The Obama Administration approved on Friday the use of seismic testing off the Atlantic coastline to detect for oil and gas reserves and update its 40 year old geological surveys.

In announcing the decision, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said the testing would be conducted using deep-penetrating and high-resolution seismic surveying, electromagnetic surveying, gravity surveying, remote-sensing surveying, geological and geochemical sampling.

"After thoroughly reviewing the analysis, coordinating with Federal agencies and considering extensive public input, the bureau has identified a path forward that addresses the need to update the nearly four-decade-old data in the region while protecting marine life and cultural sites," said Walter D. Cruickshank, Acting BOEM Director. "The bureau's decision reflects a carefully analyzed and balanced approach that will allow us to increase our understanding of potential offshore resources while protecting the human, marine, and coastal environments."

The testing area will be 20 miles to 430 miles offshore in a swathe from Delaware to Orlando, Florida. BOEM has prohibited any testing during November to April when marine life is mating, breeding and birthing. BOEM said energy companies need the data as they prepare to apply for drilling leases in 2018.

"It's like a sonogram of the Earth," said Andy Radford, a petroleum engineer at the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association in Washington, D.C., told The Associated Press. "You can't see the oil and gas, but you can see the structures in the Earth that might hold oil and gas."

Environmental groups are protesting the decision say it is the first step to transforming the mid-Atlantic to Southern Atlantic coast towards heavy industry, and a move away from fisheries and tourism, and will threaten marine life.

"Opening vast stretches off the East Coast to oil and gas has no place in an otherwise historic agenda to combat climate change," said Michael Jasny from the Natural Resources Defense Council first reported by The Associated Press ahead of the announcement.

Advocates for Clean Ocean Action in New Jersey, while not in the catchment area of the proposed new surveys, recently filed an amicus brief for a preliminary injunction sought by New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection against Rutger's University who planned to conduct seismic testing off the coastline in the state. The testing would have involved "the use of two four-eight air-gun subarrays operating alternatively with a multi beam echo sounder and sub-bottom profiler, and acoustic Doppler current profiler. [A]ir-guns would fire every 5.4 seconds, 24 hours a day, for a 30 day period set to commence on June 3, 2014."

In their brief they argued scientific literature shows seismic activity can have behavioral effects with whales temporarily stop vocalizing essential to brewing and feeding, marine animals avoid the areas which causes them to be moved off migration pathways and navigational routes. The New Jersey Third Circuit of Appeals denied the injunction appeal this week.

"This is a very disappointing decision for marine life and for those who depend on a clean and healthy ocean. It is upsetting that the blasting of our ocean be allowed to continue during the legal challenge. COA is confident that the State will eventually prevail in court because the State and its citizens were denied important opportunities to review the proposal," said Cindy Zipf, executive director Clean Ocean Action. "However, that decision will come too late to save a single creature from this project."

BOEM says it conducted 15 public hearing along the mid and south Atlantic region and received more than 122,000 comments on its programmatic environmental impact statement publication.

"This is a gift to oil and gas industry -- an industry that is not a big tax payer. This does nothing for the environment or local people who do pay taxes and who make a living off the ocean through fishing and tourism," said Ken Gale, radio host of Eco-Logic and presenter on The Environment TV.

"The ocean is still a bigger mystery to us than the moon; there is much more to know and less money spent on research. All cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) use sonar, some over long distances, for eating, mating, communication, navigation, the way a dog uses smell, they use sound. It is so advanced that scientists seen how much the basilar membranes has evolved in the bone structure of marine animals. It is important to fish as well, not all species, and they don't hear for long distances as whales do. It's amazing how noisy a coral reef is, often in frequencies we can't hear."

The decision by the Obama Administration is also seen as political as it will appeal to Republicans, but the plan avoids the political well-organized shorelines of the Northeast.