EMC Chair 2015 | Joshua Horwitz: How the Navy can save Marine Mammals from Sonar Sound
Channel: U.S. Naval War College
Date: 31/03/2015

Joshua Horwitz, Senior Fellow, The Ocean Foundation
EMC Chair Symposium on Maritime Power and International Security
March 26, 2015

Two decades of negative publicity from sonar-related whale strandings have obscured the Navy’s innovative advances in other areas of environmental protection, including recycling at sea and developing biofuels that reduce the Fleet’s energy costs and carbon footprint. Most significantly, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) has been among the earliest and most rigorous investigators of global climate change. Its landmark studies in the Arctic, beginning in the 1970s, first confirmed and then measured ocean warming, melting ice, sea rise, and other disruptive consequences of climate change. 

Horwitz will present the “sonar v. whales” confrontation as a case study in the Navy’s navigation of the troubled waters of environmental compliance over the past two decades. Drawing on lessons learned from battles fought in court, and in the court of public opinion, Horwitz argues that the Navy now has a golden opportunity to demonstrate its good stewardship of oceans: by leading the fight against ocean noise. 

By sharing with industry some of its proprietary technology assets -- such as satellite telemetry, simulation software and computer modeling, ship-quieting technology, and passive acoustic monitoring – the Navy can reverse the rising tide of noise pollution from the primary commercial sources: international shipping, and oil and gas exploration. 

We live in too dangerous a world to beat our swords into plowshares. But by sharing the knifeedge of its acoustic and quieting technology, the U.S. Navy can cut the Gordian Knot of noise pollution, and rescue marine mammals from one of the most drastic changes to our global climate: rising levels of ocean noise. 

Author Joshua Horwitz spent seven years researching and writing War of the Whales: A True Story, which documents the Navy’s long-running struggle with environmental and animal rights activists over the impact of sonar exercises on marine habitats. This high-profile public relations and legal battle rose all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008, while legal skirmishes over sonar exercises in California and Hawaii continue today.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed are the speaker's own and may not necessarily reflect the views of the Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or any other branch or agency of the U.S. Government.