Collaboration is Key to Saving Whales, Supporting Our Sailors

By Walt Elliot

In [many] news stories during 2003, Navy sonar arrays were pitted against whales. While both are important, the debate was dominated by those who simply folded this issue down the middle, placing all good on one side and all bad on the other.

In reality, there is a large middle ground. We can save our whales and support our sailors.

Last spring, the [Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer] USS Shoup’s sonar generated a week of headlines for its “harassment of orcas and porpoises.” Although no orcas were injured, the news was replete with demands to stop using sonar, citing the earlier stranding of 17 whales in the Bahamas. In that incident, beaked whales from the deep ocean were caught in a shallow channel being swept by Navy sonar.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration investigation [that followed] recommended more beaked whale research and protection, and the Navy agreed. Experts also agree that, from species to species, whales respond very differently to sound. Annually, more than 3,000 marine mammals are stranded on our shores from other causes. It would not be responsible to assume sonar is the major threat and to make policies that put our sailors at risk.

A May 8, 2003, [Bremerton Sun] front-page photo showed the Shoup passing seven to 10 miles away [from a pod of whales], while whale watchers are within a few hundred yards of them. Although nearby boats are known to disturb whales, the impact of whale watching gets no news coverage.

The 2003 Defense Authorization Bill gave the Navy more than $1 billion for environmental protection, including $4.2 million for the Northwest Environmental Resource Center. It also funded most of the world’s marine mammal research, with $2 million going to study the effect of sound on whales.

News headlines, however, declared that the bill “gives the military an exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act” because it also approved the following definition of marine mammal “harassment:”

“To injure or have the significant potential to injure a marine mammal or disturb a marine mammal by not causing disruption of natural behavior patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, surfacing, nursing, breeding, feeding or shelter to a point where the patterns are abandoned or significantly altered.”

There is good reason to speak up for Navy testing and training. To paraphrase Thomas Paine, a long habit of not thinking a thing right gives it the superficial appearance of being wrong.

More specific reasons are: Keyport, Bangor and Everett [naval bases]; torpedoes, submarines and aircraft carriers. At Keyport, the Navy develops and tests torpedoes. At the beginning of World War II, the Navy went to sea with faulty torpedoes. In the two years it took to get them right, the Japanese conquered the western Pacific. Had a reliable torpedo been available at the beginning, the war could have been foreshortened. This underscores the need for testing equipment before it is deployed for action.

More recently, the Russian submarine, Kursk, was destroyed by its own torpedo. The consensus in the U.S. research and development community was that Russians, strapped for cash, had been doing only minimal testing and training before that disaster.

Today’s threats take Navy ships through coastal waters. These choke points are ideal for an undersea ambush, and any nation can buy submarines designed to do just that. At a recent trade show, I noticed that the logo for the cutting-edge Italian “Black Shark” torpedo was a shark with a U.S. aircraft carrier in its mouth. This is why it is crucial for the Navy to train in coastal waters.

So what to do? First, put more pressure on activities that affect [whales], but which are not essential. The whale watchers should back off at least 600 yards from pods and stay out of the whales’ breeding habitat.

Second, members of Congress should be told that if they want to keep Washington’s Navy bases, they must also support the Navy’s training and testing in Northwest waters. If the Navy can’t train and test here, shouldn’t the bases go to places where they can?

Finally, the U.S. government should focus on the voices of reason and less on the rhetoric of confrontation. Collaboration is the only way we can save our whales, jobs and sailors.

Walt Elliot retired from the Navy in 2000 and is a member of the Bremerton Sun’s editorial board. This article was first published in the Jan. 25 edition of the Sun.