Something that I have not been aware of, or even thought about, is what shipping is doing to marine life. Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, recently posted an article about the dire situation in the oceans, mentioning a documentary, Sonic Sea, that aired on The Discovery Channel last week.
The film states that, “We are acoustically bleaching our oceans,” and underscores several deeply disturbing facts about the ever-increasing level of noise in the sea, including that:
- Sounds can travel 17,000 kilometers underwater and still be audible
- There have been several documented instances of US Navy sonar causing brain hemorrhaging, organ lesions and bleeding from the ears in whales.
- Whale calls are literally being drowned out by ship noise
- There are 60,000 commercial ships in the oceans at any given moment.
- According to the US Navy, noise levels in the oceans are doubling every 10 years, and have been doing so for decades.
Whales, dolphins and other marine life depend on sound to live, and we are seriously interfering with their ability to hear what they need to hear.
It seems like we are slowly taking away the homes of wildlife, and how many years will it take until they are all gone? Can we find a balance between human needs and animal needs?
On a more positive note, there is good news for elephants. The U.S. has recently restricted ivory trade, and China may soon follow. Poachers are killing elephants faster than they are able to reproduce, and it is estimated that every 15 minutes an elephant is killed for his or her ivory. Maybe the restrictions on ivory trade will have a positive impact. Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society of the United States posted the news on his blog on June 2.
Well, that’s all I can do for today. That nasty Ramsay Hunt Syndrome has decided to make my life miserable again. Here are a few pictures of my cats that I took on Sunday as they were sunning themselves. I thought that quite appropriate on a “sun”day.
When I first started taking pictures of the cats, three of them, Lily, Harry and Sammy were sitting in a row in the streak of sunlight, Of course, they all started to move when I got the camera, all except Lily. Then Sammy came back and I got his picture. Harry never did come back, not even when I went into the living room which is where I got the picture of Hermione.