Sonar Victory Helps Protect Whales
NRDC wins appeal; Navy must protect marine mammals when using sonar in Southern California
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The U.S. Navy will no longer be able to blast high-intensity sonar into Southern California’s waters without taking steps to protect the region’s whales and dolphins, following a November 2007 federal appeals court decision. The ruling halts Navy training exercises that threaten whales and other marine mammals with deafening sonar until the Navy agrees to take more precautions in its sonar use to protect the aquatic habitat around Southern California and the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that high-intensity military sonar poses a deadly hazard to whales and other precious marine life. Sonar noise has the power to disrupt the migratory paths of whales and has caused hundreds of whale strandings and deaths around the world during the past decade.
Southern California’s waters are particularly rich in marine wildlife, including plentiful dolphins and gigantic, endangered blue whales. They also serve as a migratory pathway for Pacific gray whales. Deep-diving beaked whales appear to be particularly vulnerable to sonar. Scientists believe sonar can prompt beaked whales to ascend too quickly to the surface, causing gas bubbles to form in the blood stream. Similar to the bends in human divers, this rapid ascension can result in dizziness and disorientation, joint pain, internal hemorrhaging and sometimes death. Stranding incidents involving beaked whales and other marine mammals have been linked to military sonar use around the globe, from Greece to the Canary Islands to Hawaii.
As proposed for its Southern California exercises, the Navy’s steps to protect marine habitats from sonar have been “woefully inadequate and ineffectual,” as the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California noted earlier this year.
The Nov. 13, 2007 legal victory – won by an NRDC-led coalition of environmental groups – curtails Navy plans to engage its sonar system in the rich Southern California waters until it can “provide adequate safeguards for protection of the environment,” the court determined.
Precautions the Navy should undertake include avoiding using sonar in key whale habitats and migratory routes; scanning surrounding waters for marine mammals before training; ensuring a large “safety zone” around sonar ships; and lessening sonar intensity when visibility is low.
As NRDC senior attorney Joel Reynolds put it, “We don’t train soldiers to shoot in the middle of crowded city streets, and the Navy shouldn’t practice hunting with sonar in California’s rich ocean habitat without basic, common sense precautions.”
