin across long distance through the ocean (the article hinted New
>Zealand), as a way of measuring the ocean temperature, to give us
>information about global warming.  Now perhaps this is fine and dandy,
>but this idea gives me the creeps, and I hope people who know about this
>sort of thing don't let this experiment proceed without having a darn
>good understanding of the possible consequences.  It sounds awful to me.
>
>

  There was a similar post few months ago.  I followed up to supply
information regarding the depth selected for this project.  Another
person at Naval postgraduate school followed up regarding the effects
of sound on marine mammales. Unfortunately, I can not retreive that
person's post.  All I can remeber is quite sketchy but the effects are
not serious.  Please note that, 195dB is not what one would hear
if one has some distances from the source. Like any other propagating
phenomena, sound decays(due to scattering and absorption) as it
propagates.  It also spreads and therefore, signal strength per
unit area decrease as the distance from the source increase(Thus
we aren't fried by sun light). 

  Finally, Dr. Munk is the one of the most respected Oceanographers
if he is not the most in this world.