| NRDC

In its final days in office, the Trump administration pushed through a regulation allowing fossil fuel companies to search for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico through a process known as seismic testing, where they criss-cross the ocean with high-volume airguns blasting the water every 10 seconds for days, weeks, and even months on end.

The noise from these seismic blasts are like bombs repeatedly going off in marine mammals’ homes — a constant, deafening assault they can’t escape.

And it’s not just whales and dolphins who are harmed by seismic testing. It also injures and kills fish and invertebrates, can dramatically reduce catch rates of some commercial fish, and tightens the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold on our environment during a dire climate crisis.

Call on the Department of Commerce to reverse a dangerous Trump-era regulation allowing fossil fuel companies to search for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico through seismic testing — a process producing deafening underwater blasts that impair whales and other marine mammals’ ability to find food, communicate with each other, navigate, and breed.

Tell the Biden administration to put the Gulf of Mexico off-limits to dangerous seismic testing for new leases.

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Gina Raimondo, U.S. Secretary of Commerce

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Reverse the Trump admin. regulation allowing seismic testing in the Gulf of Mexico

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Dear Secretary Raimondo:

Please act now to reverse the dangerous Trump administration regulation allowing fossil fuel companies to search for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico through seismic testing. It is in direct violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and it only tightens the fossil fuel industry's stranglehold on our environment during a dire climate crisis.

As you know, seismic testing produces deafening underwater blasts that impair marine mammals' ability to find food, communicate, navigate, and breed. Among the species at greatest risk is the Gulf of Mexico whale -- one of the most endangered marine mammals on the planet, with only about 50 remaining and all of them in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of the United States.

The rule would allow the oil and gas industry to disrupt, and in some cases injure, Gulf whales and dolphins more than eight million times over the next five years -- an outcome that makes a mockery of the standards the agency is supposed to uphold. And the species affected by the rule are still decades from recovering from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

You have a responsibility to protect our marine mammals. Please don't auction off their last chances for survival to the oil and gas industry. I urge you to reverse this illegal Trump administration regulation before it's too late.

Thank you.

Natural Resources Defense Council

Take Action to Protect Whales in the Gulf of Mexico from Seismic Testing

Take Action to Protect Whales in the Gulf of Mexico from Seismic Testing

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