IS THERE A CONSPIRACY TO COVER UP BAROTRAUMA AS THE REAL CAUSE OF ALL WHALE BEACHING?
YES!
by Capt. David Williams, Deafwhale Society, Inc
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A WHALE'S SINUSES, AIR SACS, AND MIDDLE-EAR AIR SPACES ARE THE MOST VULNERABLE PART OF ITS ANATOMY WHEN NEAR NAVAL SONAR OR OIL INDUSTRY AIR CANNONS!
Naturally, the US Navy and the oil industry will go to great expense to keep the public from knowing of this vulnerability.
Talk to a scuba diver. Ten million divers worldwide know their sinuses are easily injured if the surrounding water pressure changes too drastically or too fast.
Most marine mammal scientists are certified scuba divers. Many are dive instructors. However, not one them has ever published a single word that even hinted at the vulnerability of a whale's sinuses to rapid and excessive pressure changes easily induced by navy sonar and oil industry air cannons.
Why not?
It's unimaginable to think that over the last fifty years all the world's whale experts have accidentally "overlooked" the marine mammal vulnerability to sinus barotrauma. Even if marine mammals had evolved a means whereby they could neutralize rapid and excessive acoustic pressure waves, or quickly recover from such injury, one would expect that at least one marine mammal scientist would have publish a research paper illuminating how their sinuses are protected from powerful oscillations in pressure.
A complete void in barosinusitis research is indicative of a massive cover-up. Said differently, marine mammal scientists are afraid to publish a research paper saying whales and dolphins are resistant to sinus barotrauma since they know this is scientific fraud and will surely catch up with them.
Search the world's best libraries— there is absolutely "no available scientific information" anywhere that might illuminate how marine mammals deal safely with excessive pressure changes. There is also "no available scientific information" that might reveal their vulnerability to barosinusitis. The only way any scientists can explain why there is "no available scientific information" on how whales might deal with barotrauma is by admitting that there has been an ongoing government cover-up in place since the 1960s.
Doubt me? Search "barotrauma and whales" in Google, Yahoo, Bing, or Google Scholar and you'll find mostly the Deafwhale Society's comments and ramblings. To make matters more suspicious, the research that you will find is blatantly evasive and deceptive.
For example, the first scientific objective in one US Navy sponsored research paper (link) was: "To understand how the ears of deep-diving marine mammals are structured to prevent barotrauma."
Regardless that the main purpose of this research was to understand how a whale's anatomy prevents barotrauma, Dr. Darlene Ketten, the world's leading whale cochlea expert who has received hundreds of big-dollar grants from the Navy , declared therein:
" . . .we (scientists) have no knowledge of what auditory structural adaptations these animals evolved to endure bathypelagic and rapidly changing pressures . . ."
There was no discussion whatsoever about barotrauma in whales. Nor was there one word about the massive air sinuses and air sacs in the heads of these deep divers. How is it possible to research BAROTRAUMA in diving mammals and not mention the part of their anatomy most vulnerable to pressure-related injury? The ONLY purpose of this US Navy-sponsored scientific doublespeak was to have Dr. Darlene Ketten officially declare that there was "no available scientific information on barotrauma in whales."
But why would making such an official statement in a research paper be so important? The reason involves the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). This law states over and over again (17 times) that the Secretary of Commerce must protect marine mammals to the "best available scientific information." Verify this for yourself. Keyword search "best" in the MMPA and you will quickly see that the law offers NO PROTECTION when there is "no available scientific information," which is the case with barotrauma from all causes.
This defective law states repeatedly that National Marine Fisheries Service must protect marine mammals to the "best available scientific information." If there is "no available scientific information on barotrauma or barosinusitis in whales" as Dr. Darlene Ketten openly declared, then the Marine Mammal Protection Act is worthless legislation when it comes to pressure-related injury in diving whales.
The "best available scientific information" clause was the object of two well-written law reviews (link) (link).
Obviously, the navy and oil industry are not going to use taxpayer money to sponsor any research that will show how their operations cause rapid pressure changes that slowly kill marine mammals. Nor do they want to see earthquake-induced barosinusitis accepted as the cause of mass beachings since it is only a small step over to barosinusitis induced by explosives, sonar, and/or airguns.
HERE'S HOW THE COVER-UP WORKS
Just as the tobacco companies used to supply all the money to research lung cancer in the 1960s and 70s, the US Navy and the oil industry use taxpayer dollars to supply a whopping 98% of all whale research funds worldwide. Other than submarine earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, these two groups generate the most whale-dangerous LF pressure waves. They do not want scientists talking about seaquake-induced barosinusitis because barosinusitis is the identical injury induced by their underwater activities.
Marine mammal scientists go along with the public deception because they know they stand a much better chance to get their projects funded if they cater to the desires of those who supply 98% of their money.
This is an identical situation that existed a few decades ago when the tobacco industry was funding all the lung cancer research.
Since there is "no available scientific information" on barotrauma or barosinusitis in whales, the Marine Mammal Protection Act is junk legislation as it offers no protection to marine mammals from their greatest source of deadly injury. In other words, as long as the scientists, who are bribed with taxpayer money by the oil industry and the navy, do not research pressure related sinus injury, there is no protection whatsoever from seismic airguns and sonar that could easily blow out their sinuses, air sacs, and middle ears and cause them to die slowly over many weeks.
And, don't dare think that I am trying to prevent the oil companies for getting at the oil, or prevent the US Navy from defending our shores. NO WAY... I am as much a patriot as any US Citizen can possibly be! I want out country safe and I want cheap oil.
I also know that by exposing the fraud and deception, the US Navy and the oil industry can find ways that they can operate the sonars and explosives and air cannons and not kill our whales while they are doing it. There is a simply way to frighten marine mammals away from these dangerous operations.
