The lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service, the latest salvo in a long-running dispute, seeks to prevent the US Navy from performing the exercises in “biologically critical areas” during key hunting and breeding times. Environmentalists say intense sound waves caused by the Navy‘s use of sonar can harm or kill endangered marine animals such as the killer whale and the blue whale.
“As part of these exercises, the Navy will repeatedly broadcast high-intensity sound waves into a vast stretch of ocean, containing some of the most biologically productive marine habitat in the United States,” said the lawsuit, filed by a coalition of environmental activists led by Earth Justice.
The coalition is asking the fisheries service to reconsider a 2010 decision in support of the Navy’s training exercises in waters spanning from California to the Canadian border.
A Navy representative declined to comment on the lawsuit. The National Marine Fisheries Service has not yet received any information on the suit, the agency‘s spokesperson said.
It is doubtful the suit would proceed any father as already in 2008, the Supreme Court sided with the Navy, ruling that sonar training exercises off the Southern California coast could be conducted without restrictions designed to protect marine life, in a defeat for environmentalists.
(아주경제 앤드류 이 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com