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TAKE ACTION: Whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals threatened by seismic blasting

Steve Mashuda--Earths

6-21-17

Federal agencies have determined that seismic airgun surveys for oil and gas deposits in the Atlantic Ocean will harass and harm marine mammals, including critically endangered right whales, hundreds of thousands of times.

But now that President Trump has ordered agencies to reconsider the Obama administration’s five-year ban on offshore drilling in the Atlantic, oil companies are already seeking permits for this harmful and unnecessary activity.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is taking public comments on the “incidental taking” of marine mammals during these seismic surveys until July 6. Our irreplaceable wildlife and coastal communities are too important to become another casualty of polluter profits. Tell NMFS to deny these dangerous seismic survey permits.

Seismic airgun arrays are towed across vast swaths of ocean and fired every 10-12 seconds up to 24 hours a day for months on end. Each of the blasts can exceed 230 decibels—louder than a rocket launch and many hundreds of times louder than the noise level that would cause pain in the human ear. This sound can travel up to 2,500 miles underwater—the distance from New York City to Los Angeles.

Flooding the ocean with noise from seismic surveys is devastating for marine life. For marine mammals like whales and dolphins, which depend on their sense of sound to communicate, navigate and find prey, this industrial noise can be devastating. Deafening a whale is the equivalent of killing that whale--it just happens more slowly. And even exposures that don’t cause this level of physical harm disrupt these animals’ behavior and can drive them away from areas vital for feeding, breeding or raising their young.

Five companies are seeking permits to conduct this harmful seismic airgun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean from Delaware to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Together the proposed surveys will blast more than 200,000 square miles of these biologically rich waters 24 hours a day for six months or more. In many cases, the same areas will be surveyed multiple times. The NMFS draft permits would allow these activities to harm or harass whales and dolphins over 350,000 times in the span of one year, with nearly 2,000 of the exposures loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss.

At a time when our oceans are already showing the stress of climate change, it just doesn't make sense to harm whales, dolphins and other ocean wildlife in the service of drilling for more oil we can't afford to burn.

Let’s urge NMFS to protect whales and other marine life and deny the requests to allow seismic airgun surveys in the Atlantic Ocean!

Thanks for your help,

Steve Mashuda

Managing Attorney

Oceans Program

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