Whalers and dolphins have flourished for 50 million years while dealing with intense pressure waves generated by Earth's seismic activity. Evolution has worked out a way that they can detect precursor signals from large earthquakes. When they detect a pending earthquake, they flee from the area like a bat out of hell. All we need to do to scare they away from Navy sonar, explosives, and air cannons is duplicate the precursor—as easy task for the US Navy. There are scores of other ways to protect whales. Admitting the truth and bringing the problem to the whale-loving people of the world will get the problem solved. If not, the worse that can happen is that the truth come out. The truth is ALWAYS better than dirty-dog lies, especially when you are using taxpayer money to corrupt the marine mammal scientific community. How utterly shameful can it get?
And,if it requires that we fire 50 admirals, vote out all the lying politicians, and shame our lying scientists; then I will be the first to call for such action.
Navy and oil industry sponsored whale scientists are also lying to the public with the issue of auditory trauma (deafness) in whales. These two worse offenders hand out millions of taxpayer dollars to crooked scientists willing to publish fabricated misleading research articles arguing that deafness in stranded dolphins and whales is likely due to a genetic flaw and/or old age. The idea here is that there is an ongoing argument as to whether cetaceans suffer auditory injury from underwater explosions and sonar, or do they just grow old and lose their hearing. Whenever their is an ongoing scientific argument, there is "NO best AVAILABLE scientific information" and the killing can continue.
And, as long as the Navy and the oil industry supply 98% of all the funds to research marine mammals, there will never be any "best AVAILABLE scientific information" on deafness or barosinusitis in whales, dolphins, and sea turtles too!
Can you imagine how many human lives would have been saved if Congress would never have allowed the tobacco industry to control lung cancer research?
The unethical cover-up surrounding barosinusitis also extends to NOAA, who hands out millions of taxpayer dollars every year to the "save-the-whales" rescue teams (link). The payoff money is called "John H. Prescott Grants." These teams get a yearly bribe of $100,000 because they are the first at the scene and in the position to control the media and make sure the navy and the oil industry don't get blamed (link). The bribe with taxpayer money is absolutely necessary for the public scam to work! Can you imagine the uproar if the rescue teams started suggesting to the news teams that navy and/or oil industry activities might be causing barosinusitis leading to the strandings? These are also the same teams that cut open the whales and dolphins so obviously the rescuers need to be bribed too. Of course, as long as they're using taxpayer money to finance the cover-up, how much is spent really doesn't matter to them.
The rescue teams also want to make sure that there is always a mystery behind beachings because it helps them in their donation seeking. Notice at this website how the begging is done. They even have donation plans so they can inherit your sick grandmother's estate after she's dead. There are all kinds of ways challenged persons can give they're life savings to the rescue teams. They are playing on the heart strings of the whale-loving public to enrich themselves while the scam continues.
Saving whales is big business and the management of these groups pay themselves millions annually. No wonder the mystery of cetacean strandings will never be solved by the current establishment.
In the mean time, NOAA's whale experts use taxpayer dollars to buy themselves a big expensive party yacht.
As mentioned above, barosinusitis is the real reason why whales and dolphins beach themselves. But rather than admit the existence of barotrauma in the sinuses, and work on ways to prevent it, whale experts publish senseless stranding concepts like social cohesion (mass suicide), biosonar failure due to slopping beach, chasing prey too close to shore, sharks, killer whales, parasitic worms, viruses, bacteria, fungal infections, red tides, severe storms, geomagnetic navigation failure, geomagnetic storms, phases of the moon, sun spots, heavy metals, immune failure, ingestion of plastic bags, movement of ice sheets, and movement of nutrient-rich waters closer to shore. All of these concepts are nonsensical in view of the facts, and the scientific community knows it.
The cover-up has been ongoing for maybe 50 years! During this time, one brief sentence from a marine mammal expert leaked out and came very close to explaining why whales beach themselves. This sentence also revealed what most whale expert have known for 50 years.
In 1962, Dr. Francis Fraser, the curator of marine mammals at the British Museum of Natural History offered the following insight on barosinusitis while commenting (link) on the mystery of why whales beach themselves. He said: "It is very easy to imagine a condition in which the air-sac system has broken down, so that it is no longer reflecting, and, with the isolation of the essential organs of hearing disrupted, the animal may lose its sense of direction.
Barosinusitis is indeed the condition that exists when the air-sac system (aka: pterygoid sinuses) breaks down and is no longer reflecting the acoustic signals necessary for the proper function of biosonar. Obviously, when sound waves travel outside their proper channel in the heads of these animals, they loss all sense of direction. Furthermore, these small sacs of air surrounding the cochlea acoustically isolating it from the whale's own loud voice. The air in these sinuses also deflects and channels sound around inside the whale's head like light bouncing off mirrors (ref) (ref). This acoustic deflection/channeling prevents sound waves from hitting the cochlea from all directions—a must if the whale is to determine the azimuth of any returning echonavigation signals. Dr. Fraser was absolutely right—whales and dolphins become lost when the air-sac system suffers a pressure-related injury. The really sad part is that marine mammal scientists are withholding their awareness of barosinusitis as the major cause of all marine mammal strandings!
The following passage will prove beyond even the slightest doubt that US Navy whale experts know that healthy, functional sinuses are an absolute must if whales are to dive and feed themselves and navigate their home range. This fact was confirmed on page 3663 a 2004 research article in which US Navy scientists stated:
"... the presence of air around the bulla (cochlea) contributes to the acoustic isolation of the ears by providing a sound-reflective barrier between them. The almost complete dorsomedial coverage of the bulla (cochlea) with air should contribute to the animal's ability to differentiate time of arrival differences by impeding conduction through soft tissues that exist between the ears. In combination with other air spaces in the head, this should allow dolphins to capitalize on spectral differences in received signals due to shadowing and may contribute to minimum auditory angular resolution in the vertical and horizontal planes. Position, geometry, and volume of the air spaces within the head of the dolphin are important components of both the sound production and reception process and care should be given to their properties when developing models of biosonar production and hearing in dolphins."
