Report: Navy weapons testing safe for marine mammals

[unhappycamper]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-beach/fl-navy-atlantic-testing-20130128,0,5874221.story

Report: Navy weapons testing safe for marine mammals
By David Fleshler, Sun Sentinel
8:44 p.m. EST, January 28, 2013

A Navy plan for testing submarines off Fort Lauderdale, torpedoes off Rhode Island and other weapons systems at installations across the East Coast will have only "negligible" impact on whales, dolphins and other marine life, according to a draft federal report to be released this week.

The Navy's testing and training plan for 2014-2019 calls for air-to-surface missile practice, large-caliber gunnery training, blasting the water with sonar and many other activities across 2.6 million square miles of ocean from Maine to Texas. The Navy calls these essential activities for maintaining combat readiness.

Included is the South Florida Ocean Measurement Facility, a network of undersea cables and detection devices off Port Everglades used to determine the acoustic characteristics of ships and submarines. That facility, which runs from near-shore waters to 25 miles out, will see increased testing of surface ships and submarines, mine countermeasures and unmanned underwater vehicles.

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But a draft report by the National Marine Fisheries Service says the Navy's activities are highly unlikely to harm any species as a whole, although individual animals could be injured or killed. The report says marine mammals will be exposed to sound from active sonar, underwater explosions and pile driving, as well as the danger of ship strikes. The use of sonar by the Navy has been linked to whale strandings, the fisheries service said.