Http://Www.Washingtonpost.Com/National/Health-Science/Expert-Says-Claims-That-War-Games-Will-Harm-Thousands-Of-Animals-Are-Overblown/2014/11/09/1c6338ea-644f-11e4-9fdc-D43b053ecb4d_story.Html
WASHINGTON POST: Health & Science
WASHINGTON POST: Health & Science
Navy war games
face suit over
impact on whales,
dolphins
seen during bravo sea trials in this U.S. Navy handout picture
taken in the Atlantic Ocean August 18, 2013. The Navy
commissioned its newest attack submarine North Dakota,
during a ceremony October 25, 2014, at Submarine Base
New London in Groton, Connecticut, defense officials
announced. (U.S. Navy/Reuters)
No humans will be harmed in the war games the
Navy is conducting in the Pacific Ocean near
California and Hawaii for the next four years.
The same cannot be said for marine mammals
that gather there. Dozens of blue whales,
bottlenose dolphins and seals are almost
certain to die, and tens of thousands more
could be permanently injured by explosives
and underwater sonar.
War games have played out in the vast
Testing Study Area for nearly 45 years,
and environmentalists again are trying to
halt them. The Conservation Council for
Hawaii filed a federal lawsuit last year
before the start of the exercise and last
week submitted a motion asking a judge
to declare the training illegal because it
violates an act meant to protect endangered
mammals.
This argument has found its way in federal
courts numerous times, with the U.S.
Supreme Court siding with the Navy in
a 2008 case, saying sacrifices must be made
in the military’s quest to protect the public.
The question is how many lives of endangered
whales and seals, along with depleted
stocks of dolphins, is too many.
Excruciating noises are in store this winter for whales calving off the coasts of Hawaii and California.
260,000 explosives — some as heavy as
2,000 pounds — and emit high-frequency
sonar for a total of 500,000 hours —
including 60,000 hours of the most powerful sonar.
A single “ping” generated every 10 seconds
can permanently damage the ears of animals
that rely on hearing to find food in the deep
ocean, according to conservation groups
that filed a lawsuit challenging the operation.
There is no threat unless animals are within
100 meters of a ping.
In the lawsuit, attorneys for two nonprofit
environmental groups that represent the
council in Hawaii, Earthjustice and the
Natural Resources Defense Council, say the
Navy is conducting “more intense training”
that violates an act to protect marine mammals
and should not have been permitted by the
National Marine Fisheries Service, a division
of the Department of Commerce charged
with protecting mammals.
They claim that the fisheries service
“rubber stamped” a permit the Navy needed
to conduct the exercise, failing to consider
the full impact on numerous species under
its protection. That animals should die for
the common good is not in dispute, the lawyers
said, but the current exercise will take too many.
“The more we look at the Navy’s activities,
the more we’re finding the potential for harm,”
said Michael Jasny, the director of NRDC’s
marine mammal protection project. Citing
the Navy’s estimates, he said the impact
of the current exercise on animals will
“increase more than 11 times over the
previous five-year period.”
The fisheries service declined to comment,
citing the pending lawsuit. But the Navy
emphatically denounced the activists’
characterization of their operations.
In an environmental impact statement
that the fisheries service requires as part
of the permitting process for the exercise,
the Navy estimated that the exercises
would result in 155 deaths of marine
mammals, 2,000 permanent injuries
and nearly 10 million instances of temporary
hearing loss and disruptions of behavior.
An adult, female beaked whale swims off the Kona coast in Hawaii. These and other marine life are at the center of a dispute over the Navy's use of sonar, missiles and machine guns. (Robin W. Baird/Cascadia Research Collective/Associated Press)
Conservation lawyers seized on those numbers
to describe the harm, but the Navy called that
unfair. They “are not annual numbers but
actually cover a five-year period” and
“represent worst-case scenarios,” said
Kenneth Hess, a spokesman for the Navy.
“Despite decades of the Navy conducting
very similar activities in these same areas,
there is no evidence of these types of impacts,”
Hess said. Permits the Navy requires for
the training “can only be issued if our
activities will have no more than a
negligible impact on marine mammal
populations,” he said.
That assessment was backed by Brandon
Southall, a former fisheries service researcher
who researches at the University of
California at Santa Cruz. “I think the
numbers” citing potential harm presented
by the Navy and NMFS “are overestimates,”
he said.
“Overall, I think the concerns are being
amplified because the conservation groups
are interested in getting people’s attention,
and they get it by saying these animals are all going
to die,” Southall said.
“This is where the Navy is kind of damned
if they do and damned if they don’t,” he said.
“If you assume the worst-case scenario,
using models that have different levels of
uncertainty. . . you wind up getting really
high numbers. They get these large numbers
and they get sued.”
The lawsuit appears to face an uphill battle,
if previous court rulings serve as a precedent.
the court decided that the military’s interests
trumped environmental concerns, lifting an
injunction against training with sonar imposed
by a lower court.
Activists say the pending case is different
because the mortality estimates in the
impact statement exceed the numbers
allowed under the federal Marine Mammal
Protection Act.
They said the fisheries service failed to analyze
the consequences of the deaths that could
happen in the next four years, according
to the Navy’s analysis, and failed to take basic
steps to mitigate damage, such as instructing
the Navy to avoid certain sensitive areas when
animals are feeding, mating and giving birth.
“No one is suggesting the Navy shouldn’t be
allowed to do testing and training,” said
David Henkin, a staff attorney for Earthjustice.
‘The question is whether they need every inch
of the ocean. . . particularly biologically
significant small refuges.
“We’re saying that even if you take their own
numbers, they’re so monumental, it violates
the animal protection act,” Henkin said.
“They cannot justify it.”
The Navy’s use of sonar is central to the legal
complaint. Its effect on marine mammals is
widely debated, but recent incidents have
left no doubt that it can be harmful to animals .
Conservationists compared the high-frequency
decibel levels of mid-range sonar to the
sound of 2,000 jet engines.
In April this year, several Cuvier beaked whales
stranded on the beach and died on the southern
coast of Crete in Greece when the United States
conducted war games with two other countries’
navies. In 2000, four species of whales —
16 in all — beached themselves in the
Bahamas during Navy exercises.
At first, the Navy denied responsibility in
the Bahamas. A U.S. government investigation
proved otherwise. Afterward, beaked
whales in the area nearly disappeared.
Sonar-related strandings also have occurred
in the Canary Islands, Virgin Islands, the
Outer Banks of North Carolina,
Washington state and Alaska.
Jasny said the sonic activity alone can disrupt
the behaviors of blue whales and beaked whales
“in millions of instances,” causing them to flee,
stopping them from eating, communicating
with mates and nursing calves.
“We’re looking at high levels of mortality,
high numbers of hearing loss, enormous
amounts of disruptions and potential life
functions. It’s not sustainable without
better mitigation,” he said.
Hess said the Navy learned “a great deal
through its investigation of the Bahamas
stranding,” and followed up with “a thorough
analysis of the potential environmental
effects of our activities.”
And yet, Jasny said, strandings linked to
use of Navy sonar continue.
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