Since this article proves that the US Navy knows the truth, why are marine mammal scientists still refusing to tell the public that barosinusitis is the cause of most beachings? Obviously, they are pretending not to know about barosinusitis so that the Navy can continue to kill whales and the scientists can continue to grab taxpayer' money! Simply put... the Navy, NOAA, and the oil industry are using taxpayer dollars to bribe marine mammal scientists continuously, year after year. If you doubt me, visit the Navy's website and review the research projects they funded in FY09, FY10, and FY11. Notice that not one penny went to research barotrauma or barosinusitis, which is a marine mammals worse nightmare come true.
The number one injury in navy divers is pressure related so how can Navy admirals ignore barotrauma is the massive sinuses of the greatest divers the world has ever known?
When you review what the Navy funded, also take notice of the child-like stupidity in the projects themselves. None of them are of value in protecting whales from barotraumatic injury. In fact, they are spending the taxpayers' money to keep the spotlight off barosinusitis. This alone should tell you that the entire marine mammal research program funded by the Office of Naval Research, NOAA, and the oil industry is nothing more than pure bribery.
But the offenders have recently started covering their own butts so they will not look like the deceptive scientists that they are! They know that one day in not too distant future, my words will catch up with them simply because the deception is far too blatant. A few of the worse offenders were given a grant by the Office of Naval Research to create a digital model of a beaked whale's head so they can supposedly learn how powerful navy sonar bounces around inside the head of beaked whales. The top-level goal of this project is to build an interactive online modeling and visualization system, called the Virtual Beaked Whale, to enable users to predict mid-frequency sonar-induced acoustic fields inside beaked whales and other marine mammals.
Ask yourself this simple question, why do they need a digital model of the sinuses of beaked whales if they did not already know that barosinusitis was a serious injury for whales exposed powerful sonar?
They state they are "hoping" that "the availability of such a system, together with high-quality data, will give researchers insight into the nature of sonar interactions with beaked whales, and may prove useful in evaluating alternate sonar transmit signals that retain the required information content but with less effect." In other words, they are saying, "We know sonar induces sinus injury so we want to make a digital model so we can research barosinusitis for the next 20 years and try to figure out a way to establish a scientific argument so that their will never be "best available scientific information" on barosinusitis." They also want to cover their own butts by APPEARING as responsible scientists working to solve the problem that they have cover-up for 50 years.
On page #3 of this article, these scientists did give a few clues as to their awareness of the vulnerability of whales to barosinusitis. They stated:
(2) Gas volume conformational changes in beaked whales:
"The volume of gas contained within air spaces of a diving and ascending odontocete will vary depending upon depth, functional use, and compliance of the surrounding tissues. The dynamic relationship between gas volumes and ambient pressure is well understood, and can be used to make general assumptions about the total gas volume held within the whale at any depth relative to the total volume held at surface level. However, biological material is not uniform and therefore variations in compliance must be accounted for when examining pressure-volume relationships. The gas-containing organs can have a range of compliances depending upon the structure of the interstitial and surrounding tissues. Lungs, for example, are highly elastic, but have some stretch constraints related to their internal construction. The jointed ribs of odontocetes allow additional flexibility for lung collapse compared with terrestrial animals. The cartilage surrounding the larynx and trachea, particularly the complete circular rings found in whales, make it stiffer than the lungs, but more pliant than the skull. Cranial bony sinuses are rigid and could crack under pressure changes if the ostia allowing gas exchange are insufficient or blocked. Odontocetes have thus evolved air sacs outside the skull that are free of the constraints of rigid bony walls. These air sacs are probably even more elastic than lungs, particularly as they have highly folded external contours and no tissues crossing through their lumen. At extreme depths, it is likely that these spaces collapse as they are completely evacuated of gas. Some species of deep diving beaked whales have evolved reduced or absent air sacs, probably through selection against these non-functional spaces at full collapse, which become liability for infections. There are several major functional conditions under which odontocete respiratory spaces may undergo conformational changes during a dive: breathing, sound production, hearing, and valsalva. It is clear that current knowledge of beaked whale anatomy is inadequate to predict gas volume conformational changes with depth and function. Work on such changes that is currently being performed at M Moore’s laboratory, with ONR support, is expected to be enlightening."
Why did evolution place the sinuses outside of the bony cranial space? The answer is to allow them to expand rapidly without cracking the skull. In other words, evolution is trying to protect them from sudden changes in pressure induced by undersea earthquakes. Allowing the free expansion and contraction of the sinuses to prevent barotrauma induced by subsonic seaquake waves ranging for .5 to 20 cycles per second is an entirely different ballgame then trying to protect whales from sonar operating at 500 cycles per second. The expansions and contractions at 500 time per second establishes shear forces at the air/tissue interfaces that simply rip apart the sinus membranes. Seaquakes don't cause such damage. Besides, these whales can detect most pending quakes hours before they occur; they cannot detect the sonar until its already too late. How stupid does an acoustic scientists have to be not to understand this simplicity?
If they would only stop the deception and spend the money to find ways to prevent barosinusitis, we might still be able to save our whales and dolphins before its too late.
