The Obama administration has opened the doors for seismic oil and gas expeditions using air-guns off the Atlantic coast; the activities are expected to have a "moderate" effect on marine wildlife.
"Imagine dynamite going off in your living room or in your backyard every ten seconds for days to weeks at a time," Matthew Huelsenbeck, a marine scientist at Oceana, one of the environmental groups opposing the plan, told National Geographic.
An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) gave recommendations for how to minimize the effects of these activities on the animals that are most vulnerable to them.
The document was encouraged by Southern governors who stressed that offshore drilling could help create jobs.
"The Department and BOEM have been steadfast in our commitment to balancing the need for understanding offshore energy resources with the protection of the human and marine environment using the best available science as the basis of this environmental review," BOEM Director Tommy Beaudreau said in a statement, National Geographic reported.
Fewer than 500 right whales are alive today due to aggressive hunting during the whaling era.
"It's the rarest of the large whales," Huelsenbeck said. "You can consider it the American bison of the sea."
BOEM proposed banning seismic activities during certain periods (between November and April) when these animals frequent the region in large numbers. Many environmentalists argue that even this is not enough the keep the sparse whale population from harm; the ban would only reach up to 20 nautical miles from shore, but new research suggests the whales swim farther away from land than researchers previously believed.
The activities are also expected to interfere with humpback whales, dolphins, loggerhead turtles, and many other species.
"The mid- and south Atlantic is very special," Huelsenbeck told National Geographic. "It's home to an abundance and diversity of marine mammals that's almost unparalleled throughout the world."
