Excerpt from the official NW Training Range Complaint:
"Though the Navy has been conducting training exercises in the NWTRC (Northwest Training Range Complex) for several decades, it has recently evaluated and sought the required permits for increases in the intensity and tempo of its training activities. The Navy’s activities in this area include surface to air gunnery and missile exercises; anti-submarine warfare exercises involving tracking aircraft, sonobouys, and use of surface ship sonar; air-to-surface bombing exercises; and sink exercises. As part of these exercises, the Navy will repeatedly broadcast high-intensity sound waves into a vast stretch of ocean, containing some of the most biologically productive marine habitat in the United States, and take other actions known to kill and injure whales, dolphins, fish, and sea turtles."
Disturbing as it is, this high-intensity sonar training has been conducted for the better of a decade with the knowledge of it's damaging effects of marine wildlife along the American coasts; Oregon, California and Washington.
It was on January 26, 2012 when Earthjustice attorney's represented a coalition of conservation and American Indian groups in suing the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for failing to protect thousands of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions from U.S. Navy warfare training exercises - through the use of high-intensity mid-frequency sonar.
In late 2010, NMFS gave the Navy a permit for five years of expanded naval activity that will harm or “take” marine mammals and other sealife. The permit allows the Navy to conduct increased training exercises that can harm marine mammals and disrupt their migration, nursing, breeding, or feeding, primarily as a result of harassment through exposure to the use of sonar.
NMFS and the Navy estimate that the Navy’s use of mid-frequency active sonar (“MFAS”) and other actions will result in approximately 650,000 marine mammal “takes” during the first five-year authorized period of these training activities. According to these agencies, the use of MFAS in particular will harass marine mammals hundreds of thousands of times, in the ways mentioned above.
The Navy’s NWTRC range extends seaward approximately 250 nautical miles (288 miles) and encompasses more than 126,000 square nautical miles of ocean and 34,000 square nautical miles of airspace – an area the size of the entire State of California. These waters are some of the most biologically significant and productive marine areas in the world, home to both abundant and threatened species of marine life, including six endangered whale species, threatened Steller sealions, salmon, steelhead, and rockfish.
In response to the Navy's NWTRC increased MFAS use, Zak Smith, staff attorney for NRDC (Natural Resource Defense Council) plea's: "We are asking for common-sense measures to protect the critical wildlife that lives within the training range from exposure to life-threatening effects of sonar. Biologically rich areas like the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary should be protected.”
The Navy’s mitigation plan for sonar use relies primarily on visual detection of whales or other marine mammals by so-called “ watch-standers” with binoculars on the decks of ships. If mammals are seen in the vicinity of an exercise, the Navy is to cease sonar use.
“Visual detection can miss anywhere from 25–95% of the marine mammals in an area,” said Heather Trim, Director of Policy for People For Puget Sound. “It’s particularly unreliable in rough seas or in bad weather. We learn more every day about where whales and other mammals are most likely to be found—we want NMFS to put that knowledge to use to ensure that the Navy’s training avoids those areas when marine mammals are most likely there.” Visual detection is without the aid of scientific knowledge and a ineffective method clearly used as a loophole tactic to continue the Navy's military testing without hinder.
The litigation is not intended to halt the Navy’s exercises, but asks the Court to require NMFS to reassess the permits using the latest science and to order the Navy to stay out of biologically critical areas at least at certain times of the year. Which proves against all dubiety that the goals express patriotic duty within reasonability.
Scientific fact is as scientific fact does; Navy sonar harms whales, dolphins, and a myriad of other vital marine species. Earthjustice is working to get the Navy to use their sonar in places where it won't harm these crucial breeding, feeding and migrational grounds off our American coasts.This is all something we should concern and involves ourselves with, showing that American citizens care for their wildlife while at the same time encouraging the progress and advancement of our military forces. Please visit www.earthjustice.org and donate for this cause whenever you can.
Related video:
Please listen to narration thoroughly.
In May 2003, a group of about 20 killer whales and dozens of porpoises were forced to flee the waters near the San Juan Islands in Washington State after a Navy ship passed by with its active sonar blasting. The incident was captured by whale researchers from the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island. Ken Balcomb, executive director of the Center for Whale Research, narrates this video
Press Release BRoll - Navy Training Blasts Marine Mammals with Harmful Sonar
Downloadable version
from Earthjustice on Vimeo.
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