Offshore Seismic Blasting Remains A Serious Concern

OCEAN CITY — While the Obama administration announced in March it was abandoning plans to open a vast swath of ocean off the mid-Atlantic coast as close as 20 miles from the resort for offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, the threat of seismic air gun blasting to find those very reserves remains a real threat.

A collective sigh of relief was heard from coastal communities in mid-March when the administration reversed course on a controversial plan to lease a vast area totaling nearly three million acres off the mid-Atlantic coast to offshore drilling for oil and natural gas reserves. The federal government’s reversal came after strong opposition to the proposal from local, state and elected officials, environmental advocacy groups and hundreds of coastal communities along the east coast whose economies rely on clean oceans, healthy natural resources, tourism and commercial and recreational fishing.

However, left on the table was a federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) proposal to allow private sector companies to utilize potentially harmful seismic air gun testing to determine what oil and gas reserves lay beneath the ocean floor off the mid-Atlantic coast. Seismic air guns shoot blasts of sound into the ocean floor, each of which has been equated to 100,000 times more intense than a jet engine’s sound.

Last July, BOEM released its final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for seismic air gun testing in the mid-Atlantic, essentially opining the potential rewards outweigh any possible impact to marine life. While there are still several hurdles to clear before seismic air guns are blasted into the ocean floor off the mid-Atlantic coast, the PEIS represents the federal government’s intention to move forward with the practice despite an outcry of opposition from nearly all corners.

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