A recent news article, “UN ocean treaty talks resume with goal to save biodiversity”, sent me trying to dig up a memory, an endeavor only partly successful, but that brings with it a few contradictions in the process. This discussion may seem highly technical on one hand, and potentially highly environmental on the other. I grew up near the ocean and loved the sight of Orcas, porpoises, dolphins, minnows, starfish, crabs, and other sea life. As a Natural Health Practitioner teaching how to do natural health Gods way, with a focus on wholefood as medicine, the knowledge that seafood contains beneficial levels of EPA Omega-3’s, iodine, selenium, etc, coupled with growing up near the ocean, means I have a bit of a vested interest in the general health of our oceans.
It used to be that you wanted to buy Pacific seafood, because Atlantic was considered too polluted with ocean-vessel fuel pollutants. Then concern began to grow, and is still building, that the release of radioactive water into the Pacific by Japan from Fukushima will have a devastating effect on the ocean food chain, eventually reaching us, at the top of that chain. But another form of pollution has been out there now for decades and I only heard about it sometime in the past few years. In reality, it’s a bit of a “duh!” discovery when talking about machinery and such, but here we go.
In recent years, I’ve heard about a version of the Internet of Things, known as the Internet of Underwater Things, and an article awhile back had talked about just how loud the low-frequency audible signals had to be to get from one node to another. This article was talking about the damage being done to whale, dolphin and other highly-sound-sensitive ocean mammals. Unfortunately, for all the research I’ll show today, I couldn’t find THAT specific article! What made me go looking for it, was the article on local news about intergovernmental efforts to preserve ocean biodiversity. While that initiative sounds good on the surface, the number of “collaboration” calls worried me a little, particularly as I already knew about the IoUT. So I wanted to dig up info on that development again. Some of what I uncovered in the latter half of this article about underwater sound behaviour I knew, and some I didn’t. On my way there however, I learned a side of the Internet of Underwater Things that completely belies the efforts of international cooperation on the surface! I’ll share a number of quotes now from articles dating between 2018 and 2022:
BY: MERITALK STAFF JAN 3, 2018 12:05 PM
DARPA Floats a Proposal for the Ocean of Things
The agency also is looking for algorithms that can autonomously detect, track, and identify nearby military and commercial vessels, as well as discern indicators of other maritime activity.
FORBES BUSINESS AEROSPACE & DEFENSE
DARPA Progress With ‘Ocean Of Things’ All-Seeing Eye On The High Seas
David Hambling Contributor
Aug 13, 2020,11:41am EDT
DARPA has awarded a contract for the next phase of development of its Ocean of Things (OoT), a project to seed the seas with thousands of floating sensors, monitoring everything that passes from aircraft to submarines.The new contract was awarded at the end of July to technology company PARC, whose 18-kilo, solar-powered glass float design won out ahead of two others in the first phase. The floats are sensor nodes which will pass data via satellite to a cloud network for real-time analysis. The OoT will combine data from multiple floats, seeing the whole picture rather than the single pixel gathered by one sensor, as Waterson puts in.
In addition to obvious military and border protection use – no vessel could slip through the dense field of OoT sensors, on or under the water – the OoT will produce a mass of data of interest to oceanographers, meteorologists and biologists, with plans to share raw data online with researchers.
Kaushal notes that as well as directly observing vessels and aircraft, the OoT will be able to measure variables like temperature, ocean salinity and ambient underwater noise, which are important for calibrating sonar during anti-submarine operations.
DARPA Ocean Of Things(OoT) to provide automatic detection of Russian and Chinese submarines and ships
Rajesh Uppal July 14, 2022
AI & IT, Navy
But researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) foresee a wide range of military and civil benefits from extending the Internet of Things out to sea.DARPA launched OoT program which can be considered
as one of the aplications of the Internet of Military Things (IoMT) in the maritime and underwater domain for the purposes of reconnaissance, surveillance, and other combat-related objectives.The Ocean of Things program will provide persistent, wide-area sensor coverage across the
maritime environment through the employment of thousands of intelligent floating platforms, the agency said. Along with machine learning and multi-sensor fusion techniques, the Ocean of Things would detect object and sensor motion used to track vessels, aircraft and even marine mammals.However, the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT), is much larger world-wide network of smart interconnected underwater objects that would transmit data from existing and planned roaming, autonomous vehicles and underwater sensor networks to networks above surface in real time.
