SEISMIC BLASTING
Seismic Surveys for Oil
Offshore oil and gas exploration uses deafening seismic surveys that generate the loudest human sounds in the ocean, short of those made by explosives. Seismic testing involves blasting the seafloor with high-powered airguns (a kind of powerful horn) every 10 seconds and measuring the echoes with long tubes to map offshore oil and gas reserves. These blasts disturb, injure and kill marine wildlife around the clock for years on end.
In marine mammals, the blasts — which reach more than 250 decibels and be heard for miles — can cause hearing loss, disturb essential behaviors like feeding and breeding, and mask communications between individual whales and dolphins. The blasts also reduce catch rates of commercial fish.
While a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management factsheet describes the technology as “state-of-the-art computer mapping systems,” seismic testing is actually a blunt-force weapon introduced in the 1920s that was augmented by computer analysis starting in the 1950s.
Expanding offshore drilling into the Atlantic and eastern Gulf creates a higher risk for oil spills, more polluted beaches and waters, more industrial equipment, and fewer pristine places for wildlife and people. Extracting and burning the 4.72 billion barrels of oil and 37.51 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that the federal government estimates is under the Atlantic would also significantly worsen the climate crisis.
So there's no good reason to be subjecting ocean life to these deadly seismic blasts.
The oil industry seeks federal permits to do seismic testing even in areas where offshore drilling is currently prohibited, including the Atlantic Ocean and eastern Gulf of Mexico.
During the Trump administration, efforts to expand offshore oil and natural gas exploration in federal waters created not only long-term risks from climate change and oil spills, but also more immediate threats to ocean life. Department of the Interior environmental studies have estimated that seismic proposals under review would cause more than 31 million instances of harm to marine mammals in the Gulf and 13.5 million harmful interactions with marine mammals in the Atlantic, killing or injuring 138,000 dolphins and whales — including nine endangered North Atlantic right whales, whose calving grounds are off Florida's coast. Hundreds of communities along the East Coast have expressed their opposition to seismic testing and the offshore drilling that it could lead to.
The Center has been working hard to save marine mammals from deadly and disturbing seismic surveys since the early 2000s, and we're still at it. Learn more about seismic testing and other forms of ocean noise now.
