Time to Turn Off the LFA Sonar.

Imagine being exposed to an acoustic wave so powerful that, even at substantial distances, it can destroy your hearing, cause your lungs or ears to hemorrhage, or even kill you. Such may be the plight of many marine mammals worldwide if the U.S. Navy gets its way and deploys the low frequency active sonar system, according to a recent warning by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The full name of this submarine detection system is the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active Sonar (SURTASS LFAS), often referred to simply as LFA. It is a source of environmental concern because it can blast very loud (235 decibels), very low frequency (100 to 500 hertz) sound over thousands of square miles of ocean. The navy contemplates using this system in over 80 percent of the world's oceans.

The Ocean Mammal Institute reports that, beginning in the 1980s, the U.S. Navy developed and tested the LFA without preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) or obtaining the necessary permits--in the process spending millions of dollars in violation of environmental law. It wasn't until the NRDC called attention to these violations in a 1995 letter to the Secretary of the Navy that the navy took steps to come into compliance. It committed to the preparation of an EIS and obtained the necessary permits. The permits required suspension of testing if whales behaved in unusual ways, such as repeated breaching or pectoral fin or tail slapping.

In 1998, the navy conducted tests of the LFA system on whales off the coast of Hawaii. Observers from the Ocean Mammal Institute reported changes in whale distribution and behavior. Institute officials observed a humpback whale calf and a dolphin calf without mothers. The humpback calf breached 230 times and its pectoral fin slapped 671 times in four hours. Yet testing wasn't suspended.

Also during the Hawaii test, a snorkler was exposed to a 125 decibel LFA broadcast over a period of thirty to forty-five minutes. She emerged from the water with symptoms a doctor diagnosed as similar to acute trauma: "She could barely talk, had difficulties in expressing and finding words, expressed dizziness and confusion.... There was tremor in reaching for things and difficulties in walking straight forward with open eyes."

Noise pollution is now widespread throughout the world's oceans, and deployment of the LFA would further insult an already injured population of marine life for which hearing is a matter of life and death. Dr. Lindy Weilgart, a bioacoustician who studies whales and sound at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, believes: "The windows of opportunity in which whales can communicate with a specific group member or find prey are becoming increasingly limited because of noise pollution. And most whales are endangered and having a hard time anyway."

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has adopted the "precautionary principle" approach in dealing with proposed deployments such as LFA sonar. This approach places the strong burden of proof upon the navy to show that its LFA sonar system won't cause harm. The navy will no longer be able to hide behind the ruse that "no data means no jeopardy," as Gregory D. Kaufman, president of the Pacific Whale Foundation, so succinctly put it. To date, however, the navy has failed to provide the necessary proof that the LFA won't cause harm.

To the contrary, Dr. Robert Wilder, conservation director of the Pacific Whale Foundation, has observed that "the Final Environmental Impact Statement produced by the Navy glosses over very large gaps in our knowledge, and presents what seems more an advocacy piece aimed at justifying a predetermined conclusion." Moreover, there is a large and growing body of evidence that deployment of LFA will cause harm.

For example, seventeen whales from four different species stranded themselves in the Bahamas in March 2000. Seven died. At the same time, the navy was conducting the Littoral Warfare Advanced Development Sea Tests, which used various sonar devices and included high intensity (235 decibel) broadcasts. Six of the dead whales were sent to specialists for necropsies to determine the cause of death. At the time, the navy claimed the strandings were a coincidence. But in July 2000, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Robert Pirie told CNN that the U.S. Navy did have an operational sonar exercise in the Bahamas in March 2000 "that was closely correlated with the ... strandings and that's the source of our concern."

The probable cause of the whale deaths in the Bahamas was determined to be some form of shock trauma, according to Kenneth (2. Balcomb, director of the Center for Whale Research. Blood in their eyes and the type of tissue damage all pointed to some explosive or high intensity sound source. Biologists meeting in June 2000 with representatives of the U.S. Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Marine Mammal Commission subsequently confirmed Balcomb's assessment, stating that the animals apparently suffered from disequilibrium and disorientation from an acoustic or pressure event.

But loud noise is not the only danger from LFA. Resonance inside the skulls of marine mammals also poses a serious threat. Balcomb states in a letter to J. S. Johnson, SURTASS LFAS program manager, that the navy hasn't adequately considered how loud noise from sonar may resonate within air chambers located in the whales' skulls, tearing apart delicate tissues around the brain and the ears. He points out that the navy has known the resonance frequency of airspaces in Cuvier's beaked whales since 1998 and places the resonance frequency in the whales' cranial airspaces at about 290 hertz at 500 meters depth--precisely the middle frequency of the LFA system.

Other possible harmful effects of LFA on marine mammals, as reported to Congress by the Marine Mammal Commission, include death from lung hemorrhage; hearing loss or impairment; disruption of feeding, breeding, or other vital behavior; psychological and physiological stress, making the animals more vulnerable; and harm to marine mammal prey species leading to population decline.

Maintaining healthy oceans is in our long-term national security interest far more than is the deployment of the LFA sonar system. Rear Admiral Malcolm Fages, U.S. navy director, Submarine Warfare Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, in testimony to Congress on submarine force structure and modernization, has stated that the navy now has the ability to detect advanced diesel submarines in littoral waters using passive sonar systems, at ranges they didn't think possible in the past. Therefore, LFA sonar doesn't play a critical role in our national security. It does, however, represent a critical threat to our oceans' long-term health and shouldn't be deployed.

Working to prevent this deployment, the NRDC has teamed up with Pierce Brosnan, James Taylor, and Jean-Michel Cousteau to mount an e-mail campaign that asks all concerned citizens to contact their congressional representatives immediately and urge they not endorse funding of the LFA. The full text of their message and the latest developments on the LFA sonar system is available on the NRDC website at www.nrdc.org. You can send electronic messages of protest to congress at the website set up for this purpose: www.nrdcaction.org/index.asp?step=2& item=518. (The NRD is also currently campaigning against George W. Bush's initiative to desecrate the Alaskan wilderness through oil drilling--a measure that was approved in early August by the House of Representatives and is currently under consideration in the Senate.)

It isn't too late to prevent this dangerous new sonar system from being deployed and harming the world's biosphere. Add your voice to the united cry to "turn off LFA sonar by cutting off its funding."

Byron Demmer is a freelance writer from Middleport, New York. He holds a B.A. in economics from the University of New Mexico.