Navy Begins Controversial Tests on Humpback Whales

HONOLULU (February 25, 1998 10:01 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net) - The U.S. Navy began aiming piercing blasts of underwater sound at humpback whales on Wednesday, testing a new sonar submarine detection system that environmentalists say could harm the endangered marine mammals.

The tests, designed to see how the whales react when bombarded by deafening noise, were cleared to begin after a federal judge in Honolulu Tuesday refused a request by environmental groups to stop them.

"A week from today we're going to go back to ask for an injunction," said Paul Achitoff, the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund lawyer who filed the failed request for a restraining order.

"We will go back to this same judge and try to persuade her that she misunderstood the situation."

The Low Frequency Active (LFA) sonar tests, being run for the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, will use huge transmitters towed behind ships to pump sound into waters just a few miles from the new Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.

The tests are part of a project to develop a new long-range sonar system to detect "quiet" submarines by flooding the oceans with soundwaves.

Environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the Animal Welfare Institute, have described the noise as "a thousand times louder than a 747 jet engine" and say it could harm the whales in their favorite breeding habitat.

"They really have no idea how this is going to affect the whales, let alone other marine life," Achitoff said. "It is really a question of looking for a pain threshold."

Navy scientists acknowledge that LFA will use sounds of up to 215 decibels to see how loud a sound must be before it causes a "behavioral change" in the whales.

But they say the test will not harm the humpbacks, and will help the Navy avoid disturbing marine life in future by obtaining data on what exactly the whales can and cannot tolerate.

Similar tests have already been conducted on whale populations off the California coast without any noticeable adverse effect, navy scientists say.