Dear NRDC Activist,

In its final days in office, the Trump administration pushed through a regulation that could have grave consequences for marine mammals and our climate.

Fossil fuel companies are now approved 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 underwater every 10 seconds for days, weeks, and even months on end.

The noise the airguns generate is deafening to whales and dolphins, impairing their ability to find food, communicate with each other, navigate, and breed. These seismic blasts are as loud as bombs repeatedly going off in their home — a home they can't escape.

The Trump administration's dangerous seismic testing regulation threatens countless marine mammals, including the critically endangered Gulf of Mexico whale, and keeps us shackled to dirty fossil fuels — and it must be reversed.

Join me in calling on Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to stop seismic testing for new leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

Among the animals 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. According to the Trump administration, the new regulation would allow the oil industry to disrupt, and in some cases injure, Gulf whales and dolphins more than eight million times over the next five years.

But it's not just marine mammals 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 worsening climate crisis.

An alarming new report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this month found that the impacts of climate change are happening faster and more severely than once thought. More drilling in our oceans will only continue our addiction to oil and exacerbate an already dire situation.

Last month, NRDC and partner groups sued the National Marine Fisheries Service challenging the Trump-era regulation approving seismic testing in the Gulf.

We'll see this fight through to the end, but we need your help to create a wave of public pressure to push Secretary Raimondo and the Commerce Department to reverse the Trump administration's damage now.

Please speak up and tell the Biden administration to block seismic testing for new leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

Thank for your support!

Sincerely,

Michael Jasny
Director of Marine Mammal Protection, NRDC