Melissa Ross
Jacksonville is the only Florida city selected by ocean scientists up and down the Eastern Seaboard to raise the alarm about seismic testing.
“We’ve tried to pick one coastal city in each state since there is enormous concern about this in coastal communities,” said Michael Jasny, director of Natural Resource Defense Council’s Marine Mammal Protection Project.
An upcoming open house on the city’s Southside is part of a larger push by ocean scientists worldwide to pressure President Barack Obama to stop planned oil and gas exploration off the Atlantic Coast.
The seismic blasts that it requires would have “significant, long-lasting and widespread impacts on the reproduction and survival of threatened whales and commercial fish populations,” according to an NRDC news release.
As if to support their concern, on Wednesday the administrator overseeing a BP fund to compensate people and businesses claiming they were harmed by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill said more than $5 billion has been paid out.
The coastal community meetings in Jacksonville and other locales will feature information stations and experts from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. People attending will be able to provide handwritten or electronic comments on-site.
“People are rightly concerned about the dangers of offshore oil spills, but seismic blasting is likely to have a terrible impact on Atlantic sea life before the first well is even drilled,” Jasny said.
He cites a letter sent by to the president by 75 scientists from Cornell, Duke, the New England Aquarium, Stanford, the University of North Carolina and other U.S. and international institutions. In it, they write that the seismic blasts have “an enormous environmental footprint.” One example of the potential harm: airgun noise is loud enough to mask whale calls over thousands of miles.
Because whales depend on sound waves to communicate, feed, mate and travel, the blasting can disrupt the reproduction and feeding of blue whales and other endangered whales “over vast ocean areas,” the letter says. It expresses special concern for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, of which only 500 remain.
The blasts also “could have potentially massive impacts on fish populations,” according to the letter.
Seismic surveys are used by oil companies to find oil and gas deposits below the ocean floor.
Nine applications for seismic blasting have already been filed, covering most of the Atlantic Ocean continental shelf from Delaware to Florida, along with deeper waters farther out to sea.
The pushback against the testing has increased since the Obama administration’s announcement that offshore oil and gas drilling will be allowed in the region for the first time in more than 30 years.
Opposition to offshore drilling has mounted in Florida. More than a dozen governments along the state’s east coast have passed resolutions in opposition to geologic exploration and offshore drilling.
On the other hand, energy advocates are upset about Florida’s overall absence from the federal plan to begin conducting offshore oil and natural gas exploration.
Which begs the question: Why do an open house in Jacksonville?
“Oil spills don’t respect boundaries,” Jasny said. “Even if there is no offshore drilling off Florida’s Coast, the Deepwater Horizon disaster showed us how seriously coastlines can be damaged when the current moves the oil onto beaches in multiple states.”
