A few weeks back we submitted comments on the US Navy’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the expansion of Anti-submarine Warfare exercises in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). The DEIS, at some 950 pages was very wordy, though we found it lacking on many counts.
In requesting permission to open this area up to environmental compromise, the Navy is also requires a “Letter of Authorization” (LOA) from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) “to take or harass marine mammals.”
The Navy’s LOA request was also a very wordy document – some 426 pages and reading a bit like a marine natural history textbook. Although all of these words were wrapped around a scant ten day transect survey of the proposed 42,000 sq. mile area. We found this shortcoming exacerbated by the fact that the transects were performed in April to derive estimates marine mammal populations throughout the summer feeding season when they want to do their exercises.
The EPA among others also found the population estimates inadequate so I suspect the Navy will be asked to do a more thorough survey job. But in our comments we also found quite a few more deficiencies in the impact estimates – statistical anomalies and carefully selected (but outdated) research papers used to substantiate their models, for example.
Another troubling symptom of their request is that they mention nothing about the dumping of 10,000 lbs. of toxins each year into the GOA – toxins which are persistent, are known endocrine disrupters, and are increasingly found in high concentrations in the tissues of marine mammals.
Our comments on the GOA Letter of Authorization Request are not particularly light reading, but we believe that they call for much more than just a recalibration of marine mammal population estimates to induce a “green light” from NMFS.
Back in the mid 1970’s Physical Oceanographer Walter Munk was evaluating the acoustical transmission characteristics of the ocean “sound channel” – an isothermal layer in the deep ocean that baleen whales use for long distance communication.
His visionary work in this field developed into a 1991 experiment called the “Heard Island Feasibility Test” which produced the first sound that was literally heard around the world – under water.
The utility of this ocean feature for long distance communication was something Dr. Munk had been advancing ever since 1978 when he proposed a “Sea Net” – an acoustic based ocean internet system that could be used – and heard around the world.
It was along this trajectory that the “Acoustic Thermography of Ocean Climates” (ATOC) was proposed, and then deployed in 1992 despite the misgivings many of us had about projecting very loud sounds throughout the entire Pacific Basin.
ATOC turned out to be relatively benign, but for me it was the harbinger of things to come; where all manner of acoustic signals would be used for research, military, and industrial communication –crowding out the important bio-acoustic signals of marine animals.
The signals and technologies continued to develop, and it was in 2000 with a US Navy proposal of a long distance sonar system called “SURTASS” (which would ensonify the entire ocean with military noise) that the public became aware of the problem.
Public hearings were conducted, lawsuits filed, and demonstrations ensued. It was in the midst of this gambit that the Bahamas Stranding occurred – alerting us all that despite the assurances of our Navy that there was indeed a problem.
It is the continuous association between military operations and marine mammal strandings that has kept the Ocean Noise Pollution issue in the public conversation. While most of this conversation orbits around military sonar and seismic surveys, the exponential advance of other acoustical communication and navigation signals threatens to seriously compromise the marine bio-acoustic habitat.
This link describes one such signal, but there are many others being developed and deployed for research, industrial, and military applications.
While some of these signals may not be pernicious – even while overlapping some odontocete communication and bio-sonar bands, it would be good to know this prior to saturating biologically significant habitat with sounds generated by expensive equipment.
Tools to make this determination is one of OCR’s banner projects which we hope to complete this year pending support from funding agencies.
When we do complete these tools it will be none too soon, as underwater communication systems are springing up like mushrooms all over the sea.
A nicely written article in the Dec. 3 2009 issue Nature reveals how a how a neutrino detection experiment conducted in the Mediterranean Sea by nuclear physicists actually uncovered an abundance of sperm whales.
The experiment involved placing hydrophones down 2000 meters below the surface; the idea being that these hydrophones could detect little pops from neutrinos – sub-atomic particles zipping in from deep space.
Marine Biologists Giovanni Pavan was brought in to help filter out the background noise. What they found though was a proliferation of biological sounds, and a surprising high density of Sperm Whale vocalizations – which ended up shifting the focus of the study to monitoring populations of sperm whales.
The article mentions that the Nuclear Physicists somehow thought that the deep ocean would be a “quiet test chamber” for their studies. I find it telling that some of the smartest guys in the room (nuclear physicists) would be so siloed in their field that they would lose track of the fact that the ocean is teaming with ‘biologicals.’
