Drilling in the Atlantic Ocean (Stephanie DeRubertis)

The Obama administration has announced a proposal to open up coastal waters from Virginia to Georgia for oil and gas drilling. Opening the Eastern Seaboard to oil companies is a prize the industry has sought for decades and is a blow to environmental groups. They argue that the move would put the coasts of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia at risk for an environmental disaster like the BP spill that struck the Gulf Coast in 2010. According to Bob Deans, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, “Opening Atlantic waters to offshore drilling would take us in exactly the wrong direction. It would ignore the lessons of the disastrous BP blowout, the need to protect future generations from the dangers of climate change and the promise of a clean-energy future" (Davenport, 2015). The part of the Atlantic Ocean that is being considered for oil drilling is an ecologically diverse network of soft-bottom shelves and rocky canyons that includes some of most dynamic and mysterious marine systems on Earth. Many of the species living in this part of the ocean have sensitive acoustic systems such as the endangered Fin and Right whales. 

 Endangered North Atlantic right whales travel each fall from their feeding grounds in Canada and New England to calving grounds in South Carolina and Georgia (Welch, 2015). 

The potential to drill in the Atlantic Ocean is related to our course Principles of Ecology because it has a potential to affect the many interconnected parts of the ocean's system. The ocean has many species, some known and many unknown. These species play an important role in creating and maintaining their habitat. Their habitat depends on them and they depend on their habitat. once accident such as an oil spill could put these species in serious harm. According to Steve Ross, a research professor at UNC-Wilmington, in a spill, every part of the ecosystem is potentially at risk—the bottom, the upper water column, the surface, and the shore. There are not a lot of places where you could say, 'We could afford to write that off.' (Welch, 2015)

I believe it's important to realize the consequences of drilling in the Atlantic ocean. We risk having another incident the like BP oil spill, which took a lot of money and effort to clean up the Gulf and species that lived in it. It's also important to recognize that the result of the BP oil spill has not been completely rectified, so it is a consequence that has long lasting effects. Obtaining human resources such as oil is imperative, but protecting our environment should be a priority. If Obama fights against the Keystone Pipeline because of the harmful effects it could have on the environment, than he should fight against drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.  

Work Cited

Davenport, C. (2015, January 26). White House to Propose Allowing Oil Drilling Off Atlantic Coast. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/white-house-to-propose-allowing-oil-drilling-off-atlantic-coast.html?_r=0

Welch, C. (2015, January 29). Could Drilling in the Atlantic Harm Fish, Whales, Turtles? Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150129-ocean-atlantic-offshore-drilling-oil-environment-animals/