Date: Jan 09, 2003 Author: Jane Kay Source: SFGate (
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Citing a need to investigate potential harm to gray whales, a federal judge halted sonar tests in waters off the California coast Wednesday just hours before they were scheduled to begin.
U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti in San Francisco granted a temporary restraining order stopping the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Scientific Solutions Inc. from sending high-frequency sound waves into the migration path of some 3,000 whales.
At this time of year, the Pacific gray whales swim thousands of miles from winter feeding near the Bering Sea to breeding lagoons in Baja California.
The scientists want to test two prototype sonar systems for finding whales and other marine mammals. Such systems could help commercial vessels avoid ramming whales, and oil and gas explorers who detonate undersea explosives might use it to determine if whales are nearby.
But attorney Lanny Sinkin, representing the Channel Islands Animal Protection Association and other groups, said the high-frequency sonar could disorient whales and separate calves from their mothers. The whales are shrinking in number and should be left alone, the association said.
Conti agreed that the tests could cause irreparable harm to the gray whales and that the National Marine Fisheries Service might have erred when it approved three weeks of experiments off the coast of San Luis Obispo County without first conducting an environmental assessment.
The sonar system uses an underwater speaker on a moored vessel to send out short pulses of sound at high frequencies, then records the echoes that bounce off the whales to indicate their location. The scientists plan to observe on land and sea how the sonar system affects the movements of the animals.
But the federal government should have been more protective of the gray whale, Sinkin argued. Even though the gray whale was removed from the protection of the Endangered Species Act in 1994, the species is "in crisis," Sinkin said. Recent counts show that the population has declined from 26,600 to 17,414, about 34 percent, between 1998 and 2002.
"To go into a species spiraling toward extinction to see if the whales avoid a certain level of sounds, and not even acknowledge that a species is in crisis, is a total violation of the government's responsibility to respect the species," said Sinkin.
Maureen Rudolph, a Justice Department lawyer representing the National Marine Fisheries Service, said the high-frequency sonar is outside the whales' hearing range, and the federal experts don't believe the tests would injure auditory systems or tissue.
"The idea that it can cause them harm is a nonsensical thing. The tests haven't been viewed as a controversial experiment or considered a big deal," said Rudolph.
At Woods Hole, spokeswoman Shelley Dawicki said she would be surprised if the environmentalists can come up with data showing that the high-frequency sonar would harm the gray whales. "There's so little known. We know almost nothing about what marine mammals hear."
The new test would try to assess how whale-finding sonar would affect the animals, Dawicki said.
"The scientists would turn on the sources, and see what the whales do. Do they swim farther away from the source? Do they keep going like they're oblivious to it? What effect does it have on mothers and calves? They see their behavior and record it," said Dawicki.
The judge will hear arguments on the case Jan. 17 in his San Francisco court.
