Category: Local Campaigns

The Hawaii Independent ran a story on the Mural Making Day event at Mayor Wright Housing sponsored by 808 Urban, with support from AFSC Hawai’i, MANA, the Ka La Ho’i Ho’i Ea planning committee and Na Pua Noeau youth.

According to the following article in the AP, a new study that was partially funded by the Office of Naval Research supports the theory that sonar has negative effects on beaked whales.  This has been a major contention against the powerful Navy sonar exercises that are conducted in Hawaiian waters several times a year.

Whale study implicates sonar

By Audrey McAvoy
Associated Press

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jun 12, 2009

A new study offers evidence to support the theory that beaked whales get the bends when they surface rapidly, possibly after being startled by naval sonar.

The report could help scientists understand why beaked whales appear to be more vulnerable to the potentially harmful effects of sonar than other marine mammals.

Together with other studies, the results might also help scientists and regulators think of how navies could adjust their sonar use during training to prevent beaked whale strandings and deaths.

“It provides more evidence that beaked whales that are being found dead in association with naval sonar activities are likely to be getting decompression sickness,” said Robin Baird, a marine biologist at Cascadia Research Collective and one of the report’s authors.

The study, published online this week in the journal Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology, uses data gathered from three species in the beaked whale family. Two of the species, Cuvier’s and Blainville’s, were observed in Hawaii waters. The third, northern bottlenose whales, were studied off Nova Scotia, Canada.

Military ships use midfrequency active sonar by firing bursts of sound, or “pings,” through the water and listening for an echo off a vessel’s hull. The technology has become increasingly important to the Navy as other countries, including China, have built quieter diesel-powered submarines that elude passive sonar detection.

In 2000, several beaked whales washed ashore with bleeding around their brains and ears during Navy exercises in the Bahamas. Scientists believe the bleeding may have been caused by bubbles that formed in the whales’ bloodstreams when they surfaced more quickly than normal.

The Navy has since agreed to adopt some measures to protect whales, such as having ships turn off their sonar when sailors spot marine mammals nearby. But it has strongly resisted many more stringent restrictions, saying there is not enough scientific evidence to require them.

The Navy is also pushing for more research in the area, budgeting $26 million per year over the next five years to understand how marine mammals hear and how sound affects them.

The new beaked whale study was also funded in part by the Office of Naval Research.

Beaked whales are among the least studied marine mammals because their populations are small and they spend most of their time deep below the surface.

So little is known about how the whales react to underwater sounds that it has been difficult for regulators to determine how the Navy should limit its use of sonar during training to protect marine mammals.

Last year the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed by environmentalists seeking more restrictions on navy sonar because it was not clear how many marine mammals would be harmed by exercises. The justices said the restrictions would lead to an inadequately trained Navy, jeopardizing the safety of the fleet.

The study concludes the animals are at higher risk of suffering the bends because they live with extremely high levels of nitrogen in their blood and body tissues.

Nitrogen builds in mammals, including humans, when they dive. Beaked whales likely accumulate such high levels of nitrogen because they repeatedly dive to great depths — sometimes almost 5,000 feet below the surface — for long periods of more than an hour.

When mammals ascend slowly, the nitrogen in their blood stays dissolved. But when they surface too quickly, the nitrogen comes out in bubbles. This gives them a form of decompression sickness, or the bends, a condition also known to scuba divers. Skin divers who make repeated deep dives are also susceptible.

Andreas Fahlman, study co-author and visiting investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said scientists would need to study what sound levels and frequencies might be prompting beaked whales to react in a way that is dangerous.

“What do the animals do? Do they swim faster to the surface?” Fahlman said. “How do these behaviors change?”

Since 1960 there have been 41 cases of mass strandings of Cuvier’s beaked whales around the world, according to a 2006 report in the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management.

Studies examining whether whale populations are increasing, decreasing or are stable are also needed, Baird said. Currently, nothing is known about the population trends of the world’s 21 beaked whale species, regardless of where they are in the world.”

A new study offers evidence to support the theory that beaked whales get the bends when they surface rapidly, possibly after being startled by naval sonar.

The report could help scientists understand why beaked whales appear to be more vulnerable to the potentially harmful effects of sonar than other marine mammals.

Together with other studies, the results might also help scientists and regulators think of how navies could adjust their sonar use during training to prevent beaked whale strandings and deaths.

