The United States Navy is asking for public comment on its environmental impact statement for training operations along the northwest coast. It should finally realize that conservationists are not sanguine about the use of sonar in marine mammal habitat since the federal government has been sued once again for failing to take adequate precautions protecting marine mammals from the potentially lethal effects of sonar. The previous round of litigation ended with the Navy agreeing to keep visual watch for whales and cease sonar emissions if they were spotted.
US Person does not need to be a marine biologist (although he would like to be one) to know that inadequate concession still leaves many whales, dolphins and seals exposed to brain damaging subsurface sonar. On January 26th a coalition of conservation groups and American Indian tribes sued the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to protect marine mammals from US Navy war training. The suit in federal district court for Northern California calls for the NMFS to mitigate harm to mammals in critical areas of the Northwest Training Range that extends from Northern California to the Canadian border. Since the Navy makes extensive use of high frequency and mid-frequency sonar during training operations the coalition anticipates it will harm dozens of marine mammals who also use sonar and are therefore quite sensitive to subsurface sound. A spokesman for 10 federally recognized tribes joining the suit said "our relatives such as the whales and many other species will be negatively and permanently impacted by the Navy's activities."
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| orca critical habitat |
Late in 2010 the NMFS gave the Navy permission to harm or harass marine mammals for five more years of expanded naval activities. The conservation groups point out that the Northwest Range is the size of California but not once square inch of it is designated as off-limits to sonar use. The petitioners are asking for common-sense rules based on the latest scientific data to protect critical habitat and biologically rich areas such as the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary from disruptive training activity. There are many documented instances of sonar disturbing marine mammal behavior and even causing death. Visual detection cannot protect mammals beneath the surface or in bad weather when they are feeding, hunting, mating or migrating. For just one example, the endangered southern resident
killer whale pods
[photo, map: NOAA] use northern coastal waters within the training range while feeding on salmon runs in the fall and winter. The Navy will be pushing these protected orcas closer to extinction through indiscriminate use of sonar. In 2003 the USS Shoup while operating in the Haro Strait exposed a pod of the protected orcas to mid-frequency sonar, causing the mammals to stop feeding and attempt to flee the area.
