Laserfiche WebLink
Dear Mr. President: <br />Duke <br />U N 1 V, E'R-5 1.,T Y <br />March 5, 2015 <br />We, the undersigned, represent 75 marine scientists united in our concern over the introduction <br />of seismic oil and gas exploration along the U.S. mid-Atlantic and south Atlantic coasts. This <br />activity represents a significant threat to marine life throughout the region. <br />To identify subsea deposits, operators use arrays of high-volume airguns, which fire <br />approximately every 10-12 seconds, often for weeks or months at a time, with sound almost as <br />powerful as that produced by underwater chemical explosives. Already nine survey applications <br />covering the entirety of the region several times over have been submitted within the past six <br />months, including multiple duplicative efforts in the same areas. In all, the activities <br />contemplated by the Interior Department would result in more than 60 million seismic shots. <br />Airgun surveys have an enormous environmental footprint. For blue and other endangered great <br />whales, for example, such surveys have been shown to disrupt activities essential to foraging and <br />reproduction over vast ocean areas. Additionally, surveys could increase the risk of calves being <br />separated from their mothers, the effects of which can be lethal, and, over time, cause chronic <br />behavioral and physiological stress, suppressing reproduction and increasing mortality and <br />morbidity. The Interior Department itself has estimated that seismic exploration would disrupt <br />vital marine mammal behavior more than 13 million times over the initial six -to -seven years, and <br />there are good reasons to consider this number a significant underestimate. <br />The impacts of airguns extend beyond marine mammals to all marine life. Many other <br />marine animals respond to sound, and their ability to hear other animals and acoustic cues in <br />their environment are critical to survival. Seismic surveys have been shown to displace <br />commercial species of fish, with the effect in some fisheries of dramatically depressing catch <br />rates. Airguns can also cause mortality in fish eggs and larvae, induce hearing loss and <br />physiological stress, interfere with adult breeding calls, and degrade anti -predator response, <br />raising concerns about potentially massive impacts on fish populations. In some species of <br />invertebrates, such as scallops, airgun shots and other low -frequency noises have been shown to <br />p`-)5'D- <br />