It is known fact, whales flee the area shortly before large earthquakes. They are obviously detecting earthquake precursor signals of some sort. Fleeing the scene before a earthquake is proof positive that seaquakes pose a serious threat to whales (read how seaquakes cause mass whale beachings). Why not admit seaquake-induced barosinusitis and spend money researching ways to understand how whales detect seaquake precursors? Duplicate these signals and scare the whales away from an area before turning on the deadly sonar. Do the same with seismic oil exploration.
But not all marine mammal scientists are taking bribes. Professors Hal Whitehead and Linda Weilgart, at Canada's Dalhousie University, are making an effort to reveal the bias in marine mammal science (link) (link) (link).
SO WHAT IS THE REAL CAUSES OF WHALE MASS BEACHINGS?
We know underwater explosions can cause biosonar-disabling barosinusitis; as can exposure to powerful
navy sonar and oil industry air cannons. In fact, any disturbance in the sea that generates rapid and excessive changes in the surrounding water pressure can rupture a whale’s sinuses. Nature can easily generate such pressure changes. For example, a meteorite’s impact with the ocean's surface would produce a series of potent pressure oscillations. So would an undersea earthquake. The vertical jerking of the seabed acts like a giant piston, pushing and pulling at the water, generating a series of intense low-frequency changes in ambient pressure called seaquakes (aka: ocean acoustic waves or t-waves). The intensity of the pressure changes to which the whales are exposed is not so much related to magnitude as it is to the speed at which the seafloor shifts vertically, and to the depth of the focal point of the earthquake. The faster the seafloor shifts, and the closer the EQ's focal point to the water's interface, the more danger nearby whales face.
Sailors have reported violent encounters with seaquakes since the beginning of recorded history.
Hundreds of these eyewitness accounts (and other evidence) are posted on two websites (1750 to 1899) (1900 to 2009). Reading these two web sites will convince you beyond even the slightest doubt that seaquakes do indeed cause barosinusitis in whales!
Naturally, millions of years of evolution has equipped these animals with the ability to detect earthquake precursors. But only the big quakes >7 magnitude constantly give precursors, which explains why whales do not strand after monster quakes. However, events below 7 magnitude often occur with only a moments notice to the whales. These are the events that catch them off guard.
As touched on above, the stranding beach is always located downstream from the point of injury. I've traced approximately 500 beachings over the past 40 years. On average, seaquake-injured whales swim about 2,600 miles downstream from the epicenter before they strand. This journey takes an average 27 days.
MORE ON THE COVER-UP OF BAROSINUSITIS IN WHALES!
Not one marine mammal scientists has ever been curious about whether whales simply lose their sense of direction and swim into a sandy beach with the flow of the surface currents. It's understandable that the public might not realize stranded whales always swim with the flow but how can marine mammal scientists be so blind to the obvious? Another clue pointing to a massive cover-up is the fact that the most important observations during a stranding are never recorded. Things like wind direction and speed, storms at sea, local and offshore currents, and tidal inflow and outflow are never recorded by the scientists.
Look at the picture on the left... you can see the waves rolling in. This tells you that a strong shoreward wind in blowing, causing current to flow toward the beach. Examine videos and pictures taken during strandings, not afterward. If you look close you can see the surface current washing ashore. In many pictures and videos you see flotsam and sea weeds washing ashore with the whales. Why can't the experts make such simple observations? Are whale scientists stupid? Pretending to be ignorant of obvious facts is more evidence of a massive cover-up.
Nor has any whale expert published a paper on barotrauma or barosinusitis in mass stranded whales. We have excellent and detailed government publications on barotrauma in fish (link). Why don't we have something similar in stranded whales?
The mystery of why whales mass strand has been around since the beginning of recorded history; therefore, the cause has to be something that has been around just as long. Undersea earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and meteorite impacts certainly fit the time frame. These events would produced a series of potent pressure changes in the water and could indeed breakdown the air-sac system and cause an entire pod of whales to get lost. Is such an idea so complicated that it defies the imagination of whale scientists? It seems reasonable that such a simplistic concept would have been ruled in or out decades ago. Why is it that the experts never checked out seaquakes as a cause of strandings?
Dr. Francis Fraser gave scientists the best clue to the stranding mystery 50 years ago when he said it was easy for him to imagine a condition in which the air-sac system had broken down. Why is it that no other marine mammal scientists in the last 50 years has considered the loss of directional senses from a broken down air-sac system as an answer to the stranding mystery?
Why is it that whale experts have never investigated barosinusitis as the cause of whale strandings? Is it because barosinusitis is an identical injury to the break down of the air-sac system that is often induced by oil industry air cannons, explosives, and navy sonar?
The new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), the former Minerals Management Service (MMS), was and still is a corrupted puppet of the oil industry. This government group collects fees from the oil industry and hands them out to scientists to study the environmental impact of the industry. BOEMRE and the US Navy, fund 98% of all marine mammal research worldwide. In other words, by controlling BOEMRE, the oil industry and the Navy control 98% of all the money available to study whales and dolphins.
According to the Washington Post (and many other sources) dirty dealing and corruption has plagued this downright dysfunctional government agency for decades. Read these shocking links: (link) (link) (link) (link) (link). Since its inception, and in particular since the 1980s, BOEMRE has been embroiled or implicated in numerous scandals. For example, in 1990 BOEMRE employees were linked to prostitution. One BOEMRE female official got pregnant from sleeping with an oil and gas lobbyists. In September 2008, reports by the Inspector General of the Interior Department were released that implicated over a dozen BOEMRE officials of unethical and criminal conduct in the performance of their duties. The investigation found BOEMRE employees had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sex with oil and gas energy company representatives. BOEMRE staff had also accepted gifts and free holidays amid a culture of ethical failure. The New York Times revealed "a dysfunctional organization that was riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch. A May 2010 inspector general investigation revealed that BOEMRE regulators in the Gulf region had allowed oil and gas industry officials to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency. BOEMRE staff had routinely accepted meals, tickets to sporting events, and gifts from oil companies. In 2009, the regional supervisor of the Gulf region for BOEMRE pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year's probation in federal court for lying about receiving gifts from an offshore drilling contractor. This deeply disturbing report is further evidence of the cozy relationship between BOEMRE and the oil and gas industry. The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) alleges that BOEMRE has suffered from a systemic revolving door problem between the Department of Interior and the oil and gas industries. For example, thirteen months after departing as BOEMRE director, Bush appointee Randall Luthi became president of the National Oceans Industries Association (NOIA) whose mission is to secure reliable access and a favorable regulatory and economic environment for the companies that develop the nation's offshore energy resources in an environmentally responsible manner. Luthi succeeded Tom Fry, who was BOEMRE director under the Clinton administration. Luthi and Fry represented precisely the industries their agency was tasked with being a watchdog over. Lower level administrators influencing BOEMRE have also gone on to work for the oil and gas companies they once regulated. In addition, Jimmy Mayberry served as Special Assistant to the Associate Director of Revenue Management, managed by BOEMRE, from 2000 to January 2003. After he left, he created an energy consulting company that was awarded a BOEMRE contract via a rigged bid. He was convicted along with a former BOEMRE coworker Milton Dial who also came to work at the company. Both were found guilty of felony violation of conflict of interest law. (link)
As it stands now, the underwater activities of the US Navy and the oil industry are responsible for at least 90% of the human-induced barosinusitis in cetaceans and they know it. Thus, they must prevent any legitimate research on the topic to keep from pointing the finger at themselves. They will fund research saying that ships kill whales, and that whale watching boats harm them, and that native cultures are killing too many whales. BUT THEY WILL NOT SPEND ONE DIME TO SHOW THAT BAROSINUSITIS IS A DIVING MAMMAL'S WORSE NIGHTMARE COME TRUE!
Since they control all the money spent to study marine mammals, they naturally look with strong disfavor upon any scientists who supports pressure-related SINUS injury (barosinusitis) as a cause of whale strandings. On the other hand, they look favorably on any scientists who is willing to falsify and fabricate research saying the activities of these two groups are not harming whales. The crooked scientists get the money while the honest scientists lose their jobs or cave in to the corruption
Doubt me? Search "barotrauma and whales" in Google, Yahoo, Bing, or Google Scholar and you'll find mostly my comments and ramblings. To make matters more suspicious, the research that you will find is blatantly evasive and deceptive. For example, the first scientific objective in one US Navy sponsored research paper (link) was: "To understand how the ears of deep-diving marine mammals are structured to prevent barotrauma:" Regardless that the main purpose of this research was to understand how a whale's anatomy prevents barotrauma, Dr. Darlene Ketten, the world's leading whale cochlea expert and a navy favorite, declared therein, " . . .we have no knowledge of what auditory structural adaptations these animals evolved to endure bathypelagic and rapidly changing pressures . . ." There was no discussion about barotrauma in whales. Nor was there one word about the massive air sinuses and air sacs in the heads of these deep divers. How is it possible to research BAROTRAUMA in diving mammals and not mention the part of their anatomy most vulnerable to pressure-related injury? The ONLY purpose of this US Navy-sponsored scientific doublespeak was simply to have Dr. Darlene Ketten officially declare that there was "no available scientific information on barotrauma in whales." But why would making such an official statement in a research paper be so important? The reason involves the Marine Mammal Protection Act (link). This defective law states repeatedly that National Marine Fisheries Service must protect marine mammals to the "best available scientific information." If there is "no available scientific information on barotrauma or barosinusitis in whales" as Dr. Darlene Ketten openly declared, then the Marine Mammal Protection Act is worthless legislation to diving mammals when it comes to pressure-related injury.
The "best available scientific information" clause was the object of two well-written law reviews (link) (link). This clause has killed more whales than all the harpoons ever thrust at sea.
Obviously, the navy and oil industry are not going to use taxpayer money to sponsor any research that will show how their operations cause rapid pressure changes that slowly kill marine mammals. Nor do they want to see barosinusitis accepted as the cause of mass beachings since it is only a small step from earthquake-induced barosinusitis to barosinusitis induced by explosives, sonar, and/or airguns.
Furthermore, any scientists who tries to research these topics on their own will face a group of well-funded scientists who will strongly disagree with them. In this fashion, "best available scientific information" can never be established. Instead, a scientific argument ensues until one side of the issue runs out of money. The navy and the oil industry both have unlimited taxpayer funds and will use them to pay for all the research needed to keep barosinusitis from every gaining "best available scientific information" status.
This is exactly what they are doing with the deafness issue in marine mammals; keep the scientific debate ongoing and you defeat the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and can kill unlimited numbers of whales, dolphins, seals, polar bears, and sea otters with complete immunity. All they Navy has to say is that scientists just don't know the answer--thus, the killing can continue unabated.
In 2010, a group of scientists, supported by taxpayer money given them by the Navy and NOAA, published a research article saying most stranded dolphins were deafened; however, these outright crooks claimed that deafness was due mostly to old age and birth defects. The importance of this research was monumental to the Navy and the oil industry since there is now a scientific debate ongoing about whether deafness in dolphins is cause by sonar, explosives, airguns, birth defects, old age, ship noises, or etcetera, etcetera. So now we have a scientific argument on deafness in marine mammals and the laws protecting whales are toothless. The same thing will happen with barosinusitis. Taxpayer money will be used to kill our marine mammals and there is NOTHING we can do about it.
