Sonar sounds fine to Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has given the go-ahead for the US navy to use sonar for training off the California coast. The verdict rejects concerns from environmental groups, which argued sonar threatened the lives of mammals such as whales.
The key to the hearing was that the judges involved did not assess whether or not sonar could actually cause such damage. Instead they ruled that the need to fully prepare the navy to protect the country outweighed any environmental concerns.
The Supreme Court hearing overturns a previous judgment in a federal court which limited the navy’s use of sonar, requiring them to turn it off when a marine mammal was seen within 2,200 yards. The navy had also been forced to cut the sonar power by three-quarters when it was in a surface duct, a pocket of water that traps sound waves.
Sonar (which comes from sound navigation and ranging) involves sending out sound waves underwater and tracking them to work out where they have collided with an object, thus giving its location. Environmentalists say sonar can physically damage mammals and one group forecast the planned navy testing would injure 564 animals, with some suffering permanent loss of hearing.
Like most cases that wind up in the Supreme Court, this dispute was less about the particular facts and more about a general legal principle. In this case, the question was whether President George W. Bush had the legal power to grant the navy exemption from environmental laws.
The ruling could therefore act as a significant blow to environmental campaigners dealing with future disputes. However, the verdict did point out that “military interests do not always trump other considerations, and we have not held that they do. “
Five of the nine Supreme Court judges backed the verdict without reservation, with two voting against it completely, and two objecting to parts of the decision.
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November 13th, 2008
I’m betting on the President. There are certain things that need to be done to ensure that events more serious than deaf sea life, regrettable as that is.
November 14th, 2008
Good move SCOTUS! If there were a practical way for a naval force to practice using sonar without actually using it, I would say “save the whales”. But there isn’t. People want a military that will protect us, and its the liberal nut jobs that lost here that are some of the first to pile on any mis-step our military makes, and inorder to be effective you need to practice hearing the reflections.
December 11th, 2008
Unfortunately , deaf sea life means dead sea life. Whales and other cetaceans cannot survive without their echolocation as this is the only way they can detect prey, find a mate and plain be able to “see” in the dark waters of the ocean.
Many of the species being affected are already threatened, even endangered.
There are ways that the navy can minimize the damage they do, however, this has sadly become too inconvenient.
Everything in Nature is connected, for every action there is a reaction. We need to stop and think about consequences of our actions or there will simply be nothing left to protect .