Counting Deaths, Not Damage: What the US Navy’s Environmental Review Leaves Out

Hawaiian advocacy groups are criticizing a recent environmental review by the US Navy, arguing it misrepresents the damage caused by training practices like sonar testing to the local marine ecosystem.

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The US Navy’s most recent environmental review reports that only two whales will be injured or killed by Navy ships training in Hawaiian waters over the next seven years. This headline has circulated widely on social media and online articles over the past few weeks, often framed as reassuring when compared to the population of whales present in Hawaii’s waters. 

But the Navy’s claim that their actions will not pose a significant threat to local marine mammal populations has been contested by several local advocacy groups, given that several of these species are already endangered and cannot bear much more harm. 

Danger Behind the Numbers

While the headline focuses narrowly on direct fatalities, the report itself acknowledges widespread harm caused by routine exercises carried out in Hawaiian waters.

Buried deeper within the report is a far more troubling realization. The Navy’s readiness exercises, which include sonar testing and underwater explosions used as test runs for future military operations, are expected to cause more than three million instances of behavioral disruption, hearing loss, or injury to marine mammals in Hawaii alone. These impacts extend across whale, dolphin, and Hawaiian monk seal populations, all of which have cultural significance and rely on sound to survive in the ocean. 

Local Advocates Say the Impacts Are Sugar-Coated 

“If whales are getting hammered by sonar and it’s during an important breeding or feeding season, it could ultimately affect their ability to have enough energy to feed their young or find food,” said Kylie Wager Cruz, a senior attorney with the environmental legal advocacy non-profit Earthjustice. 

Cruz’s concerns resonate with many local environmental advocates, who dedicate their lives to protecting Hawaii’s marine ecosystems. For them, the Navy’s review fails to fully capture the true scope of harm facing vulnerable species across the Pacific, particularly off the coasts of Hawaii and California. 

Sonar exposure is known to have numerous consequences for marine mammals, especially whales. Hearing loss interferes directly with echolocation, decreasing whales’ ability to find food, navigate across the ocean, and care for their young. When energy reserves are drained and feeding patterns are disrupted, it is no surprise these animals are weakened over time. A whale that later dies from starvation or exhaustion may not be counted as a sonar-related death, even though the exposure initiated the chain of harm.

A Death Count That Ignores Delayed Harm

The Navy’s fatality estimates overlook indirect and delayed deaths, which are among the most scientifically documented consequences of sonar exposure. Sonar does not have to kill a whale instantly to be deadly. Mid-frequency sonar is known to cause hearing loss and disorientation, which disrupt echolocation, the ability whales and dolphins depend on to find food and navigate. When an animal can no longer find its own food, it slowly starves. Its death is due to starvation or other natural processes, even though sonar experiments initiated the harm that led to the animal’s death.

This accounting gap allows the Navy to report minimal impacts while ignoring long-term ecological damage.

Scientists and conservation groups have come up with ways to reduce these risks, including slower vessel speeds, which commercial shippers like Matson have already adopted during whale season. As national security and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive, the Navy would experience less scrutiny from these groups by adapting similar measures to reduce their environmental impact. 

Unequal Protections Across Hawaii’s Waters

Local conservation groups also expressed frustration that the Navy continues to downplay the broader consequences of its training activities, particularly when vessel collisions already kill dozens of endangered whales in the Pacific each year. 

Environmental law requires federal agencies like the Navy to disclose all potential impacts to marine mammals, including those caused by testing. Yet the Navy has repeatedly sought expanded allowances to conduct exercises off Hawaii’s coasts. While it has pledged to limit its most intense sonar use in designated mitigation areas around the Big Island and Maui during humpback whale breeding season, this accommodation does not do much to protect other species. 

The Navy’s own report identifies 11 biologically important areas across the Hawaiian Islands that are critical to spinner dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, and other whale species. Despite acknowledging these ecosystems, the report does not extend the same sonar restrictions that will be used in humpback whale breeding season. Bottlenose dolphins alone are expected to experience disruptions to breeding, feeding, and other vital behaviors more than 310,000 times, alongside muffled hearing and heightened collision risk.

A Model Failing to Capture Reality

The Navy’s claim that its testing will result in just one or two whale deaths over seven years relies on population estimates that have already proven unreliable. In fact, a research paper from 2011 revealed that certain species of whales could not maintain normal foraging and vocalizing routines when exposed to Navy sonar testing at much lower levels than the Navy predicted to cause harm to their population. 

In 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity estimated that Pacific training exercises would harm marine mammals 12.5 million times in just five years. That number has since ballooned to 35 million estimated harms over seven years across Hawaii and California waters. To suggest that this level of disturbance somehow translates into only a single fatality requires ignoring both past underestimations and the inherent uncertainty of military testing. 

Testing, by definition, assumes controlled conditions. It does not and cannot account for system failures, misfires, navigational errors, or unexpected animal presence in dynamic ocean environments. Hawaiian waters are biologically dense and culturally significant ecosystems. Treating them as statistically manageable variables minimizes real risks to their populations.

A Call to Action

Hawaii should not be asked to accept millions of documented harms in exchange for reassurances that collapse under scrutiny. Environmental laws exist to prevent exactly this kind of trade-off. The Navy must revise its environmental review to require stronger mitigation, expanded protected zones in biologically critical areas, and meaningful reductions in sonar use and vessel speeds.

Protecting Hawaii’s marine life does not weaken national security, it strengthens it by upholding environmental responsibility and public accountability. Policymakers and the public must demand transparency grounded in ecological reality. Hawaii’s waters are not expendable, and its marine life cannot be reduced to margins of error.