Sonar site called bad for sea life

Some North Carolina environmental and fishing groups accuse the U.S. Navy of downplaying the environmental dangers of a proposed sonar training range 47 miles off the coast.

They say the Navy has omitted vital information from their proposal, including an accurate depiction of the range of the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale and an up-to-date estimate of important fish habitats.

Their critiques are among more than 300 submissions made during a public comment period about the proposed range that ended Monday.

Critics compare the proposal for the sonar range to the Navy's initial environmental review for a practice landing field it wants to build in Eastern North Carolina. A federal judge has stopped that airstrip until the Navy does more thorough environmental reviews.

"It's inexcusable what was omitted from the public record," said Michelle Nowlin, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The Navy says it welcomes any credible findings it missed.

The federally mandated comment period -- which was originally slated to end in December but was extended to Monday -- is designed to attract information that had escaped notice, said Jim Brantley, a spokesman for the Navy's Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.

"We've said right along, if there is better science out there, please, help us find it," Brantley said. "We want to do the right thing."

Waters off North Carolina are the Navy's preferred site for its 661-square-mile range, which it would use to train sailors and pilots in tracking submarines. Part of the range could be open in 2008, with completion in about 10 years.

But first, the Navy must review comments on the range and respond to them in a final environmental report it expects to deliver this fall.

It will have much to review. The Southern Environmental Law Center, for one, used global positioning tracking records to show that North Atlantic right whales travel closer to the proposed range than the Navy acknowledges. The Navy has said the animals hug the shore in migrations up and down North Carolina and would not be close enough to be bothered by Navy sonar.

Scientists suspect that sonar, pulses of sound that are bounced off submerged objects to "see" under water, has an effect on whales. They aren't sure what sonar does to whales, but the technology was linked to a stranding of whales in the Bahamas. Government scientists are investigating whether a mass stranding on the Outer Banks last year resulted from sonar used by the Navy.

Environmentalists, with a court order, obtained a draft assessment of autopsies performed on those animals by a National Marine Fisheries Service scientist. It indicated sonar might have played a role. The scientist omitted any reference to sonar in a later report.

In its comments to the Navy, the Southern Environmental Law Center questions why the Navy doesn't mention that stranding in its draft environmental review, which was released months later.

It's not just whales that environmentalists are worried about. The environmental law group also found federal records showing that species the Navy says are not in the vicinity, including seals and endangered manatees, actually travel in North Carolina waters.

In addition, the group questions why the Navy doesn't note that cable needed for the range would be installed in land the state has designated as a sea turtle sanctuary.

Another group, Environmental Defense, says the Navy used outdated public maps prepared in 1997 to estimate the amount of coral on the ocean floor in and near the proposed range. Maps prepared in 2001 show more abundant coral, which can be a key habitat for commercial fish species, staff biologist Michelle Duval found.

Comments submitted by the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries also fault Navy estimates of coral. And the state agency criticizes the Navy for submitting too little data to defend its statements that sonar will not cause long-term behavioral disruptions to fish, something the Navy has conceded it handled badly but will rectify.

The Navy will respond to all questions submitted during the public comment period in its final report, Brantley said.

But some people say the Navy should have been talking with people in North Carolina long before it created its draft environmental study, to make sure it had the best data available.

"The Navy's lack of communication with federal and state resource agencies in North Carolina, as well as the governor's office, during the preparation is inexcusable," marine biologist Duval wrote in her comments.

Members of the public will have additional opportunities to voice concerns. The Navy will accept comments for 30 days after it publishes its final report. And the National Marine Fisheries Service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will solicit comment, as well.