Seismic Airguns: "100,000 times more intense than a jet engine"

Image: Woods Hole Science Center

The price we pay for using seismic airguns to search for oil and gas under the ocean floor is the stunning, or death, of ocean life. When do we finally say no? As Oceana reports:

"Seismic airguns are towed behind ships and shoot loud blasts of compressed air through the water and miles into the seabed, which reflect back information about buried oil and gas deposits. These blasts harm marine mammals, sea turtles, fish and other wildlife.

Impacts include temporary and permanent hearing loss, abandonment of habitat, disruption of mating and feeding, and even beach strandings and death. For whales and dolphins, which rely on their hearing to find food, communicate, and reproduce, being able to hear is a life or death matter."

Quote: "Ocean bulldozers" - enormous nets weighed down with rollers - scrape the ocean floor

I mentioned earlier that those rollers have the power to push aside twenty-five-ton boulders. They pulverize everything in their path, crushing deep coral, grinding boulders to rubble, wiping out populations of old fish and other creatures, which will take generations to recover, and leave behind a flat, lifeless moonscape of gravel and sand.

Ted Danson with Michael D'Orso
Oceana