On January 3 2008, a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the toughest set of restrictions ever imposed on the U.S. Navy's use of mid-frequency sonar off the Southern California coast as part of a protracted court battle to protect whales and other marine mammals from underwater sonic blasts. The order was the first time the judge has spelled out specific rules the Navy must follow to avoid a court-imposed ban on training missions with a type of sonar that has been linked to the death and panicked behavior of whales and dolphins.

U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ordered the Navy to refrain from using the powerful submarine-hunting sonar within 12 miles of the coast, an area heavily used by migrating gray whales, dolphins and other marine mammals. She also ordered that the Navy spend an hour before it starts any training mission searching for marine mammals in the area and that it continues using shipboard observers and aircraft to monitor for whales and dolphins while the sonar is in use. If any marine mammals are spotted within 2,200 yards of a ship using sonar, the Navy will have to cease its use immediately. In her 18-page order, Cooper said the Navy's proposed strategy of slowly reducing sonar power and then shutting it off when whales or dolphins come within 200 yards "is grossly inadequate to protect marine mammals from debilitation levels of sonar exposure."

Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Navy spokesman, said despite the care the court took in crafting its order, the navy does do not believe it struck the right balance between national security and environmental concerns. In addition to the 12-mile buffer along the coast, the judge forbade the use of mid-frequency active sonar in the Catalina Basin, an underwater canyon between Santa Catalina Island and the Navy-owned San Clemente Island, because it's an area known to have a high density of whales. But the judge refused to bar the Navy from conducting exercises off the Tanner and Cortez banks, and the Westfall seamount - undersea mountains that tend to attract whales. Nor would she set any restrictions on operations at night or in the fog or other times of low visibility, when spotting marine mammals may prove difficult. Instead, she opted for a more rigorous effort to keep watch for whales, including using passive acoustic monitoring to listen for whale clicks, chirps and songs, especially for those of deep-diving beaked whales, which are particularly sensitive to sonar activities. These mysterious whales have washed ashore injured or dead after naval exercises using mid-frequency sonar in the Bahamas in 2000 and the Canary Islands in 2003.

In August, Cooper issued a temporary injunction banning all training exercises off Southern California waters until she could sort out the merits of the lawsuit. The Navy took the case to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which instructed Cooper to narrow her injunction to specific safeguards the Navy could adopt to continue its training missions while the legal issues are thrashed out in court.

A spokesperson for the Marine Connection comments “The decision may be a blow to the Navy but is a victory for dolphins and whales and a step in the right direction, the charity is delighted with this outcome”.