Drilling for oil and gas off the East Coast is off the table through 2022, but seismic testing is not, and conservation groups are waiting to see if they’ll need to continue to fight against the practice.

None of the companies that have sought the seismic permits have withdrawn their applications to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Yet there appears to be little reason to spend money on testing. Estimates for 3D seismic surveys go as high as $40,000 per square mile to blast air guns into the sea floor to find a fuel source.

“We haven’t received any indication yet that they plan to (withdraw),” John Filostrat, of BOEM’s Office of Public Affairs in the Gulf of Mexico Region, which includes North Carolina, said. “They might well just want to see what’s out there.”

As a result, opponents of the testing are in wait-and-see mode, but they’re hoping, and even doing a little planning.

“Now that offshore drilling won’t be considered in the Atlantic for years, there is absolutely no reason to move forward with seismic air gun blasting, which would put our fisheries and marine mammals in harm’s way,” said Claire Douglass, spokesperson for Oceana, the international conservation group that played the most prominent role in the successful fight to get Atlantic drilling out of the 2017-22 offshore energy plan.

But, she added, Oceana is still pondering what to do and is working behind the scenes, talking to federal officials and members of Congress. Some members, including Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican who represents coastal North Carolina, have already opposed the tests.

Currently, eight applications to conduct seismic testing are winding through the federal permitting process. The National Marine Fisheries Service, part of NOAA, is considering issuing Incidental Harassment Authorizations, which allow the vessels certain numbers of takes of marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins.

While there have been reports that NMFS could act within weeks on some of those permit applications, Mr. Filostrat said it’s also possible that those decisions might not be made until summer or even later in the year.

North Carolina has already granted consistency review permits to four companies, which were necessary before NMFS and BOEM reviews could begin. Those permits indicate that the proposals are consistent with the state’s coastal management program, and the reviews are necessary because that program receives federal funds.

In April 2015, the N.C. Division of Costal Management granted approval for federal consistency determinations to Spectrum Geo and GX Technology. That May, the DCM approved CGG Services for seismic surveying, and in June, it approved TGS for surveying.

One other, TDI-Brooks, didn’t submit an application for a consistency determination, but it wasn’t necessary because the firm uses sonar, not seismic guns.

There will be a 30-day public comment period on the IHAs before they go back to the BOEM, which will decide whether to approve the testing permits.

Many of the most prominent marine mammal scientists in the world, including Dr. Doug Nowacek of the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, have argued against seismic testing, which they believe can disrupt the mammals’ communications and alter migration patterns, feeding and, potentially even mating. In some cases, such as the endangered right whale, those things could be devastating to the population.

While Dr. Nowacek said he doesn’t foresee whales and dolphins dying, floating to the surface and washing ashore if the testing occurs, he remains very concerned about the considerable number of incidental takes typically allowed as a part of the practice elsewhere.

He’s especially worried about the right whales, and the fact that although the now-dropped East Coast drilling plan banned wells inside 50 miles of the coast, seismic testing would be allowed within three miles of shore, plenty close enough to cause problems for the dolphins that frolic in our waters.

Dr. Nowacek, a marine ecology and bioacoustics expert, was one of the scientists who urged President Barack Obama not to approve seismic testing in the Atlantic, and also was one of the authors of a paper, published last year in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, that said the need for worldwide monitoring and controls of the tests is becoming more obvious.

The paper said:

?Marine seismic surveys produce intense sound impulses to explore the ocean floor for energy sources and research purposes.

?Environmental reviews of seismic surveys are seldom undertaken at scales necessary to meaningfully assess, mitigate and monitor their impacts.

?Managing exposure of marine animals to these sounds requires additional attention and data.

?Current exposure threshold criteria fail to account for the best available science and the cumulative effects of simultaneous seismic surveys and prolonged, repeated exposures.

?Increasing marine seismic surveys, especially in ecologically sensitive areas, require multi-institutional and international collaboration to effectively manage risks.