The OoT will not be limited to any specific role; the variety of sensors, coupled with powerful data-processing techniques, mean it might be reconfigured to deal with emerging threats. For example, OoT might form a defensive picket to detect, track and locate incoming Russian Poseidon nuclear torpedoes so they could be intercepted. “This fits into a wider concept of Mosaic Warfare creating a system the components of which can reform and interact in multiple ways rather than relying on a hierarchical system,” says Kaushal.
Along with highresolution environmental data, the floating network could track passing vessels and predict their likely destination. The network could also provide early warning of unusual maritime activities.
The Ocean of Things would be linked to command datacenters via the 66-satellite Iridium constellation that includes dedicated Defense Department gateway. According to preliminary plans, sensor data would then be downlinked via DoD’s Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services gateway.
“We will see acoustic communications transmitting information to AUVs over long distances, while optical modems enable data transfer between sensors and vehicles over shorter distances,” says Sonardyne’s Tena. “The entire network will enable the provision of near-real-time updates to surface-based operators.
It is possible an ocean-based Internet could provide data on demand to a variety of customers inside and outside the Defense Department
The new contract was awarded in July 2020 to technology company PARC, whose 18-kilo, solar-powered glass float design won out ahead of two others in the first phase. The floats are sensor nodes which will pass data via satellite to a cloud network for real-time
analysis. The OoT will combine data from multiple floats, seeing the whole picture rather than the single pixel gathered by one sensor, as Waterson puts in.Numurus has won a $2.3M contract from DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office to integrate its Smart IoT Ecosystem into thousands of satellite connected remote monitoring devices.
To achieve the OoT program goals, DARPA will leverage Numurus’ SB-SDK™ Edge software and NEPI™ Smart IoT management platforms. These tools together produce a full-spectrum sensor-to-cloud solution capable of detecting minor changes in the environment, reducing megabytes of sensor data into kilobytes of information at the collection source, and transmitting that information through Iridium satellites to a secure firewalled cloud infrastructure.Through NEPI’s fleet level monitoring and software management solutions, DARPA can access data products, tweak mission configurations, and apply software updates to deployed smart devices.
Some of the above articles, and others I scanned through, tried to say that sonic wave travel under the water isn’t very good, that signals regularly get lost and can’t be picked up, etc. I didn’t quote those above as I wanted to focus the above quotes on what is going on below the ocean surface, literally, while nations try to gather on the surface to protect marine life (or so they say!). But if you click each link and read through it, you’ll come across these mentions of difficulty getting low-frequency sonic beams through the water to receptor sensors. I’m assuming this is why they need these beams to be so loud. The article I couldn’t find actually shared data on why this is, but I can’t find it!
What I found instead however, should still give pause to those who think they are all about marine life preservation. If the government delegates around the international table actually care about preserving marine biodiversity as they claim, perhaps the IoUT should be reworked to a far quieter decibel level, or cut altogether.
SCIENCE
Noise pollution is penetrating further into our oceans, endangering marine animals
ABC Science /
By environment reporter Nick Kilvert
Posted Thu 4 Feb 2021 at 11:00am updated Thu 4 Feb 2021 at 3:20pm
The shrimp themselves, known as snapping shrimp, use sound to stun their prey, sharks also use sound to detect wounded fish, and experiments exposing jellyfish to low-frequency audio have found they suffer acoustic trauma.Other growing sources of marine noise pollution include seismic surveying for oil and gas deposits, scientific mapping instruments, recreational and commercial “fish finders” that use sonar, offshore wind turbines and coastal development.
Although humans do not hear well underwater, sound travels much further and faster through water than air, especially at low frequencies.
Blue whales, for instance, are thought to be able to communicate with one another over a distance of more than 100 kilometres.
And while human-made sounds are growing louder in the ocean, the natural soundscape — biophony — is becoming much quieter, according to the researchers.
Discovery of Sound in the Sea
How is sound used to transmit data underwater?
Special acoustic modems that can successfully transmit digital data underwater have been developed. These modems convert digital data into underwater sound signals that can be transmitted between two submerged submarines or between a submerged submarine and a surface ship. These digital signals can represent words and pictures, allowing submarines to send and receive communications. Underwater acoustic modems are relatively slow compared to telephone or cable modems on land. Nonetheless, this technology is very important because it provides an accurate and efficient means to send and receive data underwater.Underwater data links can also be combined with satellite data links to transfer data in real-time from instruments on the seafloor to scientists ashore.
