The claims by the Navy and Alaska Command and the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson that the Northern Edge 2017 (NE 17) military training exercise being conducted at present in the Gulf of Alaska will not harm Alaska’s marine environment are simply incorrect.
While the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) biological opinion released last month concludes that the Navy training activities “are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered or threatened species,” it also concludes that the Navy exercises are “likely to adversely affect” many protected marine mammal and salmon species.
The NMFS opinion states:
“The effects analysis contained in this opinion concluded that individual blue whales, North Pacific right whales, fin whales, humpback whales (Mexico and Western North Pacific DPSs), sei whales, sperm whales, Steller sea lions (Western DPS), and listed fish species are likely to be exposed to active sonar, sound fields associated with underwater detonations, or noise and other environmental cues associated with the movement of surface vessels. In some instances, for marine mammals, we concluded that this exposure is likely to result in evasive behavior or changes in behavioral state which we would consider ‘harassment’ for the purposes of this Incidental Take Statement.”
NMFS defines marine mammal “harassment” as actions that “significantly affect normal behavior patterns … including, but not limited to, migration, surfacing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering, to a point where such behavioral patterns are abandoned or significantly altered.”
Both the Navy Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and NMFS opinion conclude that the training exercises will cause hundreds of hearing impacts (Temporary Threshold Shifts) to whales; thousands of hearing impacts to porpoises; harassment of dolphins, porpoises, beaked whales, and seals; and permanent hearing injuries to Dall’s porpoises. The Navy EIS predicts a total of 18,196 impacts per year to marine mammals from its sonar and other active acoustic sources.
Strangely, the NMFS opinion assumes, without any scientific justification, that three species of rare beaked whales known to be susceptible to sonar-induced gas bubble hemorrhage and death will simply “avoid the activity area, putting them out of range to mortality.” This is an unsupportable and irresponsible assumption.
In addition, the NMFS opinion fails to consider potential impacts of NE 17 on the critically endangered AT1 killer whale pod, which inhabits the area being used by the Navy. Most members of the AT1 pod (15 of 22 individuals) were killed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS), and the pod is now expected to become extinct. Neither the Navy nor the NMFS discuss the possibility that impacts from NE 17 may further compromise the AT1 killer whale pod’s survival.
Importantly, the NMFS biological opinion and the Navy’s EIS simply predict environmental impact based on existing scientific literature. Actual impacts of the exercise would need to be measured with a comprehensive, real-time environmental monitoring program conducted just before, during and after the exercise. However, the Navy refused our request that it conduct such real-time monitoring studies and that it host independent scientific observers. Unfortunately, there was no independent environmental monitoring or observation of actual impacts of the Navy’s NE 17 training exercises.
In response to several Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals over a two-year period (2015-2016), the Navy continues to withhold important information on the duration and power level of its sonar use in NE 15, undermining its claim to be transparent.
Navy policy regarding environmental impacts of its offshore training exercises remains: “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s April 7 letter to the Navy endorses the call of many Alaska coastal communities and scientists that the training exercises be rescheduled to the fall in order to minimize exposure, impact and risk to migratory marine animals, including salmon. The Navy remains stubbornly resistant to this suggestion.
Murkowski’s letter also endorses our request last September for an independent scientific review of environmental impacts of all military training activities in U.S. marine waters by the National Academies of Sciences, and to recommend additional risk reduction measures. A National Academies review may be the only way to resolve the ongoing concerns regarding impacts of the Navy’s training exercises.
While these offshore military training exercises are certainly not the largest threat to Alaska’s marine environment, the risks are real and should be reduced as much as possible. This has yet to occur.
It is time for greater honesty, transparency and responsiveness from the military on these environmental concerns.
• Rick Steiner is a marine conservation biologist in Anchorage, was a marine conservation professor with the University of Alaska 1980-2010, and has conducted studies on effects of underwater sound on killer whales and other marine mammal issues.
