A coalition of leading environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the federal government on Tuesday to stymie seismic airgun blasting in the Atlantic. Photo: iStock
Leading environmental groups including the Surfrider Foundation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana, and others are suing the federal government in an effort to prevent seismic airgun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean.
In April 2017, the Trump Administration issued an executive order enumerating an “America-First Offshore Energy Strategy.” The order called for “expedited consideration of Incidental Harassment Authorizations, Incidental-Take, and Seismic Survey Permits,” reversing an Obama-era decision to deny permits for such activity.
Five oil and gas companies have since been given the green light to use seismic airgun blasting, an oil and natural gas exploration technique that maps deposits by firing loud airgun blasts every 10-12 seconds, to survey the region off the coast of the Atlantic from New Jersey to Florida.
Studies show seismic blasting is especially harmful to marine life. Dolphins and whales use sound for communicating, mating, and feeding, and the blasts can disrupt this behavior if not deafen the animals. According to Oceana, a group suing the administration, the noises can travel as far as 2,500 miles from the source in some cases.
Beyond the effects of seismic blasting itself, environmental groups point out that it’s also the first step in identifying oil and natural gas deposits for extraction – which comes with its own set of environmental concerns.
On Tuesday, a group comprised of the South Carolina Conservation League, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, NRDC, North Carolina Coastal Federation, Oceana, One Hundred Miles, the Sierra Club, and the Surfrider Foundation filed a lawsuit in South Carolina. According to the complaint, “the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it issued Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHAs) in late November.”
“Those permits authorize five companies to harm or harass marine mammals while conducting seismic airgun blasting in an area twice the size of California, stretching from Cape May, New Jersey to Cape Canaveral, Florida,” the complaint explains.
“Seismic testing can be harmful and even fatal to the hundreds of thousands of dolphins, whales and other marine animals in the Atlantic,” said Angela Howe, legal director at the Surfrider Foundation. “This litigation is aimed at protecting the Atlantic Ocean from the destruction of seismic testing, which is the first step of proposed offshore oil drilling. We will continue to stand up to protect our marine environment and our ocean ecosystems for this and future generations.”
The governors of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire have all expressed their opposition to seismic airgun blasting off their respective coastlines. As have 240 East Coast municipalities, an alliance of 42,000 businesses and 500,000 fishing families, and more, according to a release.
What’s more, according to an economic report conducted by Oceana, there is approximately two-years’-worth of oil and a single year’s-worth of natural gas in the Atlantic seafloor. The cost associated with seismic blasting and extraction, on the other hand, is 2.6 million jobs and $180 billion per year added to the US GDP.
“The Trump administration has steamrolled over objections of scientists, governors and thousands of coastal communities and businesses to enable this dangerous activity. Now it wants to steamroll the law,” said Michael Jasny, director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “Allowing seismic blasting at this scale in these waters is not consistent with the laws that protect our oceans.”
