Fishermen: pings lead to a net loss.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: TAR HEEL TATTLER

Commercial fishermen have a message for the Navy: When Opie tosses that rock in the lake at the beginning of The Andy Griffith Show, it spooks the fish. So imagine what will happen if you bombard them with pings and beeps.

On the heels of a record-low catch in 2005 by the state's struggling fishing fleet, the Navy is proposing a 660-square-mile sonar training range 60 miles off the coast of Swansboro. That worries some folks. "Will fish simply leave the area?" asks Louis Daniel, chief biologist of the state's Division of Marine Fisheries in Wilmington.

The range would be south of Cape Lookout in a region known for grouper and snapper. The state's commercial catch last year, valued at $64.9 million, continues a decline from its $110.6 million peak in 1995. The industry is so close to the brink that experts say the Navy shouldn't create the range without close study. That hasn't been done.

Spokesman Jim Brantley says the Navy assumes the network of underwater cables and microphones would have little impact. But Daniel says scientists know sonar affects whales and dolphins, so there's no reason to suspect it doesn't have similar effects on fish.

The declining catch is a complex problem. Daniel and Sean McKeon, president of the North Carolina Fisheries Association, say it has been caused in...