Protect Marine Animals from Seismic Air Gun Blasting
- por: Sierra Club
- destinatário: The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
The Atlantic Ocean is home to a vast and largely undocumented variety of marine mammals, including the extremely endangered North Atlantic right whale – less than 500 of which exist in this world. These are marine mammals that completely depend on their sense of hearing to find food, mates and migration routes. Now, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is allowing seismic air gun blasting that could seriously impair and even kill these magnificent marine animals.
Several oil and gas companies are lined up with proposals to blast deep into the ocean floor looking for oil and gas deposits, a first step in dirty, risky offshore drilling. These companies plan to simultaneously comb hundreds of acres of ocean, their long arrays of seismic air guns blasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for weeks and months on end. In fact, Atlantic seismic air gun blasting, by the Federal government’s own estimates, will injure and kill more than 138,000 marine mammals.
These drilling activities are not only known to kill, injure and maim, but they present tremendous risks to our sensitive coastal environment and our economy. Doubly disastrous is the fact that these pursuits of dirty fossil fuels occur in areas most impacted by climate change. We must protect our precious marine animals and our vulnerable climate.
Tell the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to halt Atlantic seismic airgun blasting now!
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s decision to allowing seismic air gun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean threatens marine mammals and the climate.
Right now several oil and gas companies are lined up with proposals to blast deep into the ocean floor looking for oil and gas deposits. These companies plan to simultaneously comb hundreds of acres of ocean, their long arrays of seismic air guns blasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for weeks and months on end. Suggesting "geographic separation of simultaneous seismic airgun surveys” is ridiculous given the movement and migration of any number of fish and marine animals.
With only 500 North Atlantic right whales left in the world seismic air gun blasting could wipe them out. Atlantic seismic air gun blasting, by the Federal government’s own estimates, will injure and kill more than 138,000 marine mammals. Simply incorporating new scientific information “as it comes available” does nothing to protect these endangered mammals as blasting companies plan activities immediately in 2014.
These drilling activities are not only known to kill, injure and maim, but they present tremendous risks to our sensitive coastal environment and our economy. Doubly disastrous is the fact that these pursuits of dirty fossil fuels occur in areas most impacted by climate change. We must protect our precious marine animals and our vulnerable climate. I urge you to halt all seismic air gun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean.
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Sincerely,
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