The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is proposing to allow the oil and gas surveys to harm marine life "incidentally," but with monitoring, reporting and measures to minimize the impacts.
"What they're requesting from us is the authorization to harass marine mammals as they're doing this activity," said Jolie Harrison, chief of permits and conservation at NOAA Fisheries.
Between 1966 and 1988, the energy industry gathered two-dimensional surveys of the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf. But industry officials say new technology could provide much-improved three-dimensional surveys of potential oil and gas deposit areas.
The federal government is considering allowing seismic surveys from just south of Cape Canaveral to Delaware in federal waters, from 3 to 350 nautical miles out to sea, an area about double the size of California. But the geological surveys and impacts could cross into state waters closer to shore as well.
The nonprofit Oceana opposes the tests, pointing to NOAA estimates showing seismic airgun testing could injure as many as 138,000 dolphins, whales and other marine mammals and disturb many more.
“This threat is real and it’s coming fast,” Nancy Pyne, campaign director at Oceana, said in a prepared statement. “Coastal communities have the most to lose, but unfortunately their overwhelming opposition may be ignored by the Trump administration.
"The threats of seismic airgun blasting alone are bad enough, but it’s also the first step to offshore drilling, which could lead to the industrialization of coastal communities and the risk of another BP Deepwater Horizon-like disaster," Pyne added. "The time to protect our coast is now.”
At the time, regulators said the permits were no longer needed because the federal government removed those waters from the list of areas available to be leased for oil and gas exploration between 2017 and 2022, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
But in late April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order expanding offshore drilling and exploration in federal waters. The order calls for a review of the Five-Year Program (2017-2022) for oil and gas development on the Outer Continental Shelf. It also directs the administration to fast-track the permitting for seismic airgun testing.
BOEM recently resumed its permitting process for seismic surveys in the Atlantic. As a result, NOAA is moving forward with the related proposed "incidental harassment authorizations" required before the seismic surveys are allowed.
If approved, the surveys would include measures to minimize harm to marine mammals, including on-board observers to listen and watch for protected marine life to alert operators. There also would be restrictions to eliminate or reduce impacts to sensitive species in their preferred habitats and acoustic monitoring to detect marine mammal underwater vocalizations.
The survey operations would have to shut down when certain sensitive species or groups of animals are observed.
Industry officials said current seismic surveying technology is safe, efficient and scientifically proven, and that further exploration is needed to meet American energy security needs.
The seismic surveys generate maps or models of rock distributions and other geological structures to show potential for oil and gas deposits. But conservation groups worried that the seismic testing could harm marine life, especially endangered North Atlantic right whales.
The deep-penetration seismic surveys are conducted by vessels that tow an array of air guns that emit acoustic energy pulses into the seafloor over large areas and long periods of time, according to BOEM. The air guns penetrate several thousand meters beneath the seafloor.
More than 120 East Coast municipalities, 1,200 elected officials, 35,000 businesses and 500,000 fishing families have publicly opposed offshore drilling and/or seismic airgun blasting, according to Oceana, which has fought against the seismic testing.