March 29, 2019 — Business leaders, elected officials, students, environment organizations, and members of the community gathered in Cape May last week for a rallying cry against the expansion of offshore oil and gas activities. We denounced the Trump administration’s plans to lock our beautiful Atlantic Coast into a future of dangerous oil exploration and dirty spilling. The message from the Jersey beachfront crowd rang clear: our oceans are not for sale.
In November of last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) authorized five companies to harm marine life, like dolphins and whales, while blasting the Atlantic in pursuit of oil and gas. These companies will use seismic airguns to look for oil in a stretch of the Atlantic that’s double the size of California – all the while producing some of the loudest manmade sounds in our oceans. This extremely pervasive noise is so loud it can be heard underwater up to 2,500 miles away.
Companies are poised to repeatedly blast their airguns from the mouth of the Delaware Bay – off our very own Cape May – down south to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Since sound from these airguns is so intense and travels so efficiently underwater, ecosystems up the entire Jersey Coast will feel the effects.
For many marine animals, sound is their most important sense. They use it to find food, avoid predators, look for mates, navigate, and communicate – essentially every function necessary for survival. It’s no wonder that noise from the exploration activities authorized by NMFS will cause harm to marine life throughout the Atlantic.