Whales may bump Navy sonar training field out of Fla. site

NORFOLK

The Navy has decided that a controversial sonar training range it proposed building off North Carolina's coast would be better located off Florida, where its East Coast sub-hunting helicopters are based.

More than 40,000 pages of public comments - most of them critical - had flooded in after the Navy announced coastal North Carolina as its preferred site for the range in 2005. It also considered locating the range off Virginia, South Carolina or Florida.

The switch in preference to a site off Jacksonville, Fla., may prove to be just as troublesome for the Navy. The border of the proposed 625-square-mile range would come within a few dozen miles of calving grounds of the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Experts believe fewer than 400 right whales remain in the North Atlantic. The population spends its summers off the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia, and in winter, pregnant females migrate to warmer southern waters off Georgia and Florida to give birth.

Michelle Nowlin, a professor of environmental law at Duke University, said the Navy appears to be on a direct collision course with state and federal efforts to protect the right whale.

Navy brass have long called for an instrumented range to teach sailors how to detect quiet diesel submarines in noisy coastal waters. Hundreds of underwater microphones placed on the ocean floor would record exercises, so crews could reconstruct events.

The Navy estimates that the range, which would cost an estimated $100 million, would be used 480 times a year, from one to six hours at a time.

Many scenarios would involve surface ships and submarines from Norfolk and Groton, Conn., but the most frequent user of the range would be SH-60 Seahawk helicopters. As a result of 2005 base realignments, all of the Navy's East Coast Seahawk squadrons are now based in Florida. P-3C Orion planes, which conduct long-range anti-submarine warfare patrols, also will be based in Jacksonville.

At close range, blasts of mid-frequency, active sonar - the type Navy ships and helicopters use to detect enemy submarines - can injure dolphins and whales, which use sound to navigate and communicate. Scientists understand less about how marine mammals are affected by repeated or continual exposure to underwater noise.

Jene Nissen, environmental acoustics manager for the Navy's Fleet Forces Command, said the critical habitat for right whales extends to about 20 miles off the coast of northern Florida. The range's westernmost boundary would be 50 miles offshore.

"We believe we're far enough off that we're not going to have an adverse effect on right whales," Nissen said. Navy analysts concluded that humpback and right whales might behave differently when exposed to sonar from the range. But Nissen said the effects would be low-level, and not permanent.

Michael Jasny, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, isn't convinced.

Jasny said the 1,000 pages of analysis the Navy compiled to support its decision "makes no attempt to consider cumulative effects on marine mammals, beyond glib statements that they wouldn't occur."

He also criticized the Navy's proposed mitigation efforts. The service should consider staying off the range in certain seasons or conditions, he said. Other measures that could reduce impact: restricting the use of sonar at night or in low visibility conditions, when Navy spotters can't easily see marine mammals on the horizon.

The Navy dismissed those alternatives in the document as impractical or contrary to the objectives of the training.

Marguerite Jordan, a spokeswoman for Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, said the agency has begun reviewing the Navy's analysis. The state has not reached any conclusions, she said.

If previous experience is a guide, the Navy could run into stiff opposition from the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission. In January 2006, the commission told the Navy that Florida's northern waters should not be considered for the training range - and in no case should the range be used between mid-October and mid-April, when right whale calves typically are born.

"The winter inhabitants off the coast of Jacksonville include the most vulnerable component of the right whale population," the commission said in a seven-page letter to the Navy in 2006. "The additional noise levels and increased vessel traffic could jeopardize the females and calves of a species that is already at high risk of extinction.... We believe the importance of the southeastern calving grounds to the persistence of the species renders the Jacksonville [operating area] inappropriate."

Michelle Duval, an invertebrate biologist with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries in Morehead City, said she doesn't think North Carolina is out of consideration yet.

"I wouldn't say that the change in location means that North Carolina agencies can sit back and breathe a sigh of relief, or not pay attention to this," Duval said. "Some new information may come to light which could cause another change in location."

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com