The decision whether to go ahead with seismic tests for oil and natural gas off the Southeast coast has been further delayed, without a deadline reports Charleston's The Post and Courier.
Oceana.org was focused and critical to get this delay. Other environmental groups and activists, including many Daily Kos members, have publicly commented and raised hell to the powers that be on how catastrophic this plan would be to life in the Atlantic ocean and the communities that depend on them. The cities of Carolina Beach, Bradley Beach, Redbank, Caswell Beach, Nags Head, Cocoa Beach, St. Augustine, Cape Canaveral and St. Petersburg have all voted against seismic blasting off their coastlines.
The momentum and fury of coastal residents up and down the Eastern seaboard was generated after the U.S. government had released it's final proposal to allow the use of controversial seismic airguns to look for oil and gas deposits deep below the ocean floor in an area twice the size of California, stretching from Delaware to Florida. The final proposal allowing the catastrophic plan to take place was released2 months earlier
Oceana has exposed this eco-crime and has not been letting up ever since. They deserve our support, please like them on Facebook and join forces to stop the crimes against the ocean.
Seismic airguns are used to find oil and gas deep underneath the ocean floor. Airguns are so loud that they disturb, injure or kill marine life, harm commercial fisheries, and disrupt coastal economies. These dynamite-like blasts—which are repeated every ten seconds, 24 hours a day, for days and weeks at a time—are 100,000 times more intense than a jet engine. Seismic airgun testing currently being proposed in the Atlantic will injure 138,500 whales and dolphins and disturb millions more, according to government estimates.
Seismic airguns are towed behind ships and shoot loud blasts of compressed air through the water and miles into the seabed, which reflect back information about buried oil and gas deposits. These blasts harm marine mammals, sea turtles, fish and other wildlife.
Impacts include temporary and permanent hearing loss, abandonment of habitat, disruption of mating and feeding, and even beach strandings and death. For whales and dolphins, which rely on their hearing to find food, communicate, and reproduce, being able to hear is a life or death matter.
Airgun blasts kill fish eggs and larvae and scare away fish from important habitats. Following seismic surveys catch rates of cod and haddock declined by 40 to 80 percent for thousands of miles.
In addition to being devastating for marine life, seismic airguns are the first step toward dangerous and dirty offshore drilling with associated habitat destruction, oil spills and contribution to climate change and ocean acidification.
Oceana is working to halt the use of seismic airguns, and stop the expansion of dangerous offshore drilling.