Boom! Oil-exploring seismic blasts could soon disrupt whale territory

[unhappycamper]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/09/18/3386510/boom-oil-exploring-seismic-blasts.html?sp=/99/261/



A dolphin and its baby race along a commercial fishing boat in the crystal clear waters of the Atlantic Ocean 10 miles off the coast of Atlantic Beach, NC in 2007.

Boom! Oil-exploring seismic blasts could soon disrupt whale territory
By Sean Cockerham
McClatchy Washington Bureau
September 18, 2014 Updated 12 hours ago

NAGS HEAD, N.C. — As early as next spring, the boom of seismic cannons will sound under the Atlantic Ocean as the first oil and gas exploration allowed off the East Coast in three decades gets underway.

While federal officials and the oil and gas industry characterize the exploration as benign, Nags Head Mayor Bob Edwards said he’s terrified about what the intense sound waves can do to dolphins and endangered North Atlantic right whales, of which only 500 remain.

“I just can’t understand how anybody would propose something that’s going to be just a rape of the East Coast, endangering whales and dolphins and turtles and fish,” he said.

The seismic surveys are done with compressed air guns that blast as loud as a howitzer under the sea, repeated every 10 seconds or so for weeks at a time. Echoes from the blasts are used to produce three-dimensional maps that help company geologists figure out whether sub-sea rock formations are likely to contain fossil fuels worth drilling.