A U.S. district court in San Francisco approved an agreement on August 12 between conservation groups and the U.S. Navy that outlines the restricted use of low-frequency active (LFA) sonar in order to minimize harm to whales and other vulnerable species. The agreement follows a court injunction from earlier this year in which the same court agreed with a group of organizations led by NRDC that the Navy’s proposed use of LFA sonar in over 70 percent of the world’s oceans was illegal. The permit issued last year by the National Marine Fisheries Service to allow the Navy to deploy the sonar was found to violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and other federal laws. According to the agreement, the Navy can still test and train in defined areas of the North Pacific Ocean, but also must observe special protective measures to avoid interfering with whale breeding and to preserve other critical marine habitat. The sonar in question uses extremely loud, low-frequency blasts to detect submarines, but disrupts whale and other marine mammal behavior from more than 300 miles away. Senior Attorney Joel Reynolds directs NRDC’s Marine Mammal Protection Project.