Slow-mo
ving, hulking ships crisscross miles of ocean in a lawn mower pattern, wielding an array of 12 to 48 air guns blasting pressurised air repeatedly into the depths of the ocean. The sound waves hit the sea floor, penetrating miles into it, and bounce back to the surface, where they are picked up by hydrophones. The acoustic patterns form a threedimensional map of where oil and gas most likely lie. The seismic air guns probably produce the loudest noise that humans use regularly underwater, and it is about to become far louder in the Atlantic. As part of the Trump administration’s plans to allow offshore drilling for gas and oil exploration, five companies have been given permits to carry out seismic mapping with the air guns all along the Eastern Seaboardfor the first time in three decades. In the first year of the newly approved exploration, more than 5 million of these huge explosions would occur all along the United States’ eastern coastline.
“Researchers saw a complete absence of life around the air gun,” said Michael Jasny, director of marine mammal protection for the Natural Resources Defence Council, one of several environmental groups suing the federal government in an effort to stop the seismic surveys.
So great is the growing din in the world’s oceans that experts fear it is fundamentally disrupting the marine ecosystem, diminishing populations of some species as the noise levels disturb feeding, reproduction and social behaviour. A coalition of environmental groups has filed suit against the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, claiming the agency is violating several federal laws protecting wildlife, including the Endangered Species Act, by allowing the blasts. And governors from 10 states have protested the offshore drilling decision and are seeking to join the legal action.
The companies involved in the exploration disagree sharply with the claims of harm. “More than 50 years of extensive surveying and scientific research indicate that the risk of direct physical injury to marine mammals is extremely low,” Gail Adams-Jackson, vice president of communications for the International Association of Geophysical Contractors, said in a statement.
By Jim Robbins|NYT News Services|