The truly sad part is that there are ways to prevent barosinusitis and deafness in marine mammals if only the US Navy will face the problem and stop running away from their responsibility. I think the answer lies in researching the connection between seaquakes and beached whales. After many millions of years of living in earthquake-prone waters, whales have surely developed a means whereby they can detect earthquake precursor signals and move out of the way long before they are injured. If we can duplicate the earthquake signals that scare the whales, we will be able to clear these animals away from the dangerous activities of the oil industry and the navy.
We could also research ways to save whales and dolphins suffering from barosinusitis.
Most folks believe that earthquake at sea, and the seaquakes these events generate, are harmless to whales. Nothing could be further from the truth.One possible reason why such thinking might prevail is that beachings rarely occur after major undersea earthquakes. In fact, in an effort to refute the BAROTRAUMA SOLUTION, whale experts in Taiwan and in New Zealand publicly stated that whale strandings never occur in their areas after major offshore earthquakes. The implication is that if a magnitude ~8 quake does not cause whale strandings, then how is it possible for lessor events to injure whales? It is true that the stranding data reflects an absence of strandings after major earthquakes; however, rather than be reason to disqualify earthquakes as a cause of injury in whales, this absences of beachings could indicate two entirely different implications. Maybe major quakes kill whales outright, or maybe the whales can detect these events before they occur because they emit strong precursor signals? Marine mammal scientists have never considered the likelihood that many species of whales are able to read the earthquake precursor signals emitted before major events.
Scientists in Japan have observed changes in VLF electric field emissions, ULF geomagnetic variations, transient electric potential changes, and changes in geoelectric potential (link). Precursor signals days before big earthquakes have been confirmed; the only question is whether whales understand theses signals or not. There is no reason to think that a means of detecting big earthquakes would not have evolved in whales, especially in view of the fact that these animals have lived for 25 million years in seismically active waters.
As you will learn below, shock waves from quakes greater than 7 magnitude have been known to complete demolish ships on the surface. The violent disturbance often exceeds 200 miles in circumference. If whales could not detect these earthquakes many hours prior to the event, it is doubtful that they could survive as a species in many seismically areas of the sea.
The size of the average injurious quake uncovered in this research is ~5.2 magnitude. Magnitudes below 4 and above 7 never appear in the suspicious category. The suggested reasons are: (a) magnitude 4 are too small and magnitude 7 and are too easy to detect in advance. Magnitude ~5.2 events are also thought to occur without precursor signals.
Strange as it may seem, many marine mammal scientists find no difficulty in supporting the idea that whales might strand PRIOR to undersea earthquakes. The concept they wrap their heads around is that the strong geomagnetic signals emitted prior to large earthquake can confuse the imagined geomagnetic compass in whales and cause them to run blindly onto the beach. What is surprising is that these same scientists are aware of geomagnetic precursor signals but can not imagine that whales might use them as a warning to move out of the way of the pending danger. Even if the whales could not detect the precursor signals, the evidence is convincing that many deep water fishes can detect this signals and do migrate out of the area before major events. The whales could easily follow the fishes.
Seaquake awareness has changed over the last 150 years ago. If I had published my BAROTRAUMA SOLUTION in the 1850s my work would have been an instant success. Folks in the 1800s and early 1900s knew about the powerful shocks emitted above the epicenter of an earthquake at sea because newspapers back then often published articles similar to the one in this link. These same newspapers also published more than 20,000 eyewitness reports from sailors and their passengers who had survived a seaquake/vessel encounter in which the ship had been violently hit by several powerful shocks.
These 20,000-plus seaquake encounters seem fictitious when compared to the limited number of such encounters published since the 1950s. One has to wonder if seaquakes were reported so often in the 1800s and early 1900s, why are there so few today?
One reason is that seaquake/vessel encounters are not nearly as newsworthy in the modern world as they were in past. In the 1800s, most knowledge of the outside world came by way of vessel passengers and crews and the mail carried by these ships. Newspaper reporters hung out at the docks and were eager hear the latest eyewitness reports from far away lands. Most newspapers even devoted special sections to the news gathered from arriving ships. There was also a special need to report ocean phenomenon in the days before the marine radio just in case a vessel was overdue. The weather encounter on the journey and such events as seaquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other strange happenings were also extremely important to locals who might have relatives or cargo coming in on a different ship. In addition, land-based seismological observatories were reporting major submarine disturbances hundreds of miles offshore with nothing more than a wild guess as to where the epicenters were located.
When seismic stations did report a massive earthquake in some unknown location offshore, the news caused near panic in the minds of folks with relatives who might be living in the general direction. The relatives would go to the newspaper office searching for any word that might pinpoint the epicenter of the disturbance. Arriving vessels that reported seaquake encounters helped fix the locations and calm the worried families. Sometimes the local observatories would even send telegraphic messages to the vessels offshore trying to locate the epicenter.
News editors also gladly reported seaquake encounters because the average citizen was very much interested in the new science of seismology. On the contrary, if a reporter goes to the docks today, it's usually to get the latest drug smuggling story.
Another answer is that many insurance policies exclude seismic damage causing vessels owners to change the way they report casualties. For example, the three most common insurance claims today are: (a) hitting a submerged object, (b) a busted/cracked pipe in the engine room, and (c) the sudden shifting of cargo. Any of these could be the result of a seaquake encounter, but would be denied if the vessel owner admitted a seismic disturbance as the cause. Another reason not to record seaquakes is because such reports might lower resale and mortgage values and might even lead to lawsuit if the ship was sold without disclosing that it had been damaged in an earthquake. Thus, today, it is far better not to mention any encounters with a sudden shock waves from a submarine disturbance.
