NRDC Activist — Critically endangered Rice's whales may be the most endangered whale on the planet, with fewer than 100 of them left in existence. And they live only in the Gulf of Mexico.

Just days ago, BOEM held Lease Sale 259, auctioning off key areas of Rice's whale habitat to the fossil fuel industry, opening the door to seismic airgun blasting and offshore drilling.

The dynamite-like blasts of seismic airguns — a precursor to offshore drilling used to search for oil and gas deposits — would hinder Rice's whales' ability to find food, stay healthy, and communicate with their calves. Just one spill, like the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, could decimate millions of marine creatures including the critically endangered Rice's whale, threaten the health and livelihoods of those of us who live and work along the coasts, and coat entire coastlines with a layer of crude oil that would take years, if not decades, to clean up.

On top of everything else concerning about dirty and dangerous offshore drilling, leasing in the habitat of an endangered whale is a risk we can't afford to take.

Tell BOEM to protect critically endangered Rice's whales and reject "business as usual" oil leasing and stop auctioning off our oceans at the cost of our climate, ecosystems, and communities — before it's too late.

Favoring dirty energy over the most vulnerable whales in the world is the worst kind of business as usual, especially at a time when we should be phasing down our use of fossil fuels, not increasing them.

This is just the latest in a worrying trend of offshore drilling, and NRDC is staying in the fight on all fronts:

• If the massive Willow oil drilling project greenlit last month in Alaska wasn't bad enough, continued new leasing like this would also lock in decades of pollution and carbon emissions, fueling the climate crisis when we need to be doing everything we can to minimize it.
• NRDC and a coalition of local and national environmental groups have sued the Biden administration to stop the reckless and unnecessary leasing in Cook Inlet to the oil industry without first considering the environmental harms that will result to protect the two-thirds of Alaska's residents who live in the Cook Inlet watershed.
• And now in the Gulf of Mexico, we're suing to challenge the insufficient environmental review of Lease Sale 259 and the harm that it will cause to critically endangered Rice's whales.

This is business as usual that we can't afford. We need to continue to generate public outrage to let the oil and gas industry know that we're watching, and we will be fighting back. Will you join us?

Urge BOEM to reverse course on Lease Sale 259 that would lock our children and future generations into depending on dirty energy while also putting one of the most endangered whales in the world at risk of extinction.

Thank you for taking action. Together, we can help protect critically endangered Rice's whales and our communities from needless dirty and dangerous offshore drilling.

Sincerely,

Valerie Cleland
Senior Ocean Advocate, NRDC