Navy officials say protecting country is more important than threat to marine life from sonar testing.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
The California Coastal Commission made good on its threat of a lawsuit against the U.S. Navy filing in federal court in Los Angeles March 22. As reported in The Malibu Times last month, the Coastal Commission had sought extra precautions from the Navy’s use of mid-frequency and high-frequency sonar training for marine animals, whose death by beaching themselves is linked to such training exercises. A coalition of environmental group have also filed suit against the Navy, citing that its exercises violate the Endangered Species Act, among other environmental laws.
“We are not asking the Navy to halt training,” Coastal Commissioner Sara Wan said. “We are only asking that they employ mitigating practices, such as avoiding migratory routes of whales and other precautionary measures. These animals should not have to die because of our training exercises.”
The Coastal Commission had given its blessing to the war games, with a caveat to employ additional safeguards. The Navy has said its top priority is the nation’s security and that it cannot have its capacity to adequately train sailors hampered by adhering to excessive regulation.
Jon Yoshishige, spokesman for the Pacific Fleet stationed in Honolulu, said recent training exercises, completed in March, were a joint task force exercise with a large carrier strike group, meaning more than one branch of the armed services was involved in the exercise.
“Over 6,000 sailors were involved in this particular exercise,” Yoshishige said. “Before we can certify these troops for deployment to a hostile environment, we need to make sure that their operational skills are perfect.”
He emphasized that the Navy’s responsibility requires nothing hamper its ability to adequately train a task force. Yoshishige said the Navy has been performing similar exercises off the coast of California for more than 30 years.
“We haven’t seen mass strandings of animals since then, after we started employing precautionary measures to protect the animals,” he said.
Cara Horowitz, attorney for the National Resources Defense Council and the Marine Mammal Protection Program, said scientific evidence of the effect sonar testing has on marine animals is indisputable.
“It’s not just the mass strandings we are talking about,” she said. “Autopsies performed on single instances of whales and dolphins beaching themselves after a sonar training exercise showed auditory and brain damage.”
Joining the NRDC in its lawsuit against the Navy are the League for Coastal Protection, Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. This is the fifth such lawsuit the NRDC has filed against the Navy, but the first time a state agency has done so.
For its part, the Navy maintains that the Coastal Commission has no jurisdiction over the Navy’s operations.
“We operate outside of the three mile zone that would put us in waters under California’s jurisdiction,” said one naval public affairs representative, who spoke anonymously as he was not authorized to comment on this subject.
“He’s just not dealing with the issues,” Wan said. “The Coastal Zone Management Act, a federal law, tasked the Coastal Commission with applying the Marine Animal Protection Act. This means that animals that have been affected by sonar training who come into California waters are under our jurisdiction. And mid-frequency sonar training does harm marine animals.”
The Pentagon recently granted the Navy’s training missions a two-year exemption from the Marine Animal Protection Act, saying that national security trumps environmental concerns.
The Coastal Commission plans to dispute that in court.
“The Navy’s position directly contravenes the federal law we are bound to uphold, which is protection of any aspect of California coastal waters,” Wan said. “The precedent it would establish is enormous. It could impinge on our ability to regulate or control any future activities that would affect our waters, including oil exploration and building LNG terminals.”
Vice Adm. Barry M. Costello, commander of the 3rd Fleet of the Navy, issued a written response to the Coastal Commission’s lawsuit, saying, “The Navy is disappointed with the California Coastal Commission’s decision to pursue litigation against critical Navy training activities off the coast of … California. These fleet training activities are essential to the Navy’s duty to train our nation’s armed forces…”
“No one is saying the Navy’s training is not vitally important,” Wan said. “But the fact is you can implement training exercises while following very reasonable mitigation procedures to protect marine life at the same time. The Navy has done it before.”
For its part, the Navy disputes environmental studies claiming mid-frequency sonar is damaging to marine life. In a letter to the Coastal Commission, Rear Adm. C.J. Mossey, a U.S. Navy fleet civil engineer, wrote, “… exposure to MFA sonar potentially may cause behavioral effects to some marine mammal species; however, these effects would not have any consequence to the population at large…”
Navy spokesman Lt. Ryan Terry said, “This is a matter of some disagreement. In certain rare circumstances, some damage can occur. But the Navy has allocated millions of dollars in research on this question because we take our stewardship of the ocean very seriously. But, frankly, we don’t see it.”
Terry went on to say that the Navy is open to reviewing any supporting scientific evidence the Coastal Commission wants to present.
“We hope that continuing talks will help us avoid the courts. I think there’s room for compromise. But the reality is, there is a threat out there that the Navy must address.”