As you will also read below, it was not uncommon for a captain of a luxury liner a hundred years ago to report that his ship was hit by a seaquake. Reporting such events was really not too smart so the cruise ship industry muzzled their captains and hired media managers to keep such reports to a minimum.You can't blame them... who wants a luxury cruise if there's a chance an earthquake might sink the ship.
Oil and gas companies also became concerned with keeping the dangers of seaquake from reaching the media. The last thing they want the public to do is worry about a loaded oil tanker busting apart during an earthquake just offshore. This is exactly what happened to the oil tanker Prestige in 2002. Nine members of the Filipino crew reported that the tanker was hit by an earthquake, but they were quickly loaded on a plane and flown back to the Philippines and told to keep their mouths shut. The Prestige was not the first oil tanker whacked. In March 1988, four empty oil tankers were hit in the Gulf of Alaska by shocks from the same earthquake (see below). In 1969, the empty oil tanker Ida Knudsen was totally destroyed by an earthquake (see below). Another oil tanker was hit off the coast of New Zealand in April 1962 (see below). We have no idea how many others have been hit since the oil and gas companies are certain not going to come forward on their own with such information.
But there's an even more important reason to suppress seaquake awareness entirely different from the all the above.
Many professional sailors who had experienced both a seaquake and an underwater mine were saying that the two events felt the same, but there was little or no talk about what might happen to a navy submarine hit by a seaquake. Enlisted men who served on submarines during the late 1930s were writing to their relatives, reporting that they had felt the violent shock of an earthquake during one of their many underwater missions. Word soon spread amongst the families of the sailors. Mothers and fathers started to worry about the serious danger their sons faced not only from an enemy torpedo but also from an undersea earthquake. These families started to pressure their sons to transfer out of the submarine service... many of them did.
The fear in the minds of navy family members turned to stark panic in November 1941 when one of the USA's most respected seismologist warned that every submarine within ~ 500 mile radius of a powerful seaquake in the Atlantic might be "crushed like an egg" by the seismic compression waves (link).
Many US Navy surface ships and submarines reported undersea earthquakes during World War II (see samples). The concept of a seismic danger underwater was reenforced in 1943 when a submarine that was evacuating nurses from Bataan Philippines was hit by a seaquake--subs a hundred miles out to sea felt the shock. (link)
At about the same time, World War II weapons experts start thinking there might be a way to cause natural catastrophic events and use them as possible weapons of mass destruction. For example, not long after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Leo Ranney, a famous oilfield engineer and inventor, proposed a plan to trigger powerful earthquakes under the Japanese industrial cities of Osaka and Nagoya. The idea was to set off huge underwater explosions in the seismic fault lines just offshore. Ranney was convinced the blast at the ocean end of the same fault running under the two cities would transfer down the fault and trigger the massive earthquakes (link), which were already overdue in the two locations. Even though the plan was never put into action, the idea of generating and/or triggering earthquakes and seaquakes as weapons of mass destruction grabbed the attention of elite military-minded scientists, especially those working for the US Navy.
It wasn't long before secret research was underway to develop a method to use the atom bomb to trigger earthquakes as a possible weapon. The prefect place to do scaled-down experiments was New Zealand since both the North and South Islands sat on top of many fault lines that also ran into the open sea. Of course, while you are trying to trigger earthquakes under cities with explosives, you might as well try your hand at generating artificial tsunami waves. This was the basis of "secret" research conducted by Professor Thomas Leach, at Auckland University. The idea that his experiments might trigger an earthquake under a small town in North Island was too scary of a proposition for New Zealanders to handle so Professor Leach's secret efforts were passed off as research into how to use underwater explosives to generate tsunami waves (link) (link) (link). The earthquake triggering part of his effort was obviously "top-secret." The operation was sponsored by the US Navy under the code name "PROJECT SEAL."
The US Navy was not only interested in generating artificial tsunami waves and triggering earthquakes under enemy cities, they also wanted to sink a few of their adversary's submarines with artificial seaquake waves. Seismic instruments in those days could not tell the difference between a large well-placed explosion along certain segments of the mid-oceanic ridge system and a seaquake in the same segment. Aiming and concentrating the explosive energy was relatively easy if the blast was set off in an undersea trench or in the depressed top of an undersea volcanic mountain called a guyot. Bottom line was that if done properly and in the right location, the US Navy could sink an enemy submarine and blame it all on Mother Nature.
Word leaked out on the campus of Auckland College about Professor Leach's work. P. W. Burbidge, a professor of physics at the same campus was greatly opposed to the use of atomic weapons is such a fashion. He released a newspaper article in November 1945 in which he stated, "The effect in submarine explosions for production of "tidal" waves, or in boring bombs for "earthquake" action has not yet been published, if investigated, but sufficient is known to be able to prophesy terrible action on waterfront regions and on ordinary underground shelters." (link) Obviously, he was placing Professor Leach on notice that if "PROJECT SEAL" resulted in any damage to New Zelanders, he would expose the whole mess.
Shortly thereafter the US decided to test the atom bomb underwater at Bikini Atoll. After the results was digested, US weapons experts started conducting hundreds of underwater shock-wave experiments with the idea to develop a scalable mathematical model by which they could predict the height of the tsunami wave based on the yield of the explosive. The waves they were trying to generate were not called tsunami or tidal waves. Instead, they were gravity waves. One of the test site was Mono Lake, California (link). The lead researcher at Mono Lake was Benard B. Le Mehaute. The knowledge he acquired in his research was assembled into a two-volume "Handbook of Explosive-Generated Water Waves." (link). On page 150 of this handbook, one can find the method used to calculate a tsunami wave generated by as nuclear explosion just offshore. The references starting on page 161 will give an idea of the research done Mono Lake, California (Notice that 10,000 pounds of TNT was used most often in these tests.)
