Navy allowed to use sonar in Hawaii waters

[CommunityEditor]

HONOLULU — The Navy has settled a lawsuit filed by environmentalists challenging its use of sonar in hundreds of submarine-hunting exercises around the world.

The Navy said Saturday the deal reached with the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups requires it to continue to research how sonar affects whales and other marine mammals.

It doesn’t require sailors to adopt additional measures to protect the animals when they use sonar.

The agreement comes one month after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Navy in another sonar lawsuit the NRDC filed.

“The Navy is pleased that after more than three years of extensive litigation, this matter has been brought to an end on favorable terms,” Frank R. Jimenez, the Navy’s general counsel, said in a statement.

NRDC officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The plaintiffs asked the judge to dismiss the case on Friday.

The NRDC and five other plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in federal court in the Central District of California on October 19, 2005.

The complaint sought a court order to curb mid-frequency sonar, the Navy’s preferred method for detecting enemy submarines, on the grounds the sonar disturbs and sometimes kills whales and dolphins.

The Navy said the suit was amended twice so that it challenged its use of sonar in 370 specific training and testing activities around the world.

In the years since, federal courts in California and Hawaii ruled in favor of the NRDC and other environmental groups and ordered the Navy to restrict its use of sonar to protect the animals.

But last month, in a ruling on a NRDC lawsuit challenging the Navy’s sonar training exercises off Southern California, the Supreme Court ruled that military training trumps protecting whales.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote forcing the Navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine fleet would jeopardize the safety of the fleet. He also wrote it was unclear how many marine mammals the Navy’s sonar exercises might harm.

The Navy uses mid-frequency active sonar to send sound pulses through the water. Sailors listen for what objects the sound bounces off of to identify if enemy submarines are lurking nearby.

This technology is different from passive sonar, which sailors use to listen for the sounds enemy submarines emit themselves.

Environmentalists argue that mid-frequency active sonar can disrupt whale feeding patterns, and in the most extreme cases can kill whales by causing them to beach themselves.

But scientists aren’t sure why sonar affects some species more than others. They also don’t fully know how it hurts whales.

The Navy acknowledges sonar may harm marine mammals but says it takes steps to protect whales. It says more research needs to be done to better understand how sonar affects whales before it adopts additional protective measures.

The Pacific Fleet has made anti-submarine warfare a top priority as more countries, including North Korea, Iran, and China, have been acquiring quiet diesel-electric submarines that are increasingly difficult to track.

The Navy said the settlement, which was reached Friday, calls on it to spend $14.75 million over three years on marine mammal research topics of interest to both the Navy and the plaintiffs.

The Navy said the long-range research program it adopted under the settlement is basically the same as the one it set out to follow in August 2005, two months before the lawsuit was filed.

Other plaintiffs were: International Fund for Animal Welfare, Cetacean Society International, League for Coastal Protection, Ocean Futures Society and Jean-Michel Cousteau.


Article: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/12/ap_sonar_lawsuit_122808/

[CommunityEditor]

HONOLULU — Federal regulators this month gave the Navy permission, good for one year, to train with sonar in Hawaii waters.

The Navy warned its exercises may, though weren’t expected to, harm or kill whales and other marine mammals.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is currently considering similar Navy requests for the authority to train with mid-frequency active sonar in waters off Southern California, the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act requires the Navy to ask for the fisheries service’s permission to carry out activities that may affect marine mammals.

Scientists say sonar may harm, or in extreme cases kill, the animals. Some species — particularly beaked whales — appear much more vulnerable to sonar than others and scientists are not sure why.

The fisheries service said Monday it will reissue the one-year permit annually for the next five years so long as the Navy follows a list of measures to protect the animals. The Navy must reapply for permission if it wants to continue to train with sonar after 2014.

The authorization also allows the Navy to set off bombs and fire guns during Hawaii drills.

For the past two years, the Pentagon has used another federal law — the National Defense Authorization Act — to exempt the Navy from the permit requirements.

The Defense Department said then the Navy needed time to study how sonar affects the environment before it sought regulators’ permission to use the technology.

The Navy has spent the past few years conducting environmental studies for underwater training ranges around the country.

The fisheries service is requiring sailors to shut off their sonar when marine mammals are nearby, use extra caution near Maui where humpback whales breed and calve, and avoid detonating explosives within certain areas.

The fisheries service said it carefully balanced the need to protect marine mammals with the Navy’s need to maintain military readiness.

Paul Achitoff, an Earthjustice attorney in Honolulu who has sued the Navy over sonar in the past, said Tuesday that the fisheries service should have required the Navy to do more.

“What the National Marine Fisheries Service is doing is basically the same as the status quo, which is to allow the Navy to conduct sonar exercises with a minimum of precautions,” Achitoff said. “The fisheries service has acceded to the demands of the Navy with little critical oversight.”

Achitoff said Earthjustice was examining the fisheries service’s decision to determine whether it should be challenged in court.

Sailors use sonar to track enemy submarines. Sonar operators send pulses of sound through the ocean and then listen for objects the sound bounces off of. They try to single out submarines from those objects.

Scientists say the sound may disrupt the feeding patterns of marine mammals. The sound may also startle some species of whales, causing them to surface rapidly.

The importance of sonar to the military has been growing even as concerns about the environmental effects of sonar have increased.

The Navy is in particular worried about being able to track a growing fleet of quiet diesel-electric submarines — owned by China, Iran and North Korea among other countries — that are difficult to spot and follow underwater.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet made sonar training a top priority in 2005.


Article: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/01/ap_navy_sonar_011309/