Tuesday, January 6, 2009

U.S. Navy, conservationists reach $16 million sonar settlement

Environment News Service: After years of litigation, the U.S. Navy and marine mammal conservation groups have reached a settlement agreement to resolve a worldwide challenge to the Navy's testing and training with mid-frequency active sonar. The settlement agreed on December 27 resolves a lawsuit filed in 2005 by five groups and one individual, challenging the Navy's lack of environmental review prior to deploying mid-frequency active sonar during training exercises carried out around the world. The Navy uses sonar to detect the presence of submarines.

The Navy acknowledged that this type of underwater sonar can be deadly to marine mammals, causing permanent injury and temporary deafness. Mid-frequency sonar can emit continuous sound above 235 decibels, an intensity roughly comparable to a rocket at blastoff. "This agreement commits the Navy for the first time to a program of environmental review and public transparency in its sonar training in an effort to shield whales and other vulnerable species from harmful underwater noise," said Joel Reynolds, senior attorney and director of the marine mammal program conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the plaintiff groups….


A right whale breaching, shot by NPRW4ever (Jim Scarff), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

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