Greenpeace Greece urges scrapping of offshore gas drilling project because of impact on whales, dolphins

Greenpeace has urged the government to abandon a deep-sea gas exploration project in the Mediterranean, citing newly published research to argue that its impact on endangered whales and dolphins would be greater than previously believed.

The environmental group said a survey last year in waters off southwestern Greece and Crete that are earmarked for exploratory drilling found sea mammals were present there in the winter, as well as the summer, as had been already established.

The area being explored for gas largely overlaps the Hellenic Trench, which includes the Mediterranean's deepest waters, at 5,267 meters. It is a vital habitat for the sea's few hundred sperm whales, and for other marine mammals already threatened by fishing, collisions with ships and plastic pollution.

Current environmental safeguards in place for the project limit prospection to the...