Science
Noise pollution ‘drowns out ocean soundscape
Published 4 February 2021 By Victoria Gill Science correspondent, BBC News
Writing in the journal Science, Prof Duarte, at King Abdullah University, Saudi Arabia, and his colleagues point out that sound waves can travel thousands of miles through the ocean.
Yale Environment 360
E360 DIGEST
FEBRUARY 22, 2021
Noise Pollution Impacting Marine Animals Worse Than Previously Thought
Sound is a crucial sensory signal for marine animals, as it travels farther than light and quicker than sound in air. Underwater sound allows animals to communicate and gather information at great distances and from all directions. They use sound to acoustically sense their surroundings, locate food, communicate, and warn each other of danger.
ENVIRONMENT
FEBRUARY 4, 2021 11:04 AM UPDATED 2 YEARS AGO
Noise pollution is harming sea life, needs to be prioritized, scientists say
Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lisa Shumaker
Oceanographer Kate Stafford at the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory praised the timing of the metastudy, as the United Nations calls on governments to set aside 30% of the world’s land and sea areas for conservation.“The review makes it clear that, to actually reduce anthrophony (human noise) and aim for a well-managed future, … we will need global cooperation among governments,” Stafford said.
ONE OF THE GREATEST THREATS WHALES FACE: AND WHAT WE ARE DOING ABOUT IT
Broadly speaking, there are two ways in which noise pollution impacts whales.First, there are short and extremely loud noises that can physically harm whales, potentially causing them to go deaf and even cause them to strand on coastlines. Sources of such noise include sonar and seismic surveys.
Second, there are noises that are quieter but are constant and ever-present. Most of this noise comes from shipping – primarily from giant ocean-going cargo ships.
Wanting to preserve marine life is literally, great on the surface. But while we have organizations like DARPA behind the scenes actively working against public-facing photo-ops and signatories, such preservation will be on paper only, in bank accounts only, and used as a ruse for yet further “global collaboration” to further NWO, I mean WEF/WHO goals.
EDIT August 31, 2024
As an example of that concluding paragraph, this showed up in the news today from the Canadian Federal Government:
“The plan may have taken eight years, but Dyna Tuytel, staff lawyer with Ecojustice, says it’s still in some ways an exercise in buying more time — nine of the 20 recommendations relate to gathering information, studying, monitoring or collecting and reporting data to better understand the underwater noise problem.
“I’m concerned that they’re … using the ongoing pursuit of perfect information as an excuse not to act,” Tuytel said in an interview with Canada’s National Observer.
The draft strategy was released on Aug. 23. Now, there is a 60-day consultation period for the public, Indigenous Peoples, partners and stakeholders to submit feedback. The next step is a federal action plan — to be published in 2025 — that will track the implementation of the strategy’s 20 recommendations, impose timelines and assign responsibilities to certain government departments and organizations.
“This is disappointing as it essentially means there will be more delays to seeing meaningful action rolled out, especially since the Government of Canada committed to incorporating the action plan with the draft strategy,” explained Kristen Powell, the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) specialist on marine conservation and shipping. ”
“Despite concerns over implementation and timelines, the environmental groups are giving the government some credit for taking noise seriously. Overall, the draft strategy is “a really important first step forward in tackling the increasing issue of underwater noise,” Powell said. For the last four years, WWF ran a campaign on underwater noise and made submissions to help shape the federal strategy. Some of the language they pushed for is in the strategy.
“It contains several important elements that are required to finalize a strong and actionable strategy,” Powell said. Some of these recommendations include addressing knowledge gaps, promoting innovative technologies to reduce noise, expanding and standardizing data collection and reporting, and ensuring the federal government clearly lays roles and responsibilities.
“However, it’s not clear how the research and innovation will lead to meaningful and measurable action at this time,” she said.”
I echo concerns about ‘perfect data”, “buying time”, and lack of direction around “meaningful and measurable action”! I echo those concerns because of everything else previously written in this article! It would appear that the federal government is making a show of concern while trying to allow the Ocean of Things to develop and be put to active use. Unfortunately, the need for more and better data will be just the ticket out of the environmental solution they don’t want to address. They now know how to evade environmental concerns, simply waste time gathering data. The need for better data will become the excuse de jour across a wide swath of issues that governments and organizations don’t want to or refuse to address.
end edit
