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Navy’s plan to expand ocean exercises could disrupt wildlife
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The U.S. Navy’s plans to expand training operations is drawing criticism from both environmental groups and the public.
The military branch has announced its intention to increase ocean warfare exercises off the Pacific Northwest coastline and sonar use in the Gulf of Alaska, USA Today writes. The plan would expand training areas by hundreds of square miles, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of sea mammals annually.
The proposal has created worry among environmental groups. Navy exercises already affect 2.3 million marine mammals, including seals, sea lions and whales, and the military branch estimates that increased activity could disturb an additional half a million marine mammals, some of which are endangered, the paper reports.
Effects can range from minor interruptions in feeding cycles to significant injury and death. The dramatic increase in sonar activities has critics particularly concerned. The technology can disrupt marine mammals’ brain activity, causing brief disorientation and sometimes reproductive changes. According to the paper, since 2000, sonar training has been associated with at least four instances of mass stranding of whales on beaches.
Environmental groups are not the only ones questioning the expansion. More than 3,500 public comments have been filed, most in opposition to the plan, which would also extend exercises into the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.
However, the Navy says the plan reflects a need to practice in a variety of environments, including the seafloor, and it has continued to make the best of efforts to create as little disturbance as possible.
Michael Jasny, a senior policy analyst at the National Resources Defense Council, disagrees. "The Navy says it knows enough to analyze impacts, but it doesn’t know enough to recommend any areas within these hundreds of thousands of square nautical miles for avoidance," he told the paper.
The new expansions will move approved waters 60 miles west of Hawaii to the International Dateline, West Hawaii Today writes. The Navy’s notice said that the change is part of "evolving mission requirements associated with force structure changes," the paper reported.
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