Underwater tests
opposed on Kauai

Opponents fear the "boom box"
device could hurt marine life

---

By Anthony Sommer
tsommer@starbulletin.com

LIHUE >> More than 100 Kauai residents turned out at a public hearing last night to protest a new permit for a low frequency sound transmitter to measure the ocean's temperature between Hawaii and the mainland, what opponents term "the boom box."

The hearing was conducted by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, one of many agencies that must approve the program.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego is seeking a conservation district use permit for the underwater cable that links the transmitter offshore of Princeville on Kauai's north shore to the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on the opposite side of the island.

Scripps operated what was then known as the ATOC -- Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate -- Project for three years, ending in 1999. Renamed the NPAL -- North Pacific Acoustic Laboratory -- the program is a continuation of the original study with new funding from the Office of Naval Research.

Those opposed to NPAL are the same opponents who lined up against ATOC. All expressed concern for humpback whales.

Scripps oceanographer Peter Worcester, who has managed the program from the beginning, said extensive research before and during the ATOC program showed no significant impact on whales off the north shore of Kauai. The sound is no louder than humpbacks hear when another whale is singing 100 yards away, he said.

Worcester said the whales swam slightly further from shore and tended to remain underwater slightly longer when the transmitter was on.

Carl Berg, a marine biologist living on Kauai, noted whales swim faster underwater than on the surface and suggested they were staying down longer "so they can get out of the way better."

Jivan Francis Hertzog, who said he works with battered children, said, "My intuition and my heart tells me there is something unnecessary about this testing."

Tom Leonard suggested the program is all a front for the Navy: "The Navy wants to run the ATOC source as an operational communications device."

Judy Dalton, who heads the Sierra Club chapter on Kauai also was opposed. "We're concerned about the probable harm that NPAL activities would inflict upon the marine mammals and other species taking refuge in Hawaiian waters."

There will be another public hearing at 6 tonight on Oahu in the Kalanimoku Building, Room 132.