Navy Approves Plan for Sonar Training Off Hawaii

The Navy has adopted a new plan for training in Hawaii waters that it says will allow it to accelerate some exercises and hold them more frequently while continuing to limit the effects of its sonar on marine mammals.

The Navy created the training plan after completing environmental studies to ensure the plan complies with federal law. It is conducting similar studies for training ranges off California, the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.

Environmentalists say active sonar can hurt or kill whales and other marine mammals. The Navy says it takes steps to protect marine mammals from its sonar.

The plan adopted Thursday leaves in place key elements of Navy training.

The Navy will continue to hold a series of undersea warfare exercises that train sailors to use sonar, or bounced sound waves, to find submarines. Rim of the Pacific international maritime drills, which the Navy hosts off Hawaii every two years, will also be allowed to continue.

B.J. Penn, Navy assistant secretary for installations and environment, said the plan allows the Navy to provide sailors with the skills they need to be effective in combat.

''The Navy must train its deploying forces in the most realistic manner possible,'' he said in a statement.

Sailors will be expected to use two varieties of active sonar, mid-frequency and high-frequency, for the same number of hours as they currently do.

The Navy said it would shield marine mammal from harm by adhering to a list of 29 protection measures it adopted last year. Those include posting specially trained lookouts on ships and shutting down active sonar when a marine mammal comes within 200 yards of the sonar source.

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has said those measures are insufficient. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed this month to hear the Navy's appeal of a Ninth Circuit ruling on the matter.

Penn said in a report announcing the new Hawaii plan that the Navy would work with the state to see what other marine mammal protection measures might be ''feasible and practicable.''

While no marine mammal was expected to be killed or injured as a result of exposure to Navy sonar, the report said, the animals might be affected in other ways. For example, a whale might hear sonar through the water and change its course to get away from the sound.

It is not clear what effect the plan may have on a dispute between the Navy and the state over whether Hawaii has the authority to restrict sonar during training exercises.

That disagreement emerged after the state's Coastal Zone Management Agency asked the Navy to adopt a federal judge's rules governing sonar use for all of its Hawaii exercises. The judge only imposed his rules on undersea warfare exercises through January.

The Navy is questioning whether Hawaii has jurisdiction in the matter.

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On the Net:

Hawaii Range Complex EIS: http://www.govsupport.us/navynepahawaii/