SURTASS LFA Allowed Limited Operation

The temporary injunction against the worldwide operation of the U.S. Navy's Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active sonar (SURTASS LFA) was lifted in mid-November, after a federal judge accepted an agreement between the Navy and the plaintiffs, the Natural Resources Defense Council-led coalition of environmental groups that includes CSI. The agreement for the limited LFA deployment was necessary as the judge was unlikely to authorize a complete ban on the sonar system while the court heard continuing arguments in the case.

The agreement allows limited testing of the Navy's LFA, while the federal court in San Francisco continues to consider our lawsuit challenging the legality of the system. The test area is still enormous, approximately one million square miles of ocean around the Mariana Islands, but experts agree that it is among the least productive regions of the Pacific, without major whale migration routes, feeding areas and breeding grounds. Although all Navy vessel movements are classified, the LFA was assumed to have begun initial operations almost immediately, although with ineffectual mitigations. While we wonder if LFA operations may allow monitoring Russian ballistic missile submarines, rumored to be stationed near the Russian coast, our concerns are for the marine animals that may be harmed. However, because of cost, time and remoteness, there is almost no research initiative to monitor LFA operations for impacts on marine life. We are unsure that the Navy will even try to validate their mitigation strategies.

But The LFA Is Not The Only Problem

A California Magistrate Judge in October issued a Temporary Restraining Order halting a high intensity seismic research project by the National Science Foundation in the Gulf of California, after scientists realized that two Cuvier's beaked whales that stranded at Isla San Jose in the Gulf of California were probably affected by the air gun blasts. Earlier strandings may also have been related. The project had neither applied for nor received permits under the Marine Mammal Protection Act or other relevant laws, and had refused to stop despite the evidence until the judge's order. For further information see http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/.

The noise issue keeps growing beyond the LFA, even as the LFA issue continues to be the main battleground over what is appropriate and legal. Standard naval sonars, such as the U.S. Navy's 53C, are implicated in beaked whale strandings and vanished populations. Major scientific conferences are reviewing data and forming positions, reacting to the failure of science to define when human noise does harm. Congress is being pressured to weaken fundamental laws that get in the way of economic efficiency or military plans. And technological improvements are motivated to be more efficient, not more benign. We have a long way to go.