Supreme Court Sides With U.S. Navy in Dispute Over Sonar Use, Whale Safety

"It is gratifying that the court did not accept the Navy's expansive claims of executive power, and that two-thirds of the injunction remain in place," he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the U.S. Navy in a dispute over the use of sonar in training exercises. Environmentalists had argued that the sonar harms whales.

(ABCNews Photo Illustration)

In court, Kendall had argued that there is scientific evidence that mammals such as the endangered beaked whale suffer irreversible damage when they are exposed to the intense underwater noises that sonar produces.

"The reason that happens, especially to beaked whales, is because they dive for very long periods of time," Kendall told the court. "If they come up too fast, they get the bends so there is evidence of -- when they do the necropsies of these beaked whales, they find hemorrhaging, the embolisms in various parts of the bloodstream and many, many deaths."

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Kendall said the sound intensity of the sonar, correcting for water, would compare to a jet engine in the courtroom multiplied 2,000 times. He said the Navy is "perfectly able to train" with some restrictions that would protect marine life.

But the court said that while it "does not question the seriousness" of the environmentalists' concerns, the use of sonar "is the only reliable technology for detecting and tracking enemy diesel-electric submarines."

The Navy has conducted training exercises off the Southern California coast for more than 40 years. It argues that its current training exercises have taken on added significance since the United States has been engaged in ongoing hostilities.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined in dissent by Justice David Souter, wrote that the "likely harm," including 170,000 behavioral disturbances and 8,000 instances of temporary hearing loss among mammal life, "cannot be lightly dismissed, even in the face of an alleged risk to the effectiveness of the Navy's 14 training exercises." ABC News' Luis Martinez contributed to this report.