The Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released a report yesterday to take US one step closer to oil and gas exploration off the Atlantic coast. It means that companies will be allowed to use seismic airguns that help estimate the amount of oil and gas deposits below the ocean floor. But, it also threats marine life close to its range.

The ocean floor intended to be explored is twice the size of California and expanses from Delaware Bay to just south of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"By failing to consider relevant science, the Obama administration's decision could be a death sentence for many marine mammals, needlessly turning the Atlantic Ocean into a blast zone", said Jacqueline Savitz, Vice President for U. S. Oceans at Oceana.

Savitz added that wildlife along with commercial and recreational fisheries, tourism and coastal recreation will fall into jeopardy because of use of seismic airguns in the Atlantic. This will ultimately risk 730,000 jobs in the blast zone.

The Obama Administration is bustling about the proposals, and not taking into consideration adverse impacts on vital behaviors like mating, feeding, breathing, communicating and navigating by cumulative impacts of repeated dynamite-like blasts.

Savitz said that concerns over threats posed to marine life by the use of seismic airguns are not trivial ones, as these create the loudest manmade sounds in the ocean. These sounds are loud enough to kill small ocean life like small fish, fish eggs and larvae at close ranges. Also, the behavior of large animals, like whales and dolphins, can be disrupted from up to 100 miles away.

Savitz said that it seems as if Obama Administration has learnt nothing from the destruction caused off the coasts of Namibia, Australia and Madagascar by similar testing.

A formal decision to go ahead will enable companies to explore the ocean floor off the East Coast stretching from Delaware to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for oil and gas deposits. The region has been banned for petroleum exploration since the early 1980s.