Navy Use of Sonar OKd Despite Risk to Whales

The Bush administration on Monday gave the Navy permission to “harass” and potentially injure whales, if necessary, in conducting exercises with a powerful new sonar to hunt for super-quiet submarines.

The Navy asserts that no whales will be killed by the intense underwater noise because of elaborate safety precautions. But scientists and environmentalists worry that marine mammals, especially those that slip undetected into the safety zone around the sonar equipment, could suffer life-threatening injuries.

Navy officials say the sonar system is needed to protect U.S. warships--particularly aircraft carriers--from a new breed of diesel submarines. Advances in stealth technology by German, French, Swedish and Russian manufacturers have led to submarines that can barely be heard, officials said.

In granting the go-ahead, the National Marine Fisheries Service of the Commerce Department agreed to exempt the low-frequency sonar system from the Marine Mammal Protection Act after determining that it would have a “negligible impact” on any species.

The decision came after years of internal debate and a startling study that blamed another Navy sonar system for inner-ear bleeding, other injuries and disorientation that drove 16 whales to beach themselves in the Bahamas. Scientists are not sure whether most or all of the whales died.

To prevent injury to whales or dolphins, the Fisheries Service is requiring the Navy to stay at least 12 miles offshore when operating at full volume, and to take other precautions to make sure no protected sea creatures come in harm’s way.

“The Navy has to shut down the system if any marine mammals or turtles are detected within two kilometers,” said Rebecca Lent, deputy assistant administrator for national marine fisheries. The goal, she said, “is to make sure the marine mammals are protected to the greatest extent feasible.”

Other safety precautions include avoiding areas frequented by scuba divers, who can also be hurt, restricting the sonar’s frequency to minimize potential damage to the ears and tissue of whales and avoiding well-known whale feeding and breeding areas around Antarctica, Hawaii and Costa Rica.

Some scientists and environmentalists were troubled by Monday’s approval, contending that the science is too sketchy for predicting whether the mitigation measures will actually work.

“It’s a case of painting the toenails of the elephant,” said Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “You still have the elephant: a very, very loud system operating on a global scale with very little environmental oversight.”

Reynolds, who has sued the Navy over related sonar issues, is considering a lawsuit to stop the use of low-frequency sonar.

The Navy issued a statement that it was “pleased” with the ruling. For years, the Navy has sought the flexibility to move closer to shore with its low-frequency sonar, initially conceived during the Cold War to hunt for Soviet submarines in the deep ocean.

“The technological advantage that we had in the Cold War has diminished,” said Jim Kadane, program director for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in the San Diego office of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.

Third World countries, unable to afford aircraft carriers and fighter-planes, have been buying submarines capable of sinking U.S. ships. “The submarine, more and more, is the weapon of choice” for the Third World, Kadane said.

So far, the Navy has only one ship equipped with the low-frequency array. It plans to resume exercises this fall in the Western Pacific “thousands of miles from California,” said Joe Johnson, program manager for the Navy’s environmental review. He declined to pinpoint the location, saying it could compromise national security.

For now, the Navy cannot operate the low-frequency sonar off California because it has not yet passed muster with the California Coastal Commission.

The Navy has received clearance from 23 other coastal states, a spokesman said, but has not yet sought approval from California’s commission, arguably the toughest environmental hurdle, until it completes its operational plans.

The sonar system, called the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System, consists of 18 speakers pulled behind a Navy ship on cables hundreds feet long. The speakers can emit low-frequency waves up to 230 decibels. That would be roughly like standing next to a jumbo jet at takeoff. Such active sonar can be compared to a floodlight, sending a sound wave burst to “light up” enemy submarines with an echo.

Low-frequency waves travel great distances in the ocean before stopping and are far more effective at spotting submarines than passive listening devices.

Their power and reach is precisely what concerns many whale and acoustic experts, who have spent the last two years investigating the whale deaths in the Bahamas in March 2000.

The Navy, which took responsibility for the deaths after initially denying it, attributes them to mid-frequency sonar, a different system that officials say cannot be compared with the low-frequency sonar approved Monday.

Johnson, the Navy’s environmental review manager, said he is “confident that there is minimal chance of physiological damage to the whales. As far as harassment, we know we can minimize that, so there is no impact on the [whale] population.”

But the experts are not so sure.

Ken Balcom, director of the Center for Whale Research in Washington state’s Friday Harbor, predicts “more whales are going to die.”

He points out that both kinds of sonar were being tested off the coast of Greece in 1996 when a mass die-off of whales occurred. The exact cause of the fatalities could not be confirmed because tissue samples from the dead animals were not preserved.

However, Balcom did preserve tissue samples when beaked whales began washing ashore near his Bahamian research station two years ago. After trying to save a few, he cut off the heads of dead whales and persuaded a restaurant to put them in a freezer until they could be airlifted to Harvard Medical School for CT scans.

Research concluded that bursts of loud sound had caused a “resonance phenomenon” in the air cavities of the whales’ heads. Scientists concluded that sound vibrations were, in effect, tearing apart delicate tissues around the brain and ears, causing them to hemorrhage.

Balcom said the government’s decision to allow the Navy to use the sonar was not based on facts. He said the effects of sonar are not yet well enough understood and that injury may not be tied to frequency as much as loudness.

“It’s pressure,” he said. “Sound is traveling as a pressure wave” as it moves through water.

Since the Navy proposed using the sonar, more than 10,000 letters flooded the National Marine Fisheries Service raising concerns about the welfare of whales.

To comply with its permit, the Navy must do research on the sonar’s effects on whale behavior. It must also submit quarterly reports to the Fisheries Service, but those reports will remain classified.

The approval granted by the Fisheries Service will be reviewed annually and will expire after five years. It is specifically for sonar testing and exercises during peacetime. No approval or precautions are needed during wartime, or during “heightened threat.”