The Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and the Gulf Restoration Network contend that the Department of the Interior and other federal agencies irresponsibly granted requests by oil companies to conduct seismic surveys in order to locate undersea sources of petroleum. The companies use powerful airguns towed behind ships.

 

According to the lawsuit, “marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins, and many species of fish have adapted to rely primarily on sound for their foraging, breeding, avoiding predators, navigating, and communicating—in short, for virtually every vital life function. They are therefore particularly harmed by intense underwater noise.”

 

“Dozens of powerful seismic surveys are conducted each year by the oil and gas industry throughout the Gulf of Mexico’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS),” stated the Center for Biological Diversity in a prepared statement. “These surveys use some of the loudest underwater sounds generated by humans to explore oil and gas reserves below the ocean floor. Day and night, for days and months at a time, large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico are inundated with high-intensity sound pulses 250 decibels or more at their source, billions of times more intense than the noise levels known to compromise feeding, breeding and basic communication in endangered species of whales.”

 

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

U.S. Fisheries Service Accused of Removing Protection of Right Whale by Changing Its Name (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Navy Asks Permission to Harass Whales (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)