It is distressing and more than a little ironic when the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency charged with ensuring the protection of marine species and their habitat, casts aside its responsibility and authorizes the use of a U.S. Navy sonar system that will wreak havoc with life in the oceans. Yet it has done so once again, with barely a pretense of complying with federal laws designed to protect our environment.

NMFS first authorized Navy deployment of Low Frequency Active (LFA) sonar in 2002.

That authorization was challenged in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of groups led by the Natural Resources Defense Council. In its 2003 decision, the court ruled in favor of NRDC, and found that NMFS and the Navy had violated several federal laws including the National Environmental Policy Act. With that decision, the court imposed a permanent injunction limiting the sonar’s use in training to areas in the northwestern Pacific and placing other restrictions to limit the harm done to the marine environment.

The new NMFS authorization will throw out most of those restrictions. It will allow for a doubling of the number of vessels deploying the sonar, and open up most of the world’s oceans, and its inhabitants, to a horrible sonic assault.

Since LFA sonar’s inception in the 1980s, NMFS has consistently acted in a way so as to enable its use, regardless of the environmental costs and its own responsibilities.

When, in 1996, the Navy was forced to write an Environmental Impact Statement, as required by NEPA, it did so, but in a manner that failed to meet the standards set forth in that law. Instead of taking the required “hard look” at how the sonar would impact the environment, it made assumptions and came to conclusions that were scientifically unsupportable, while ignoring or dismissing evidence that conflicted with those conclusions. Clearly, the intention of the Navy was not in taking any hard look, but rather in attempting to persuade readers that impacts “would not be significant.” That approach is the exact opposite of the one required by NEPA. NMFS apparently had no problem with it, but the court did, and with its 2003 decision, required that the Navy write a Supplemental EIS.

Although there is now even more evidence contradicting them, The Navy clung to its conclusions, and NMFS again bought into them. After sitting on the Navy’s authorization application for more than 14 months, NMFS released its Proposed Rule for LFA sonar on July 9, allowing the public only 15 days to comment, absurdly claiming “national security” reasons justified this. Although NMFS received requests to extend the comment period from the Maine State Planning Office and Department of Marine Resources, many U.S. senators and representatives including the entire Maine congressional delegation and literally thousands of other members of the public, it declined to do so.

The manner in which both the Navy and NMFS have dealt with the public’s concerns over LFA sonar through this process has been an outrage, and is legally questionable. The NEPA process emphasizes the importance of public involvement during the development of an EIS, and calls for public hearings and comment periods. Congress did not intend for these to be merely for show. They are provided to address the public’s concerns, not just give the illusion that they have done so.

On Aug. 16, COAST and the Animal Welfare Institute staged a “Street Theater Spectacle” at the Maryland headquarters of NMFS, in protest of its authorization made on the previous day. Alongside a large inflatable whale, performers in dolphin and sea turtle costumes “swam” while beautiful ocean sounds filled the air. Nearby, a “NMFS bureaucrat” and “Navy admiral” stood side by side, first glancing at, and then crumpling up and tossing aside page after page of “public comments” and “peer-reviewed science.”

When, with exchanges of winks and slaps on the back, the NMFS bureaucrat handed the admiral its permit to kill, injure and disrupt marine life over vast ocean regions, the ocean sounds were replaced with the loud pings of LFA sonar. And in short order, the dolphins, turtles and whale were all lying still, as if “dead in the water” and “beached.” Thus the spectacle conveyed the outrageousness of the authorization, and some of its likely consequences.

The NEPA process undertaken by the Navy and NMFS has been one great illusion that makes the Street Theater Spectacle look like real life by comparison. They have repeatedly ignored and dismissed legitimate concerns expressed by the public, including many in the scientific community, over the ramifications of LFA sonar use. This behavior reveals not only a disturbing disdain for the public and its concerns, but also for the law.

But the fight isn’t over. The chances are good, in fact very good, that NMFS will be required to stand side by side with the Navy, again, in court. And if enough citizens and members of Congress stand up to the bureaucrats and admirals, the marine environment may yet be protected for dolphins, turtles, whales and all of us.

Russell Wray of Hancock volunteers with Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats. He can be reached at 7coast@adelphia.net.