Following the president’s executive order to open the Atlantic to offshore drilling, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is set to permit five companies to begin seismic airgun blasting—an old but controversial technique for detecting reserves of oil and gas. Ships will tow an array of 24 to 36 cannons behind them along with streamers of underwater microphones. The cannons create explosions by releasing pressurized gas, while the microphones detect the echoes of these detonations to pinpoint petroleum deposits beneath the ocean floor.

The pushback from Congress has been similarly un-polarized. Don Beyer, a Democratic representative from Virginia, and Republican Frank LoBiondo from New Jersey recently introduced a bill to the House that would ban seismic testing. (A similar Democrat-led bill has been introduced in the Senate.) And last week, Beyer, together with Republican John Rutherford from Florida, sent a letter to Zinke “urging an immediate halt to the permitting process.” It was signed by a bipartisan group of 103 representatives.

“The Republicans on the letter aren’t a bunch of back-benchers no one’s ever heard of,” Beyer says. “It’s been really encouraging that a lot of them have lined up with us. The science keeps helping us.”

“We are absolutely bipartisan in support,” he adds. “There might be some pockets of resistance from businesses who are willing to put partisan politics above even their local economies. But you can go up and down the coast, and the vast majority of businesses will say this is crazy. Why would we want to blast away at our marine life?”

Read the source article at The Atlantic