scheduled to be shut down.

The US Naval Facility at Tudor Hill in Southampton is part of a $16-billion worldwide US Navy listening complex called the Sound Surveillance System, or Sosus.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that intervention this month from US Secretary of Commerce Mr. Ron Brown prevented a Navy team from destroying part of the system around Bermuda.

The article also quoted Capt. Harold Williams, director of undersea surveillance at the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, as saying the current plan was to "turn off'' the Bermuda site, which is fully automated and unmanned.

Capt. Tim Bryan, Commanding Officer of NAS Bermuda, said yesterday that Capt.

Willliams' comments were accurate.

Tudor Hill, along with the NASA facility at Cooper's Island, was earlier identified by Capt. Bryan as one of two sites the Navy might want to keep when it quits Bermuda in September of 1995.

"It is not scheduled to be shut off yet,'' Capt. Bryan said of Tudor Hill.

"We are awaiting word from Washington as to when that would be.'' Automating the Tudor Hill site had reduced annual operating costs to $1 million from $18 million, but the Navy was looking for more savings, Capt.

Williams was quoted as saying.

But a few federal officials were trying to pool money from various agencies to save much of the system for scientific use and as a hedge in case East-West tensions resumed.

The Defence and Commerce departments were to begin a cost-sharing study in July, the New York Times said.

Since the submarine threat of the former Soviet Union subsided, federal officials and scientists had used the system of more than 1,000 underwater microphones to track whales, spy on illegal fishing, monitor earthquakes and volcanoes, and look for shifts in ocean temperatures.

"It's ridiculous to throw away a $16-billion investment when it's got so many uses for mankind,'' Adm. James Watkins, a former Chief of Naval Operations who is now president of the Washington-based Joint Oceanographic Institutions told the newspaper.

Capt. Bryan told The Royal Gazette that sounds picked up at Tudor Hill were automatically sent by satellite to Virginia.

He felt there was civilian value to parts of the Navy Sosus system.

The military value was not what it once was, due to the lack of enemy submarines, he said. Even if world tensions increased, Capt. Bryan believed the Bermuda listening post was old and would need substantial upgrading.