CEO Note: Seismic Airguns Threaten the Atlantic - Oceana USA
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March 11, 2014

CEO Note: Seismic Airguns Threaten the Atlantic

Several weeks ago, I wrote to you about how the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is planning to allow seismic airguns off the East Coast, despite the obvious harm they will cause marine life, including whales and dolphins.

Last week the government released its environmental impact statement of seismic airgun surveys in the Atlantic. I joined actress and activist Kate Mara to write an editorial for the Huffington Post explaining how seismic airguns will harm marine wildlife and coastal economies. I’d like to share it with you here, and urge you to take action against this harmful and unnecessary technology.

Seismic Airguns Will Turn the Atlantic Into a Blast Zone
By Kate Mara and Andrew Sharpless
 
The North Atlantic right whale is the rarest of all the large whales and one of the most endangered species in this country. Already threatened by ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear, they will soon face yet another danger. Last week, the government announced that it is planning to allow seismic airguns in the Atlantic, which will greatly harm marine life and local economies.
 
Towed behind boats, seismic airguns map oil and gas deposits beneath the seafloor by shooting pulses of compressed air through the water every 10 seconds for days, or even weeks on end. But the deafening noise is also extremely harmful to marine life, including whales, dolphins, and even fish. Right whales and other marine mammals use sound to navigate, locate food, and communicate—seismic blasts could disrupt these behaviors, or even deafen these animals. The government estimates that at least 138,500 dolphins and whales will be injured, or possibly killed, by seismic airguns if they are allowed in the Atlantic.
 
Seismic airguns will also harm the many fisheries which we rely on for food. Airgun noise can displace commercially valuable species of fish across vast areas, decrease catch rates for coastal fisheries, and kill fish eggs and larvae.
 
Despite these dangers, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is planning to allow energy companies to use seismic airguns to search for offshore deposits along a massive stretch of the East Coast, from Delaware to Florida. On February 27, BOEM released an environmental impact statement (EIS) detailing how they plan to mitigate the impacts of airguns on right whales and other species.
 
The EIS includes several prudent mitigation measures—time-area closures for right whales and loggerhead sea turtles, acoustic monitoring and visual surveys, and shut-down procedures for when a marine mammal is present. But it won’t be enough.
 
Even with these measures in place, seismic airguns will still harm wildlife, commercial and recreational fisheries, tourism, and coastal recreation—jeopardizing more than 730,000 jobs in that fall within the blast zone. And if this testing is followed by offshore oil drilling, we risk another disastrous spill on the magnitude of the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The five states along the Gulf are still reeling from this catastrophe, dredging oil from their wetlands and watching depleted fish stocks struggle to recover from the spill. We are simply not prepared to drill safely without better technology—Deepwater Horizon will happen again.
 
Until better technologies exist, both seismic airguns and oil rigs should be kept out of the Atlantic Ocean. While we’re glad that BOEM included measures to protect right whales, and other marine life, we shouldn’t be considering seismic airguns in the first place. We need smart investments in the Atlantic’s most valuable resource—its health.

For the oceans,
Andrew Sharpless
Chief Executive Officer