Pacific Spirit Marine Institute

Marine Mammals Paying The Price For The War On Terror. U.S. Navy resumes training with sonar.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Christian Science Monitor has reported the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, and her accompanying ships began exercises Wednesday in the waters off San Diego.

U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper highlighted in her preliminary injunction against the use of sonar the Navy’s own estimate that these exercises would temporarily disrupt or harm 170,000 marine mammals and permanently injure more than 400.

Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice says, he doesn’t understand “why the sonar has become such a big deal.” Whales and other marine mammals are killed by ship strikes, fishing nets and loud sounds from oil and gas exploration. Rear Adm. Rice is the Navy’s director for environmental readiness. With friends like Rice the marine mammals might be asking themselves; who needs enemies?

The ocean is a mighty big place. It’s could be conceivable there is more than enough room for the Navy and marine mammals to stay out of each other’s way. The days of Navy training exercises being carried out far far away from coastlines vanished with the ‘war on terror’. The U.S. now feels attacks on ports by enemies using ’silent’ subs is a likely potential. This is what has prompted the Navy to move some exercises closer to shore.

Logic could dictate that detecting an enemy’s ’silent’ sub before it came close to port would be the prudent thing to practice.

Navy officials say more than 40 countries are using sophisticated diesel-electric submarines which are less expensive and more stealth. These cheaper stealthier submarines could be accessed by potential U.S. enemies. Navy officials also contend the coast simulates smaller waterways like those found in the Middle East.

Richard Kendall, National Resources Defense Council attorney, believes Bush used an agency within his own executive branch to overturn a federal court ruling which limited the use of sonar during these exercises. “The president’s effort to use a White House agency to override a court order is very dangerous in our legal system, highly illegal, and completely unjustified.”

Read the “Presidential Exemption from the Coastal Zone Management Act”

Council on Environmental Quality Letter to Navy (Don’t miss page 150) of 151 pages pdf format

Photo Thanks: PH3 Kittie VandenBosch, USN.

Labels: California, Sonar, US Navy, marine mammals