The Navy plans to test explosives in the Pacific Ocean and environmentalists are suing in a desperate effort to protect the whales, dolphins, and other wildlife the war games could harm.
War games have been played at the Hawaii-Southern California Training and Testing Study Area for over 45 years and the Conservation Council for Hawaii filed a federal lawsuit last year and submitted a motion last week urging a judge to deem the activity illegal because it violates an animal protection act, the Washington Post reported.
The Navy has plans to use 260,000 explosives and emit a high-frequency sonar for 500,000 hours. Animals who are within about 350 feet of the source of the sound can suffer severe hearing damage that would interfere with their ability to find food.
The testing area hosts nearly 40 marine mammal and five turtle species, Fox News reported. The estimated death toll is "155 whales, dolphins and seals; 2,000 permanent injuries to marine mammals; and 9.6 million incidents of temporary hearing loss and behavior changes in areas like migration, nursing and feeding," Fox News reported.
The Navy argues the estimated damage is being exaggerated, and these types of war games is an important method of combat training.
"Despite decades of the Navy conducting very similar activities in these same areas, there is no evidence of these types of impacts," Kenneth Hess, Navy spokesman, told FoxNews.com. "Bear in mind that the permits the Navy requires to conduct at-sea training and testing can only be issued if our activities will have no more than a negligible impact on marine mammal populations."
Alongside the lawsuit there is a MoveOn.org petition that says the U.S. Fisheries service has ignored warnings and is too quick to issue permits to the Navy.
"Now is the time for us to go directly to the top of the command chain and demand that the President invoke his constitutional powers to stop this senseless slaughter," the petition reads, Fox News reported.
