"Eight Democratic members of Maryland's congressional delegation wrote President Obama Monday urging him to reconsider his administration's plan to allow seismic testing for oil and gas off the mid-Atlantic coast.

In a jointly signed letter, the eight called seismic testing the first major step toward opening the Atlantic Ocean to offshore drilling, which carries the risk of oil spills. But they warned that the tests themselves would be "incredibly harmful to marine mammals and fisheries in the region," generating "dynamite-like" blasts of compressed air underwater that could hurt whales, dolphins and fish.

According to the Department of Interior's estimates, they said, the use of air guns for testing would injure about 138,000 marine mammals and disrupt their feeding, calving, breeding and other activities."

Timothy B. Wheeler reports for the Baltimore Sun August 4, 2014. [2]