US Navy Sonar Questionable

By Skylar Mabe

The Navy and several environmental groups reached an agreement Friday allowing the service to use a powerful form of sonar during military exerciases under way near Hawaii. The accord ends a brief court battle that the Navy had said could threaten national security.

At issue was whether the so-called midfrequency sonar, which blasts strong sound waves under water in hopes of detecting foreign submarines, causes harm to whales and other marine mammals.

It will also have to limit the sonar's use to areas ore then 25 nautical miles from Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument.

The legal squirmish was touched off a week ago when the Pentagon, in an effort to ensure the Navy's ability to use the sonar during the war games, gave the service an interim national security exemption from the Marine Mammal Protection Act.


But on Monday a federal district judge in Los Angeles, granted the environmental groups a temporary restraining order, declaring that the Navy's failure to look closely at the environmental effects of the sonar was an "arbitary and capricious" violation of another federal statute, the National Environmental Policy Act.


Joel Reynolds, lawyer for the plaintiffs, The Natural Resources Defence Council, said there was scientific consensus, including a study by the International Whaling Commission, that the sonar could cause, "a wide spectrum of injury, from behavioral change to mass standing death [of whales]."

The exercises, in which the Navy had planned to begin using the sonar this Thursday, are known as Rim of Pacific or Rimpac and involve military units from the US, Canada, Britain, Austalia, Japan, South Korea, Chile and Peru.

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