Guest Opinion: Sonar Testing and Underwater Explosions

— from Sadie Bailey, reposted April 13 —

The deadline to comment on the U.S. Navy’s proposed sonar testing and underwater explosions has been extended to April 15. This is the chance to make our opinions and concerns known, regarding negative impacts on whales and other cetaceans. Here is the link for making a comment, which also provides a mailing address: https://nwtteis.com/GetInvolved/OnlineCommentForm.aspx. All mailed entries must be postmarked by the 15th.

An Open Letter to the U.S. Navy Regarding Sonar Testing and Underwater Explosions:

I am writing with grave concerns about the Navy’s proposed use of sonar and undersea explosions in the Northwest Training Range. I live in the San Juan Islands – Endangered orca whale country. There are only 80 orcas left off the entire coast of Washington, Oregon, and California. Orcas already face many man-made threats along their migration routes, without more preventable and needless deaths. People come from all over the world to see the whales off the Pacific coast. Many of our coastal economies depend on eco-tourism and fishing, but our concern for the wellbeing of cetaceans goes far deeper – we love, appreciate, and respect these highly intelligent beings.

Marine mammals are extremely sensitive to noise. Sonar destroys important habitat and disrupts the essential behavior of killer whales, blue whales, harbor porpoises and other marine wildlife. If you deafen a cetacean, you essentially kill it, destroying their navigational and communication abilities. Has the Navy considered the deafening of whales in its kill estimates? What about other cetaceans affected, and the loss of habitat and food supply caused by sonar and explosion testing? What are the real numbers when it comes to maimings and deaths?

In 2004 the Navy’s sonar was implicated in a mass stranding of as many as 200 melon-headed whales in Hanalei Bay, near Hawaii. And in 2003 the USS Shoup exposed a group of endangered orcas to sonar in Washington’s Haro Strait, causing the animals to stop feeding and attempt to flee the painful sound. There is no need for this torture of innocent marine mammals – and it IS torture.

Who will be physically and fiscally responsible – the Navy, or the U.S. taxpayers – for cleaning up the carnage of whale and dolphin corpses, or worse, dying cetaceans that we’re powerless to help, washed up on our beaches? And how do we explain to a traumatized population, to our kids and grandchildren, WHY these magnificent creatures died – needlessly – at the hands of our own military?

The Navy must first consider an alternative that puts key biological areas off limits to testing and training activities, and that mitigates and reduces the impacts of training and testing on the region’s valuable wildlife. Has it been scientifically proven that the impacts even can be mitigated?

Our cetacean populations are sacred to us, and to the many First Nations Tribes and Bands along our coasts – who ultimately have final say in what happens to our waters, under National and Tribal Law. The waters of the United States, including marine environments, belong to First Nations and the people, under the Clean Water Act. What other effects on our waters will sonar testing and explosions have? What else will they kill, and in what estimated numbers? How else will they pollute? How else will they warm and acidify our oceans? What will they do to the marine food chain, and to coastal economies and Aboriginal cultures?

Have these questions and many more, been considered, and satisfactorily answered? Have outside, unbiased Academic Marine Biologists weighed in on the EIS? Who really stands to make their fortunes, or increase them, on these weapons tests, against the will of the U.S. taxpayers footing the bill?

As you continue to provide for our country’s defense, please find a way to train that respects and protects our natural resources and our ocean’s sensitive wildlife, and the people who see the value in cetaceans.