Navy Loses Second Sonar Case this Week

LOS ANGELES (February 6, 2008) – A federal court in San Francisco today issued a preliminary injunction limiting the area in which the U.S. Navy may train with a low-frequency sonar system, known as Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active sonar (SURTASS LFA), that blasts vast areas of the oceans with dangerous levels of underwater noise. On Monday, another federal court enjoined the Navy’s use of mid-frequency active sonar (a different sonar system) in exercises off southern California.

 

“This order protects marine life around the world from a technology that can affect species on a staggering geographic scale,” said Joel Reynolds, senior attorney and director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at NRDC. “But the court also gives the Navy the flexibility it needs to train effectively. The two decisions on sonar this week affirm that this country can and must achieve our national security aims while protecting the environment.”

 

Holding that marine mammals, “many of whom depend on sensitive hearing for essential activities like finding food and mates and avoiding predators, will at a minimum be harassed by the extremely loud and far traveling LFA sonar,” the Court required the Navy to reduce the system's potential harm to marine mammals by negotiating limits on its use with conservation groups who had sued over its deployment. Requiring that the Navy exclude more areas from LFA use than those currently identified off the coast of the United States and Canada, the Court noted that North America does not have “a near monopoly on the oceanic zones important for marine mammal life as compared to the rest of the world.”

 

The preliminary injunction will place certain additional areas such as the Davidson Seamount, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, the Galapagos Islands, the Great Barrier Reef and the Pelagos (in the Mediterranean) off limits to routine operations. It may also provide a wider coastal exclusion zone than 12 nautical miles in areas of particularly important habitat.

 

The order came in a lawsuit, filed by a coalition of conservation organizations led by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), challenging the Navy’s proposed deployment of the LFA sonar system in over 75 percent of the world’s oceans. Intense sonar noise poses a serious threat to whales, dolphins, and other marine animals. The coalition included the following organizations: International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Cetacean Society International, League for Coastal Protection, and Ocean Futures Society and its president and founder Jean-Michel Cousteau.

 

LFA sonar relies on extremely loud, low-frequency sound to detect submarines at great distances. According to the Navy's own studies, the LFA system generates noise intense enough to significantly disrupt whale behavior more than 300 miles away. Scientists have testified that, under certain oceanic conditions, sound from a single LFA system could be detected across entire oceans.

 

The lawsuit asserts that a permit issued last year by the National Marine Fisheries Service, allowing deployment of the sonar system around the world, violated a number of federal laws including the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

 

Every five years, the Navy must apply for a new permit to use LFA. In 2002, this same court held the prior permit unlawful, after which NRDC and the Navy entered into a negotiated agreement requiring the Navy to restrict testing and training with the LFA sonar system to limited areas in the western North Pacific Ocean, and adhere to other protective measures, including seasonal and coastal exclusions that conservationists believe protect critical whale migrations and habitat. Those restrictions have governed the Navy’s use of LFA sonar for the past five years, and will continue to govern its use pending the parties’ negotiation of new limits based on today’s ruling.