Navy Limits Sonar Testing in Southern California and Hawai’i

It also disrupts communication among marine animals, said experts. “This settlement shows the way to do both, ensuring the security of U.S. Navy operations while reducing the mortal hazard to some of the most majestic creatures on Earth”.

On September 14, settlements of two cases filed by environmental groups challenging the US Navy’s testing and training activities off the Hawaiian and southern Californian coasts got approval from a federal court. Judge Mollway ruled in favor of environmentalists, saying that the Navy had greatly underestimated the death toll of its training regimen. Around 11,000 serious injuries off the East Coast and 2,000 off Hawaii and Southern California is estimated.

Such activity has proved harmful to large marine animals that communicate through sonar waves, such as whales and dolphins, because, as David Henkin, attorney for the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice, said in a prepared statement, “If a whale or dolphin can’t hear, it can’t survive”. Henkin said they challenged the Navy’s plan because it would have unnecessarily harmed whales, dolphins, and endangered marine mammals. A pair of lawsuits against the Navy have been settled today with the signing of an agreement that will limit where and how vessels are allowed to use sonar in training exercises. Activists say this finally affords vulnerable whales and dolphins some much needed safety. The institution’s sonar and its affect on marine life has been controversial for over a decade and in 2011 a San Diego explosives exercise killed four dolphins. In Hawaii, refraining from sonar and explosives on the eastern side of Big Island and north of Molokai and Maui will protect Hawaiian monk seals and toothed whales.

The conservationists argued that the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, failed to investigate possible alternatives that could result in less harm to animals. According to the organizations, certain actions utilized by the ships of the U.S. Navy negatively affects the conditions of marine animals. This type of sonar was developed specifically to detect submarines as the older high-frequency (7KHz and up) sonar had insufficient range to find these threats.

The NRDC, along with several other environment groups, has urged the Navy to develop safer methods of conducting its explosive training and other such activities since the 1990s.