Whale of a Problem for Proposed Sonar Training Site

[unhappycamper]

Whale of a Problem for Proposed Sonar Training Site
September 29, 2008
Virginian-Pilot

The Navy has decided that a controversial sonar training range it proposed building off North Carolina's coast would be better located off Florida, where its East Coast sub-hunting helicopters are based.

More than 40,000 pages of public comments -- most of them critical -- had flooded in after the Navy announced coastal North Carolina as its preferred site for the range in 2005. It also considered locating the range off Virginia, South Carolina or Florida.

The switch in preference to a site off Jacksonville, Fla., may prove to be just as troublesome for the Navy. The border of the proposed 625-square-mile range would come within a few dozen miles of calving grounds of the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Experts believe fewer than 400 right whales remain in the North Atlantic. The population spends its summers off the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia, and in winter, pregnant females migrate to warmer southern waters off Georgia and Florida to give birth.

Michelle Nowlin, a professor of environmental law at Duke University, said the Navy appears to be on a direct collision course with state and federal efforts to protect the right whale.

Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/September-2008/whale-of-a-problem-for-new-sonar-training-site.html