# Presentation: 077630

## U.S. NAVY RIGHT WHALE PROTECTIVE MEASURES

**Tom Fetherston **
**Navy Representative NEIT **

- BRIEFING TO THE NORTHEAST IMPLEMENTATION TEAM
- 5 APRIL 05

**Notes:**
INSTRUCTOR’S GUIDANCE:

## Section 7 Consultation with NOAA concluded in 1997
Annual message prior to calving season 1 Dec – 30 Mar
Ordnance use limited
Limit east-west transiting through critical habitat and area of concern where practical.
Vessel speed limitations in critical habitat and area of concern.  "use extreme caution and use slow safe speed, that is, the slowest speed that is consistent with essential mission, training and operations.
Operations in critical habitat and area of concern limited to daylight and periods of good visibility, to the extent practicable and consistent with mission, training and operation.
Two lookouts; one Marine Mammal Lookout (trained) required when operating in critical habitat and area of concern. 
Early Warning System (EWS)
Communication and reporting network coordinated through Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility (FACSFAC)
Distributes right whale sighting information to DoD and civilian shipping
Navy also contributes funding for EWS survey flights

- Annual message prior to calving season 1 Dec – 30 Mar
- Ordnance use limited
- Limit east-west transiting through critical habitat and area of concern where practical.
- Vessel speed limitations in critical habitat and area of concern.  "use extreme caution and use slow safe speed, that is, the slowest speed that is consistent with essential mission, training and operations.
- Operations in critical habitat and area of concern limited to daylight and periods of good visibility, to the extent practicable and consistent with mission, training and operation.
- Two lookouts; one Marine Mammal Lookout (trained) required when operating in critical habitat and area of concern.
**Early Warning System**** (EWS)**
- Communication and reporting network coordinated through Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility (FACSFAC)
- Distributes right whale sighting information to DoD and civilian shipping
- Navy also contributes funding for EWS survey flights

-  Right Whale Protective MeasuresSoutheast

**Notes:**
Working from the suggestion of things we need to know on the previous viewgraph, here we present the what we need to do to acquire that knowledge.  
Navy isn’t in a position to visually monitor all our operating areas to determine marine mammal behavior.  The size of our operating areas are too large, and almost all of them are out of sight of land.  A research ship or aircraft would have to be employed, with qualified observers. 
It doesn’t do any good to assimilate behavior data for just one time period, being part of a month or season.  Observations would have to cover all time-periods of interest, in many different weather situations, in both daylight and darkness etc.  
Any possibility Navy has in understanding regional marine mammal behavior will have to come from using one of our key strengths, using underwater acoustics to monitor the animals.  Acoustic monitoring can be automated, it is impervious to weather conditions that degrade visual observations.  It can be used to detect the animals the 95% of the time they are not on the surface of the water.  
Any attempt by Navy to ascertain marine mammal populations (census) by using underwater acoustics will (initially) require visual surveys for ground-truth.  Surveys for this purpose are conducted by NMFS and take advantage of higher order statistics to determine populations of marine mammals in large regions from only a few actual sightings.  
Monitoring and surveys gives us knowledge of where the animals are, and in what strength -- but only for that one moment of time.  Some inference may be made about the relaxation time, the time over which the original survey data is no longer valid, but unless the regional population data is refreshed as the seasons change, estimates of marine mammal populations from earlier survey is only good for a while or over an unknown periodic function. 
The real key, for Navy to coexist with marine mammals in our operating areas, is to be able to “predict” where they are likely to be.  This can only be realized if we understand marine mammal habitat, and can associate it with the physical environment.  It isn’t just knowing where main patches of chlorophyll are, but rather being able to predict where the 2nd or 3rd order of the food chain, the primary food source,  is likely to be.  
Correlating the physical environment with food source will allow forecasting or predicting marine mammal presence, with an estimate of abundance when other related variables such as the overall species population in the larger region are considered.
Other than knowledge of where the marine mammals might be, and in what strength, the other critical path to determining the potential for an impact of some form is thoroughly understanding the animals’ anatomy and physiology.  Certain Navy events may trigger a response within an animal because of the structure of the body, and in some cases produce a natural resonance to underwater sound with certain characteristics.  

## Right Whale Protective MeasuresNortheast

**Fleet message in June 2002**
- Ships transiting Great South Channel and Cape Cod Bay Critical Habitats check into MRS for latest sighting data
- Ships approaching these areas or areas of high concentration “shall use extreme caution and operate at a safe speed”
- Additional speed reductions required when whale is sighted or within 5 nmi of a reported location less than one week old
- Lookout requirements same as Southeast: Two lookouts; one Marine Mammal Lookout (trained) required when operating in critical habitat and area of concern.

## Right Whale Protective MeasuresMid Atlantic

**Fleet message in December 2004**
- Ships transiting between southern New England and northern Florida
- Uses occurrence patterns suggested by NOAA, with six different ports as reference points
- South & East of BI: Sep – Oct / Mar – Apr
- New York / New Jersey: Sep – Oct / Feb – Apr
- Delaware Bay: Oct – Dec / Feb – Mar
- Chesapeake Bay (Hampton Roads): Nov – Dec / Feb – Apr
- North Carolina: Dec – Apr
- South Carolina: Oct - Apr

## Right Whale Protective MeasuresMid Atlantic

**Fleet message in December 2004 (cont)**
- Ships operating within 20 nmi arcs of these ports “***shall use extreme caution and operate at a slow safe speed that is consistent with mission and safety****”*
- Increased vigilance with regard to avoiding vessel / whale interactions along mid Atlantic coast including any ports not specified
- Reiterates previous instructions regarding lookout requirements
- Navy protective measures now cover ships transiting through important right whale near-shore habitats for the entire Atlantic Coast