Ocean Noise in the News
Public comment deadline on sonar range extended
Thursday, December 22, 2005
The plan has drawn opposition from North Carolina officials and environmental groups. Members of the state’s Joint Legislative Commission on Seafood and Aquaculture complained that a briefing Monday by Navy representatives didn’t clear up their concerns.
The proposed 660-square-mile range, 47 miles off shore from Camp Lejeune, would be used for training ships and aircraft in the use of sonar, a technology that detects objects under the sea by bouncing sound off them.
The range would include hundreds of underwater microphones anchored on the ocean floor that would record ship movements and allow exercises to be reconstructed for study.
The Navy says sonar is the best defense against a new generation of quiet submarines that can threaten coastal waters. It expects the new range to cause only mild disturbance to some whales and hardly any effect on fish or sea turtles.
But opponents fear the impact of the sound waves on marine life, saying they sometimes kill whales and dolphins. Environmentalists sued the Navy in October, claiming the stranding and deaths of at least 37 whales last January near the Oregon Inlet of the Outer Banks occurred after a mid-frequency sonar exercise.