The US Navy was not only interested in artificial seaquakes, earthquake, and tsunamis. They had launched in 1962 a massive geophysical warfare research program to find ways to manipulate all sorts of natural phenomenon. They called their effort "Blue Sky Research." Believe it or not, the US Navy even placed a press release in the Washington Post and the New York Times calling for civilian scientists with any good ideas on how to generate and use natural disasters as weapons (link) to submit them to the Office of Naval Research. Obviously, they were trying to say something to the Soviets that only the Soviets understood.
But the Soviet Union already understood how to trigger earthquakes with explosives. On 25 August 1967, they released their own program to trigger submarine earthquakes (link) with massive explosive but they were clearly not testing a weapon. They had built a massive submarine base at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, on the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The offshore area is known for its undersea earthquakes. What the Soviets were doing was using explosive to release the stress from any pending earthquakes and clear a safe passageway for their ships and subs to enter the base.
Obviously, security was lax when it came to seaquake research during the 50s and 60s. But it wasn't long before seaquakes reached "TOP-SECRET" status.
On or about 25 January 1968, the Israeli submarine Dakar vanished in the earthquake-prone Mediterranean Sea. In 1997 former Israeli Navy Captain Michael Eldar published a book titled Dakar, claiming the Israeli search for the submarine had never been serious because officials knew what happened to it. Although it had been cleared for publication by Israel’s military censorship authority, the book was banned on national security grounds and copies removed from bookshops. Police even raided Eldar's home and confiscated all documents he possessed relating to Dakar. Then, on 24 May 1999 a joint U.S.–Israeli search team using information received from U.S. intelligence sources, detected Dakar on the seabed between Crete and Cyprus at a depth of some 3000 meters (9800 ft). The tail of the submarine, with the propellers and dive planes attached, broke off aft of the engine room and rests beside the main hull. The exact cause of the loss was reported as "unknown", but it appears that no emergency measures had been taken before Dakar dove rapidly through her maximum depth, suffered a catastrophic hull rupture, and continued her plunge to the bottom. The emergency buoy was released by the violence of the hull collapse, and drifted for a year before washing ashore. The exact cause was reported as "unknown" but no emergency measures had been taken before Dakar dove rapidly through her maximum depth, suffered a catastrophic hull rupture. (link) The big question is: did a seaquake shock-wave knock her tail off? If so, did the Soviets have anything to do with it?
Three days after the Dakar disappeared, on 28 January 1968, at about 08:00 hrs, the French submarine Minerve (a Daphne-class diesel-electric attack submarine) was traveling just under the surface, roughly 25 nautical miles (46 km) from her base along the shores of the earthquake-prone Mediterranean Sea. She advised that she would be at her berth in about an hour, but was never heard from again. Nor was her wreckage ever located.
Next, on 11 April 1968, the Soviet nuclear missile submarine K-129 disappeared mysteriously in the Pacific Ocean. The Soviets blamed the US Navy.
Six weeks later, on 23 May 1968, the nuclear powered submarine USS Scorpion sank directly above the Azores Triple Junction (aka: Azores Hot Spot), one of the most earthquake-volatile zones on Earth.
Then, on 4 March 1970, the French submarine Eurydice (another Daphne-class diesel-electric attack sub) founders during a naval exercise off Toulon, France. All 57 officers and crew are killed. A geophysical laboratory picked up the shock waves of an underwater explosion. French and Italian search teams found an oil slick and a few bits of debris, including a parts tag that bore the name Eurydice. The cause of the explosion was never determined. All 57 crew were lost.
As you read the rest of this report, ask yourself the following questions: Did a seaquake sink the Scorpion? If so, did the Soviets trigger it, or was it a natural event?
Shortly after Scorpion went down, French and American scientists, sponsored by the US Navy, began planning a special survey of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between 36-50N and 37-00N. Then in 1971, they launched a massive joint research program ("PROJECT FAMOUS.") to determine the nature of undersea earthquakes along the section where the Scorpion was eventually found.
The public relations question all the above presents to the US Navy was and still is: what would folks living near seismically-active coastlines like Mexico, Chile, California, Oregon, Alaska, Japan, New Zealand, Micronesia, Indonesia, Iceland, Italy, Greece, Azores, British Columbia, Newfoundland, Hawaii, and Caribbean Island countries have to say about fully armed nuclear submarines cruising just off their shores if they knew a seaquake might destroy them in a heartbeat and create a nuclear disasters in their backyard? Surely, both the US and Soviet navies must have realized that a violent seaquake, either natural or artificial, under a fully loaded nuclear submarine could be a deadly hazard.
Japan, one of the most seismically-active countries in the world, did their own seaquake research and are decades ahead of everyone else. They know the seaquake danger and forbid nuclear armed submarines from anywhere near their shores. Many other countries have established programs to collect information on accidents with nuclear ships, safety aspects of nuclear ship propulsion plants, and the disposal of nuclear reactors. The only reason for collecting this information is to create a basis for risk assessments in case of nuclear ship/submarine accidents or in case of release of radioactivity near the sea bottom from disposed reactors or from sunken nuclear ships/submarines. Furthermore, what would countries with valuable fisheries have to say about nuclear submarines prowling on the bottom near their seismically-active fishing grounds?
One might also want to ask the Japanese about nuclear disasters and undersea earthquakes since the recent tsunami wave destroyed one of their nuclear power plants. If you read the Japanese language, by all means do a little internet searching for seaquake research. You'll find maybe 50 scientific articles detailing the hazards of seaquakes. Seaquakes in Japan are called "sea shocks."
keywords: conspiracy, cover-up, odontoceti, strandings, earthquakes, t-waves, toothed whales and dolphins, barotrauma, beaching
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