“It provides more evidence that beaked whales that are being found dead in association with naval sonar activities are likely to be getting decompression sickness,” said Robin Baird, a marine biologist at Cascadia Research Collective and one of the report’s authors.

The study, published online this week in the journal Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology, uses data gathered from three species in the beaked whale family. Two of the species, Cuvier’s and Blainville’s, were observed in Hawaii waters. The third, northern bottlenose whales, were studied off Nova Scotia, Canada.

Military ships use midfrequency active sonar by firing bursts of sound, or “pings,” through the water and listening for an echo off a vessel’s hull. The technology has become increasingly important to the Navy as other countries, including China, have built quieter diesel-powered submarines that elude passive sonar detection.

In 2000, several beaked whales washed ashore with bleeding around their brains and ears during Navy exercises in the Bahamas. Scientists believe the bleeding may have been caused by bubbles that formed in the whales’ bloodstreams when they surfaced more quickly than normal.

The Navy has since agreed to adopt some measures to protect whales, such as having ships turn off their sonar when sailors spot marine mammals nearby. But it has strongly resisted many more stringent restrictions, saying there is not enough scientific evidence to require them.

The Navy is also pushing for more research in the area, budgeting $26 million per year over the next five years to understand how marine mammals hear and how sound affects them.

The new beaked whale study was also funded in part by the Office of Naval Research.

Beaked whales are among the least studied marine mammals because their populations are small and they spend most of their time deep below the surface.

So little is known about how the whales react to underwater sounds that it has been difficult for regulators to determine how the Navy should limit its use of sonar during training to protect marine mammals.

Last year the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed by environmentalists seeking more restrictions on navy sonar because it was not clear how many marine mammals would be harmed by exercises. The justices said the restrictions would lead to an inadequately trained Navy, jeopardizing the safety of the fleet.

The study concludes the animals are at higher risk of suffering the bends because they live with extremely high levels of nitrogen in their blood and body tissues.

Nitrogen builds in mammals, including humans, when they dive. Beaked whales likely accumulate such high levels of nitrogen because they repeatedly dive to great depths — sometimes almost 5,000 feet below the surface — for long periods of more than an hour.

When mammals ascend slowly, the nitrogen in their blood stays dissolved. But when they surface too quickly, the nitrogen comes out in bubbles. This gives them a form of decompression sickness, or the bends, a condition also known to scuba divers. Skin divers who make repeated deep dives are also susceptible.

Andreas Fahlman, study co-author and visiting investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said scientists would need to study what sound levels and frequencies might be prompting beaked whales to react in a way that is dangerous.

“What do the animals do? Do they swim faster to the surface?” Fahlman said. “How do these behaviors change?”

Since 1960 there have been 41 cases of mass strandings of Cuvier’s beaked whales around the world, according to a 2006 report in the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management.

Studies examining whether whale populations are increasing, decreasing or are stable are also needed, Baird said. Currently, nothing is known about the population trends of the world’s 21 beaked whale species, regardless of where they are in the world.”

May 31, 2009

In Battle to Cut Billions, a Spotlight on One Man

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON – Near the end of a two-hour hearing on a special war-spending bill this month, Senator Daniel K. Inouye, in his slow and rumbling voice, finally said the words that defense lobbyists across Washington had been hoping to hear: there was “good reason to be optimistic.”

Mr. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, was answering a fellow senator’s question about the future of Boeing’s mammoth C-17 cargo plane. But from Mr. Inouye, the taciturn new chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the comment was also the latest reminder that, as the Obama administration lifts its ax over hundreds of billions of dollars in military contracts that the Pentagon says it no longer needs, he is the industry’s last line of defense.

Mr. Inouye is best positioned to fulfill or frustrate the administration’s hopes of reining in runaway procurement costs. That makes him the object of intense courtship from industry executives, senators and even a certain Hawaiian in the White House.

“In the Senate, the buck stops with Chairman Inouye,” said David Morrison, a lobbyist for Boeing and a former aide to Mr. Inouye, the company with the most at stake in the proposed cuts.

Critics, though, say Mr. Inouye – a self-described “king of pork” responsible for nearly a billion dollars in earmarks each year – is also the most potent remaining champion of the parochialism that for decades has made major military projects hard to kill.

“There is no question a lot of this stuff is going to get put back by Congress,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma. “And the question is, why? Do we need more C-17s, or are we trying to keep people employed on a weapons system that we already have enough of?” Now, Mr. Coburn said, “We’ll see what the priorities are.”

