Your Help Is Needed:
The Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary Is in Danger
June 10, 2020
Olympic Park Associates (OPA) asks for your help to protect one of the richest and most diverse marine reserves on the planet.
The ocean we see when we go to the Park’s ocean strip or climb an Olympic mountain needs our help. It’s the ocean where Marbled Murrelets and countless other seabirds feed. It’s 3,000 square miles where salmon, halibut, cod and other fish feed in its rich upwellings. It’s where endangered sea turtles and 29 species of marine mammals, some endangered or threatened, spend part of their lives. Its waves wash the coastal wildlife refuges created by Theodore Roosevelt in 1907.
But the sanctuary is being used by the Navy for destructive warfare training with the blessing of the federal government.
OPA worked to establish the sanctuary in 1992 to prohibit offshore oil drilling and “to protect the Olympic coast’s natural and cultural resources through responsible stewardship.”
However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency charged with protecting the Sanctuary, is determined to sacrifice it to destructive military uses. In 2015, NOAA issued a permit to the Navy allowing the “incidental taking,” or killing, of protected marine mammals during training activities. Now NOAA proposes to broaden and extend that permit for another seven years.
The training activities listed in the Navy’s permit application are for much more than using sonobuoys to detect submarines, as the Navy did during the Cold War. The training activities listed in the Navy’s permit application include explosive detonations, sonar activity, small- and medium-caliber gunnery exercises, firing at targets from aircraft and ships, large-caliber gunnery exercises, missile exercises, and explosive torpedo tests.
This activity alone is enough to be dangerous to the sea creatures of the sanctuary. But it does not end there. These activities leave debris that is difficult to remove. Debris in the ocean is often mistaken as food by a variety of creatures. Ropes, cables, etc., lost during these types of operations end up entangling turtles and a range of marine mammals, causing injury at the least, death at the worst.
NOAA needs to hear from everyone who values the Olympic coast and its bountiful offshore waters that this activity is not acceptable.
Please send your comments to NOAA by July 17, 2020. Ask NOAA to reconsider reissuing this permit that endangers the sea creatures and habitat that have been put into a sanctuary under its administration.
It is also critical to contact your U.S. senators and representatives to ask them to request that NOAA seriously consider the mission of the sanctuary versus the damage that will be allowed by this “taking permit.” Click the links below to see sample messages and to find your Members of Congress; follow the directions on those sites how to contact them.
Click here to see sample comments and where to send them.
Find and contact your senator Find and contact your representative
Click here to see the NOAA Federal Register Document
Thank you for coming to the defense of this splendid National Marine Sanctuary and irreplaceable planetary resource. Read more …