Environmentalists Fight Navy in Legal Battle to Protect Marine Animals in the Pacific Ocean

You wouldn't think that sound could do much damage. After all, it doesn't have the same obvious impact that an oil spill does. And yet sound travels faster and further in water, which means that it can cause severe impacts in oceanic ecosystems. That's why environmentalists are fighting the U.S Navy in court I order to protect animals from war games in the Pacific Ocean.

When war games are conducted by the U.S. Navy, it can involve explosives and military sonar. In the past, it's been shown that this high-intensity sonar has the ability to interrupt natural behaviors of marine animals and even cause them to strand themselves. A relatively recent occurrence in 2008, when about 100 melon-headed whales stranded in Madagascar, was triggered by an acoustic stimuli emitted by a multi beam echosounder system.

"The Navy blankets the entire ocean floor with high levels of noise," said David Henkin, an attorney for EarthJustic, an environmental group, in an interview with Fox News. "[Whales and dolphins] can't communicate, can't feed and in many cases, undergo constant bombardment."

The testing areas where the U.S. Navy is conducting war games are located in American waters off of the coasts of California and Hawaii. These waters are home to nearly 40 marine mammal and five sea turtle species, according to Fox News. Although testing is set to continue through 2018, environmental groups are fighting back.

According to an analysis of the National Marine Fisheries Service, the estimated damage to marine life includes the deaths of 155 whales, dolphins and seals; 2,000 permanent injuries to marine mammals; and 9.6 million incidents of temporary hearing loss and behavior changes.

Currently, the fight is ongoing, and it seems as if the U.S. Navy isn't going to back down.