Scott: 

This opportunity is this coming this Thursday. The next closest location is Newport on Tuesday, March 20 (see http://bit.ly/xMmehe).

Editor:

I just found out that tomorrow, the U.S. Navy will hold an "open house" 5-8p at the Wharfinger Building in Eureka to inform and hear from coastal committees about the environmental impacts of training activities in the Pacific from Shelter Cove west of Garberville to the Strait of Juan de Fuca at the Canadaian Boarder and includes the Olympic National Marine Sanctuary and the Keyport Range Complex, which covers areas of Hood Canal as it pursues renewed environmental authorization to hold training activities (i.e., sea battles) in this 162,000 square nautical mile area from the coastline west to about 250 nautical miles offshore.

The major concern in a similar effort in 2009 is the use of high-impact sonar. It may have a nice ping to it when it reveals a deadly threat to a ship full of sailors, but the intensity and pitch of its sound pulses can injure and disorient whales. This is not a bunch of tree-hugger's fantasies. In 2004 , about 200 melon-headed whales ended up on the shores of Hawaii in the wake of a seven-nation Pacific Rim training exercise.

A sense of the scale from the 2009 plan proposed the deployment of 886 mid-frequency sonar buoy's, 631 other active-sonar devices, 34 high explosives, 110 "bomb dummy units", 57 missiles, 50,000 gun shells, 117,000 rounds of machine gun fire, 231 flares, and nearly 500 targets (including 120 dumpster-sized heavy-duty inflatable red bags called "killer tomatoes"). What the Navy actually used is classified information.

Data drawn from past public comments suggest that, when it comes to whales and sonar, some-humans will come to listen, some to ask questions, and some to give the Navy an earful. Find more information at http://bit.ly/wkcp6M Join me in Eureka Thursday or submit your comments on line at http://bit.ly/wlvgEU

Gordon Clay
TheCitizensWhoCare.org