Navy Moves Forward on Sonar Facility Despite Concerns About Whales

While the right whale is currently the focus of the controversy, other marine mammals also could be affected by the range. The Navy said in its application for the sonar range that it will ask the National Marine Fisheries Service for authorization to disturb or "harass" spotted, bottlenose, common, Risso's, and Clymene dolphins, and pilot, humpback and sperm whales.

In its draft statement, the Navy presented both its reasons for building the range and its assessment of the environmental risk. The primary need, the statement said, is to train sailors in the proper use of sonar.

The Navy said that after an exhaustive review, it concluded that "the overwhelming majority" of noise would be in the "non-injurious" range. Overall, it concluded, sonar noise would have a "negligible impact" on marine mammals and new procedures could be put into practice to further limit any potential risks.

Adding to the controversy, the proposed North Carolina site is in the general area of a mass whale stranding that occurred in January, when 37 whales from three species died on the beach within 24 hours. The Navy was conducting a sonar training exercise offshore during that time, but Navy officials say the ships were too far away to have caused the strandings.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration investigation of the stranding was to have been issued this summer, but officials now say it will not be ready until early next year, after the comment period for the sonar training range has closed.

Joel Reynolds, director of the NRDC marine mammal protection program, said the Navy is taking an unnecessary risk.

"The scientific evidence that active sonar kills whales is unequivocal," he said. "If the Navy wants to make North Carolina an epicenter for training with this dangerous technology, it must first show that we won't see more whales on North Carolina beaches because of its actions."

The sonar training range would consist of a web of underwater sensors, cables and submarine pathways, and exercises typically would involve surface ships, airplanes and helicopters. The plan also envisions dropping almost 8,000 floating sonobuoys, some of which send out the same kind of loud "pings" as do ship- and submarine-based sonar.

The range would be designed to use active mid-frequency sonar, which has been used for decades. Researchers first linked this kind of sonar to whale strandings in the mid 1990s, after a NATO exercise off Greece.

Since then, the connection between the sonar and marine mammals -- especially deep-diving animals like the beaked whale -- has grown stronger. After a mass whale stranding in the Bahamas in 2000, the Navy concluded that its sonar was the most likely cause of the deaths. Whale and porpoise strandings off Hawaii, the Canary Islands, Washington state and Japan also have been linked to sonar exercises, but not with the same degree of certainty.

The Navy has another training range off Hawaii, but officials said it is generally not available to ships in the Atlantic fleet and does not provide the kind of coastal, shallow-water sonar practice now considered necessary. The North Carolina site, they said, is needed because of the "clear and present threat posed by quiet diesel electric submarines to our carrier strike groups, amphibious task forces, and to the sailors and Marines stationed aboard them."