"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 blasts are repeated every ten seconds, 24 hours a day, for days and weeks at a time. Seismic airgun testing currently being proposed in the Atlantic could injure 138,000 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."
- Oceana
A recent study revealed that "Blasts from a single seismic airgun caused a two-to-threefold increase in dead adult and larval zooplankton within 24 hours." And that's just ONE airgun in one 24 hour period, the Trump administration could permit up to five companies to begin seismic blasting in the Atlantic by the fall! If the companies do get permits they will be blasting 20 -40 airguns, simultaneously, virtually nonstop for months on end! Imagine the damage it could do!
But the populations of the various zooplankton are not the only ones in danger. The Federal government, by its own estimates, admits that airblasting in the Atlantic would kill nearly 140,000 marine mammals. Whales and dolphins all succumbing to the confusing, ear-popping and invasive airguns that could soon bombard the Atlantic.