Mr. Inouye is the last of a vanishing breed of powerful old-school appropriators. His predecessor as appropriations chairman, Senator Robert C. Byrd, 91, Democrat of West Virginia, is enfeebled by age. Another former chairman, Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican whom Mr. Inouye called “brother,” lost re-election last year amid ethics charges.

And in the House, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the defense appropriations subcommittee, is under a cloud because of federal investigations into lobbyists, contractors and other lawmakers with ties to his office.

“Inouye is the last of the old bulls,” said Steve Ellis of the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks Congressional spending. “The others have been gored.”

In an interview, Mr. Inouye said he seeks only the country’s security and its soldiers’ safety as he reviews the budget presented by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. “If we agree with the secretary, we go along,” Mr. Inouye said. “And if we don’t, we act accordingly.”

But he also hinted of conflict ahead when he takes up the main defense budget. “You’ll see some interesting activity when the big bill comes up,” he chuckled.

Elected to Congress in 1959, two years before President Obama was born, Mr. Inouye is known as a war hero and civil rights icon. While other Japanese-Americans were in internment camps, he lost his arm leading an Army unit of Japanese-Americans in World War II.

Honoring that legacy is one of many pet causes to which he has doled out federal money, including in one case to a group he helps oversee. In 2000 he inserted into the annual defense bill $20 million for a project dedicated to the sacrifices of soldiers like himself at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where he was longtime chairman of the board of governors.

He capitalized on his official power to help finance the project in other ways as well. He helped draw donations from military contractors with big interests before his committee. Boeing recently pledged $100,000 a year for five years, a museum spokesman said. (Mr. Inouye, 84, whose first wife died three years ago, also married the museum’s then-president, Irene Hirano, 60, last year.)

Mr. Inouye has other close ties to lobbyists. His son, Daniel K. Inouye Jr., once the leader of a punk rock band, is a lobbyist for several entertainment and communications companies that lobby the senator intensely because he sits on the commerce committee. (Mr. Inouye’s son says he lobbies only the House.)

Mr. Inouye has rescued military contractors before, most notably when the Clinton administration tried to cut procurement. When the Pentagon balked at buying early C-17s – the plane it again wants to stop buying – Boeing hired a lobbyist close to Mr. Inouye: Henry Giugni, a former Honolulu police officer who had become Mr. Inouye’s closest aide and then, with his help, the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms.

A month later, Mr. Inouye, then chairman of the military spending panel, wrote to the defense secretary urging the acquisition of more C-17s, and production continued for 15 more years. Now, the pressure from all sides is far more intense. The president has repeatedly called the senator, aides say, to talk about priorities like passing the war-spending bill quickly – meaning without adding any big equipment programs.

“He calls me Dan,’ ” Mr. Inouye said. “I call him Mr. President.’ ”

Scores of defense industry lobbyists, meanwhile, are reminding Mr. Inouye of his past support for threatened programs, including the missile defense system, partly based in Hawaii, or the Army’s “future combat systems,” a pet project of his friend and fellow Japanese-American from Hawaii, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, now the veterans affairs secretary.

As Mr. Inouye prepared for the Senate defense budget and a House-Senate conference on the war-spending bill, some of those lobbyists had a chance to speak to him at a fund-raiser this month for his political action committee at the home of the Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta, whose firm’s clients include Boeing, Lockheed Martin and United Technologies. (All three are among Mr. Inouye’s biggest sources of campaign money.)

Dozens of senators are also beseeching Mr. Inouye to save defense jobs in their states, including 19 who have signed a letter asking him to save Boeing’s C-17.

Many lobbyists took Mr. Inouye’s cryptic “reason to be optimistic” comment as a signal that he intended to include the eight C-17s from the House’s version of the war-spending bill when it goes to conference and may add the other eight sought by Boeing in the main defense bill. Supporters of Lockheed Martin’s F-22, a plane the Pentagon has tried for years to stop buying, took heart from Mr. Inouye’s omission of $147 million requested to shut down the production line, leaving it open while the company seeks new sales either to the United States or its allies, as Taxpayers for Common Sense reported.

Mr. Inouye has kept mum about what he may seek to insert in the 2010 military spending bill. But he acknowledged feeling the pressure. “People, whenever a lot of them see me, say, ‘Congratulations, you have got a great job, chairman of the biggest committee,’ ” he said. “I don’t have the time to explain to them that I spend less time sleeping.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/us/politics/31inouye.html?_r=1&emc=eta1