[CPEO-MEF] Judge issues temporary stay on use of sonar off California coast

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California
Tests on whales delayed
Judge issues temporary stay on use of sonar off California coast
Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer

Citing a need to investigate potential harm to gray whales, a federal
judge halted sonar tests in waters off the California coast Wednesday
just hours before they were scheduled to begin.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti in San Francisco granted a temporary
restraining order stopping the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and
Scientific Solutions Inc. from sending high-frequency sound waves into
the migration path of some 3,000 whales.

At this time of year, the Pacific gray whales swim thousands of miles
from winter feeding near the Bering Sea to breeding lagoons in Baja
California.

The scientists want to test two prototype sonar systems for finding
whales and other marine mammals. Such systems could help commercial
vessels avoid ramming whales, and oil and gas explorers who detonate
undersea explosives might use it to determine if whales are nearby.

But attorney Lanny Sinkin, representing the Channel Islands Animal
Protection Association and other groups, said the high-frequency sonar
could disorient whales and separate calves from their mothers. The
whales are shrinking in number and should be left alone, the association
said.

Conti agreed that the tests could cause irreparable harm to the gray
whales and that the National Marine Fisheries Service might have erred
when it approved three weeks of experiments off the coast of San Luis
Obispo County without first conducting an environmental assessment.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/09/MN184029.DTL

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