While the Navy was staging war games and hunting down "enemy" submarines with sonar off the island of Kauai two summers ago, more than 150 lost and disoriented whales were swimming chaotically in the shallows of Hanalei Bay.
That mass stranding is a scene neither the Navy nor environmentalists want to see repeated as 40 ships from eight countries return to the islands this month for the world's largest international maritime war games.
But the two sides agree on little else, including whether sonar was to blame for that incident.
The dispute highlights a deep divide over how to best protect marine mammals while safeguarding the nation's defenses.
This week, environmentalists won a temporary restraining order to stop the Navy from using a high-intensity sonar during this year's Rim of the Pacific 2006 exercise, which had scheduled sonar use to start today.
The federal judge's order on Monday came just days after the Defense Department granted the Navy a six-month exemption from certain federal laws protecting marine species to allow use of "mid-frequency active sonar." Environmentalists had argued that the exemption was aimed at circumventing their lawsuit.
The Navy's failure to take a "hard look" at the environmental impact of war games was an "arbitrary and capricious" violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, US District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote in granting the restraining order.
Cooper ordered the two sides to meet and attempt to resolve their differences.
She also scheduled a hearing for July 18 on whether to replace the temporary restraining order with a preliminary injunction.
Government lawyers were reviewing the ruling, and the Navy will probably respond soon, said Jon Yoshishige, a spokesman for the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group leading the legal battle, says whales have been stranded and died on beaches worldwide after being exposed to mid-frequency sonar. It says sonar can impair the ability of marine mammals to use their own underwater sounds to navigate, avoid predators, find food and care for their young.
"Whales and other marine life should not have to die for practice," said Joel Reynolds, council senior attorney. "Of course the Navy needs to train, and our lawsuit doesn't seek to prevent them from training. Our goal is simply to require them to incorporate a series of common-sense measures."
The military did not plan to use the mid-frequency sonar inside the national marine monument area that President George W. Bush designated early last month in the waters off the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The war game participants will search for submarines with "passive sonar," which historically has been used during such exercises, Vice Admiral Barry Costello, commander of the US 3rd Fleet, said in a statement late on Monday.
Active sonar locates objects by analyzing sound bounced off them, while passive sonar involves analyzing noises generated by the objects.
The Navy acknowledges active sonar can hurt, even kill, whales, but it says many factors cause marine mammals to become stranded, including pollution, disease, starvation and collisions with ships.
Environmentalists point to the stranding of more than 150 disoriented melon-headed whales in Hanalei Bay two summers ago while the US Navy and its allies were using sonar in a nearby war game.
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