Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte, however, said yesterday that the Navy may use the sonar to detect enemy submarines during wartime and must be allowed to train with it beforehand.
She ordered both sides back to court Nov. 7 to begin work on a plan that would balance environmental and military concerns.
The case stems from a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental organizations that sought to stop the Navy from training in most of the world’s waters with a powerful sonar system the groups maintain can harm marine mammals.
“It is undisputed that marine mammals, many of whom depend on sensitive hearing for essential activities like finding food and mates and avoiding predators, and some of whom are endangered species, will at a minimum be harassed by the extremely loud and far-traveling … sonar,” Laporte wrote. However, she said the Navy showed the technology “is likely to significantly increase our ability to timely detect very quiet submarines.”
Joel Reynolds, an NRDC attorney, said the group wants the sonar tests carried out far from coastlines, and away from mammals’ feeding, migrating and breeding areas. A Navy spokeswoman said only that the decision was being reviewed. Earlier this week, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the National Science Foundation to stop firing high-intensity sonic blasts into the Gulf of California because they harm whales.
The sonar at issue can send signals hundreds of miles and as loud as 215 decibels — the equivalent of standing next to a twin-engine F-15 fighter jet as it takes off. The Navy was planning to begin testing the system throughout the world and had agreed to exclude polar waters and areas within 12 miles of any coast.
Environmentalists sued, pointing to a different sonar used by the Navy in March 2000. Hours after it was deployed, at least 16 whales and two dolphins beached themselves on islands in the Bahamas. Eight whales died and scientists found hemorrhaging around their brains and ear bones, injuries consistent with exposure to loud noise.
“The possibility that the stranding in the Bahamas, and other strandings, could foretell similar injuries … is very troubling,” the judge wrote.