?Ocean noise should be addressed by revising an existing treaty on ocean pollution or negotiating a new one that more comprehensively evaluates the associated risks, benefits and procedures.

A key problem, according to Dr. Nowacek, is the arbitrary decibel level the federal government uses to assess the likelihood of a sound or sounds harming marine mammals.

“They say 160 is harmful but 159 is not,” he said. “And each decibel is a magnitude of 10. We know that the bowhead whale, a cousin of the right whale, starts responding at 95 decibels.”

Right whales pass through the area where there is likely to be seismic testing off the Carolinas, Dr. Nowacek said, and they do so after giving birth in waters off Georgia and Florida. The mother and the young stay close in the calving grounds, but not much is known about how close they stay together as they move north. But if they are far enough apart, and their communication is disrupted, the calves’ chances of survival are low, like the chances of any nursing mammal separated from its mother, Dr. Nowacek said.

What’s the chance of that happening? “Is it 50 percent? More?” Dr. Nowacek questioned. “Maybe, maybe not. But we don’t know.”

Ms. Douglass said the bottom line is that “seismic air gun blasting is an extremely loud and dangerous process to search for oil and gas deep beneath the ocean floor. The noise … is so loud that it can be heard up to 2,500 miles from the source.”

Dr. Nowacek also said it’s cumulative, since the different companies would almost surely be blasting the same areas.

Two regional fishery management councils, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, have also expressed great concerns in official letters to BOEM, saying testing would impact benthic ecosystems, fish habitat and fishermen. The councils manage fisheries in federal waters, from three to 200 miles offshore, along most of the East Coast.

Dr. Nowacek, who through his work has close ties to people in companies, doubts the testing firms will proceed, but concedes there’s no way to know for sure.

“It’s hard to imagine the oil companies paying for it, when (Atlantic) drilling is out of the 2017-22 plan and there’s no guarantee it will be in the next plan,” he said. “The (testing) companies could do it on their own, but who are they going to sell it (the resulting data) to?”

Mr. Filostrat said there are some potential buyers – the data can be used to help site offshore wind turbines, to locate sand deposits for mining and beach projects and for pure science – but said oil companies might be interested anyway, because they think in time periods much longer than five or even 10 years. Conceivably, they might pay for the data and then hold on to it until the times change and there is more demand and support for drilling.

Mr. Filostrat said Congress could even mandate that the East Coast be placed back in the 2017-22 plan. The next U.S. president who takes office in January 2017 could also do that, or could simply put it back in the next plan.

Dr. Nowacek, however, isn’t so sure any of that makes good economic sense.

He said that when the Obama Administration announced on March 15 that it was pulling the plug on East Coast drilling, officials noted that even the top estimates of the oil and gas reserves in the one East Coast lease that would have been sold from 2017-22 were generally insignificant, especially in a world so awash in oil and gas that prices have plummeted.

Dr. Nowacek also said if testing is approved by the BOEM, there’s a very good chance that one or more of the big conservation non-governmental organizations, such Oceana or the Natural Resources Defense Council, would go to court to try to stop it. The most likely avenue of the challenge would be those incidental takes.

Ms. Douglass said that while Oceana was grateful the Obama Administration listened to coastal communities on the drilling issue, “I hope they will continue to listen and stop seismic air gun blasting in the Atlantic.”

She said 43 East Coast local governments adopted resolutions opposing seismic testing and 52 adopted resolutions against testing and drilling. Mr. Filostrat said no matter what happens next, the process, so far, has worked well.

“Dealing with the public was good and informative,” he said. “A lot of smart, well-informed and concerned residents made their voices heard. I personally went to at least a dozen public meetings, and the commitment was impressive. In the end, the Interior (Department) Secretary (Sally Jewell) made a tough call.”

The DOI said in its official press release that, “Many factors were considered in the decision to remove this sale from the 2017-2022 program including: significant potential conflicts with other ocean uses such as the Department of Defense and commercial interests, current market dynamics, limited infrastructure and opposition from many coastal communities.”

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