Free Republic

<p>For more than a year, the U.S. Navy and environmentalists have been in close combat over sonar and its effect on marine mammals. On Monday, their fighting will culminate in court.</p> <p>The Navy says it needs a wide berth to test its controversial, ultra-loud, low-frequency sonar system. The Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, and other green groups counter that the military has to be more mindful of whales and other marine mammals when it runs the tests. Whales depend on their ears to make their way around the oceans, after all. The sonar in question can be as deafening to marine mammals as a Saturn V moon rocket.</p>

A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday prohibited the Navy from testing a powerful sonar system in most parts of the world's oceans, ruling that the booming sounds to detect enemy submarines could "irreparably harm" whales, dolphins and fish. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte ruled that the Navy and the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to consider alternatives that could shield whales and other marine life from these loud sounds, which some acousticians compare to standing next to the space shuttle at takeoff. She ordered military and federal regulators to meet with environmental lawyers and their scientific experts...