The U. S. National Marine Fisheries Service has issued an Incidental Harassment Authorization to SAExploration, Inc. to take, by harassment, small numbers of marine mammals incidental to a marine 3-dimensional (3D) ocean bottom node seismic survey program in the Beaufort Sea, Alaska, during the 2014 Arctic open-water season.
The U.S. Marine Mammal commission was the only commenter on NMFS’ proposed IHA for SAExploration. One MMC comment was: “that NMFS verify that SAE will conduct passive acoustic monitoring before, during, and after seismic activities.”
NMFS’ response to this comment was:
