FORT BRAGG, CA., 9/23/26 — The Navy and Coast Guard want to keep training with sonar and explosives off the North Coast into the 2030s, and the public has until Oct. 19 to weigh in. Anyone who wants to do that in person will have to head up to Washington state.
The two services released a draft environmental study Sept. 4 of what the Navy calls Northwest Training and Testing. It covers offshore waters from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Northern California, the inland waters of Puget Sound and a canal near Ketchikan, Alaska. It’s the second update to a study first issued in 2015. There are two in-person open houses, in Silverdale, Wash., on Sept. 22 and Everett, Wash., on Sept. 23. Two live online meetings follow on Zoom, Tuesday, Sept. 29 at 5 p.m. and Wednesday, Sept. 30 at 6 p.m. The links will go live on the project website shortly before each start time, according to the Navy’s news release. Questions for those sessions can be sent in through the website until Sept. 28.
Questions asked at the online meetings don’t count as formal comments, the Navy’s notice says. Formal comments must be received online or postmarked by 11:50 p.m. Oct. 19, according to the Navy’s notice.
What happened in Fort Bragg
The Navy held an open house on the last update to the study at Dana Gray Elementary in Fort Bragg in May 2019. It drew 118 people, the largest of the eight meetings the Navy held that spring in Washington, Oregon, California and Alaska, according to the Navy’s summary report on that round. Eureka drew 70. Everett and Silverdale, the two cities with in-person meetings this year, drew 25 and 32. Total attendance at all eight was 340.
The Navy’s report lists what people in Fort Bragg raised that night. The list includes objections to the open-house format, questions about whether training would happen directly off the city’s coast and requests “for the Navy to not return to Fort Bragg.”
Fort Bragg was on the Navy’s schedule in earlier rounds, too. Federal Register notices list a Town Hall meeting in March 2012 and a Redwood Coast Senior Center meeting in March 2014, each set for the day after a session in Eureka. In December 2010, for an earlier version of the training study, the Navy scheduled a session at Pentecost Hall at Rep. Mike Thompson’s request, according to a notice posted on Thompson’s House website.
The Mendocino Voice asked Navy Region Northwest’s public affairs office on Thursday, Sept. 17 why no Northern California meeting was scheduled this year and whether one is being considered. A spokesperson, Liane Nakahara, said in an email Friday morning that she would try to get answers by the afternoon, bur had not answered by publication.
None of the training or testing is planned off Mendocino County. The offshore training area runs south from Washington and stops at 40 degrees north latitude, a line the Navy’s 2015 study says “corresponds to the northern boundary of Mendocino County.” The draft also says that off the coasts of Oregon and California, training happens only beyond 12 nautical miles from shore. That puts the waters off Fort Bragg, Mendocino and Point Arena outside the training area. But the gray, humpback and blue whales that pass the Mendocino Coast each year swim through the training zone.
The Navy says the current proposal is mostly a continuation. Sailors and Coast Guard crews would keep practicing anti-submarine, mine, surface, air and electronic warfare at sea, and the Navy would keep testing new systems, including unmanned vehicles and sensors. The draft says planned mid-frequency sonar use is “comparable to what is currently authorized.” The in-water construction it describes, replacing array towers and installing cables and hydrophones, is in Washington’s Dabob Bay and the Alaska canal, not off California.
The Coast Guard is leading the study jointly with the Navy for the first time, because its own at-sea training is now included.
Navy predicts no marine mammal deaths but behavioral changes and hearing loss expected
The Navy’s computer model predicts no whale or dolphin deaths from sonar or explosives over the seven years the study covers. It does predict that animals will be disturbed and will lose some hearing, most of them for a time. For the fin whales that range from California to Washington, the draft estimates roughly 1,400 cases of disturbed behavior and 1,100 cases of temporary hearing loss over the seven years. For one of the humpback populations that migrates along this coast, it estimates about 3,400 cases of disturbed behavior and 5,400 of temporary hearing loss. It also predicts permanent hearing damage in far smaller numbers, five cases for those fin whales and nine for those humpbacks. The Navy calls the overall effect on marine mammals “less than significant.” More than 99% of predicted effects are behavioral reactions or temporary hearing effects, the Navy’s fact sheet says.
Those figures don’t include ship strikes. The draft puts the chance of a Navy vessel hitting at least one whale between 2027 and 2034 at 32%. The Navy is asking federal regulators for permission for its vessels to strike one large whale over that period. The Coast Guard is asking for three.
Those regulators are at the National Marine Fisheries Service, which will do its own review before deciding whether to issue a new seven-year permit under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The current permit expires Nov. 8, 2027. The Navy expects to finish the study next summer and make a decision that fall.
The Navy says it is consulting with the California Coastal Commission under the federal Coastal Zone Management Act. The commission sent comments last winter, and Pacific Fleet staff briefed it by video conference in January, according to a Navy report on those early comments.
That first comment round ran from Dec. 5 to Jan. 19 and drew 338 comments, 212 of which appear to be copies of the same form letter, the report says. California responders on its list include the Coastal Commission, the Environmental Protection Information Center, the Lost Coast League and a Sonoma County climate group. No Mendocino County agency, city or tribe is on the list. The Navy advertised that round in the Fort Bragg Advocate-News on Dec. 11, 18 and 25.
A printed copy of the draft is supposed to be available at the Fort Bragg Branch Library on Laurel Street, one of three California libraries on the Navy’s list. The other two are in Eureka and Arcata. The full draft, a fact sheet and a recorded presentation are on the project website.
Comments can be filed online here. The online form takes 4,000 characters, with attachments up to 20 megabytes. Comments can also be mailed to Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Northwest, Attn: NWTT SEIS/OEIS Project Manager, 1101 Tautog Circle, Room 102, Silverdale, WA 98315-1101. Everything submitted becomes part of the public record.
It is mindboggling to me that the Navy thinks it’s of” no consequence” that the mammals inhabiting the Pacific ocean lose their hearing and have behavioral disturbances! The whales are suffering! This is insanity!