New Navy plan OK use of sonar of NW coast; will it hurt orcas, whales?

The U.S. Navy decided this week it would go ahead with underwater explosions and ear-piercing sonar in the Olympic National Marine Sanctuary despite protests by environmentalists it would hurt orcas and other imperiled marine creatures.

Curiously, the decision has yet to prompt any news coverage that I can find. And yet we're at a crucial juncture because the National Marine Fisheries Services is finalizing its proposed conditions for allowing the Navy to go forward with beefed-up training efforts in its Northwest Training Range Complex.

Earlier in the month a bunch of environmental groups led by the Natural Resources Defense Council appealed to Northwestherner Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, not to alllow the Navy to harm orcas, whales, and other marine creatures. Among their comments to Lubchenco:

In this regard, a 2008 NOAA report specifically identified both military activities and underwater noise pollution as two of several emerging threats to the Olympic Coast NMS.2 The report recognized that noise pollution has the potential to compromise habitat quality for the marine mammals, fish, and other wildlife that inhabit the sanctuary. In particular, it found that "an increase in Navy activity or areas of operation, if not properly controlled, could have potential to disturb the seabed, introduce pollutants associated with test systems, and produce sound energy that could negatively alter the acoustic environment within the sanctuary."3

Fortunately for those of us trying to forensically figure out what's gone on in this process, Leah Leach of the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles wrote an advance (http://bit.ly/a7GBB3 ) of this week's decision by the Navy.

The Navy told Leach the plan would increase the number of exercises using sonar from 24 to 26 per year, and that the number of hours the sonar would be deployed would be boosted from 24 to 36.

The Navy's training range extends 250 miles off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, and also includes some inland waters around Hood Canal and Whibey Island.. The enviros are asking that special rules be employed in less than 3 percent of the 122,000-square-nautical-mile training range.

It's been a while since we last checked in on this sonar-and-whales controversy, but there were pretty clearly some effects when a Navy ship deployed its mid-frequency sonar near the San Juan Islands a few years ago, including xxxx and xxx.

It's become well-known in the last decade or so that sonar can at least cause marine mammals to swim away, and some particularly sensitve species such as beaked whales appear to be at the greatest risk.

Despite that, enviros have had a hard time fighting off Navy plans to test sonar in waters where orcas, whales and other marine mammals with sensitive hearing are known to swim.

Navy spokeswoman Sheila Murray told Leach that in the marine sanctuary, most of the training exercises would involve airplanes, not naval vessels:

"There's not really a lot that happens in the water in the sanctuary."

If that's so, why doesn't the Navy agree to just not do the sonar and underwater explosions in the sanctuary? I've got an e-mail in to Murray and will update the post if I hear back.

Murray did note that the Navy had spent a lot of time and effort to answer lots of questions and comments on its Environmental Impact Statement. The activities have been judged to be harmful to marine creatures -- a "take" under the Endangererd Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act -- but not so bad that they would cause any species to go extinct.

-- Robert McClure