Posted on 08/29/2003 12:11:46 AM PDT by kattracks
The United States Navy may no longer test a powerful sonar system needed to protect their ships against enemy submarines because the noise it makes might possibly harm fish.
That's the ruling by a federal judge in - where else? - San Francisco - who apparently believes that the alleged welfare of marine life is more important than the national security.
U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte ruled Tuesday that the Navy and the National Marine Fisheries Service had not considered alternatives that could protect whales and other marine life from the loud sounds created by the sonar, which some have compared to what one would hear standing next to the space shuttle at take-off, according to Australia's Sidney Morning Herald.
Because she acknowledged that the Navy needs the sonar system to detect modern super-quiet submarines, the judge did not order a complete ban on the sonar, telling the Navy and so-called environmentalists to work together on a plan that would then become part of a permanent injunction.
Laporte claimed that the injunction would not hamper the Navy during times of war or heightened threat, but said that in peacetime she wanted to balance national security needs with environmental safeguards for "whales, dolphins and other magnificent mammals that still live in the ocean".
"Unfortunately, the populations of many of these creatures, once abundant, have shrunk, and some are on the verge of extinction," Judge Laporte wrote. "Other precious species, like certain salmon and sea turtles, also are in peril of disappearing from the earth forever."
The Herald reports that scientists say that bursts of intensive sound can tear the delicate air-filled tissues around mammals' brains and ears, resulting in hemorrhaging and death, but the Navy counters that its newest sonar system, which uses low-frequency waves, has never been implicated in the mass strandings in which injured whales beach themselves.
The Navy says it wants to install the low-frequency active sonar in 75 per cent of the world's oceans. They say the system is designed to "light up" enemy submarines with acoustics, in a manner similar to the way a floodlight can illuminate an intruder in a dark backyard.
According to the Herald, the sonar system consists of an array of 18 speakers capable of releasing 215-decibel bursts of low-frequency waves that can travel hundreds of miles underwater before dissipating.
The U.S. Navy has revealed that Russia and other nations have new, highly elusive submarines, and insisted that it needs the sonar to detect such subs in a timely manner to protect U.S. warships.
"Today's ruling is a reprieve not just for whales, porpoises and fish, but ultimately for all of us who depend for our survival on healthy oceans," said Joel Reynolds, senior lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council which has been fighting the deployment since the mid 1990s.
"It recognizes that during peacetime, even the military must comply with environmental laws, and it rejects the blank-check permit that would have allowed the navy to operate [low-frequency] sonar virtually anywhere in the world."
Unfortunately, however, neither Judge Laporte nor the environmentalist wackos recognize the fact that the U.S. is now at war, and national security concerns must trump the welfare of fish and the demands of radical environmentalists.
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