This speaks volumes about our education model that focuses on specialization. It makes me worry about what I am missing when I scan the field I inhabit. But this tale also helps me cultivate more patience for those folks who “can not seem to grasp” the importance of our mission of preserving the ocean’s bio-acoustic sanctity.
This little sound sample is of the “carpenter fish” – an old mariner’s name for sperm whales, representative of what the scientists heard.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries department has launched a third in a series of four fisheries research vessels designed around new, quiet technologies.
Named “Pisces” NOAA’s Rear Adm. Jonathan Bailey says that the boat “…is so advanced and quiet that it is likely fish and other marine animals will never know it’s there. And that’s the whole idea.”
At the launch, NOAA Director and environmental hero Dr. Jane Lubchenko revealed “I know firsthand that the ocean does not always give up her secrets willingly.”
Ship-quieting technologies and guidelines have really taken a hold of ship-building strategies. Just this year the International Maritime Organization (IMO) began drawing up guidelines for quieter vessels, which will have a positive impact on the overall noise-floor of the ocean.
It is nice to see institutional willingness to face and address an important aspect of ocean noise pollution. Solutions are forthcoming. If only the Military and the Fossil Fuel industries would be so willing…
EcoJustice is asking for hearings about a proposed geological survey of the Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents Marine Protected Area. There is some irony in conducting seismic surveys in marine protected areas, particularly an area that has been recognized as a habitat for “12 species of marine life that do not exist anywhere else.”
Sabine Jessen from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society pointedly comments “If marine animals can’t find safety in the few areas set aside for them, where will they find it?”
The article from the Canadian Times Colonists was sent to us by a colleague at NSF and can be found here.
Perhaps as informative about the issue are the comments by the mostly Canadian citizens following the article. Equal parts bluster and concern, it illustrates the need for more public understanding about the impacts of seismic surveys on marine life.
There seems to be a divide between those who believe that there is no evidence that seismic surveys harm marine animals, and those who may not have the evidence but instinctively believe that repetitive seismic impulses are inherently bad for marine life.
Many comments are in the tradition of ad-homonym attacks (which I find surprising for Canadians). The comments also do not consider the new data substantiating that seismic surveys do have biological impacts on marine mammal foraging behavior at distances greater than 10 km (Jochens, et al, 2008, Southall et. al. 2007), and have been correlated with a cessation in traditional migratory behavior at distances greater than 100km in Mediterranean Sei whales (Castellote, 2009). And of course there is the well established evidence that seismic surveys compromise fisheries.
This particular scrap is a little uncommon because the antagonists are scientists, not the usual fossil fuel industries or the military. It also illustrates the priority rift between geophysical sciences and biological sciences – and the inherent problem with scientific specialization.
The geophysicists want to know more about tectonics in this lively area full of hydrothermal vents. The area is host to unique species, perhaps because of the hydrothermal activity. Should we compromise the unique life here to find out about its tectonic structure? Or should we take a broader and longer view of the area as a unique global habitat?
Of course all of the scientific data is “important,” but if it is not considered in a larger systematic context it loses relevance.
Follow-up on the Dust-up:
Director of Acoustic Ecology Jim Cummings reviewed this issue in greater depth and reports that the survey ship did go through an Environmental Assessment with National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) which concluded that the potential impacts of the project have been well considered.
For me his most persuasive statement Is “Throwing up legal roadblocks to a carefully designed, ten-day seismic shoot is a very extreme reaction, and should be reserved for times and places where there is real danger of harm.”
A similar situation occurred a few years back when Peter Tyack and Peter Stern were attempting to conduct “controlled exposure experiments” on migrating grey whales in California.
In this case the “defense” team took issue with a calibration beacon that sent out a single-frequency signal that would hardly be detectable over the noise of the research vessel engines.
This case drove a wedge between the scientific community and the conservation community that took years to heal, and compromised the acquisition of information that would prove very useful for more important conservation efforts.
Perhaps EcoJustice is taking advantage of the irony of doing seismic testing in a marine protected area.
As in the case of scientific data, any legal precedent is “important,” but if it is not considered in a larger systematic context it loses relevance.
San Ignacio Lagoon is the birthplace of a remarkable chapter in the relationship between whales and humans. The lagoons along the western coast of the American Continent- from San Francisco Bay in the north to Bahía Magdalena in the south – were all once breeding and birthing areas for the Eastern Pacific Gray Whales.
Shipping activities, harbor construction, oil extraction and processing and other human enterprises chased the whales out of many of their historic haunts (such as San Francisco and San Diego bays). Currently the only remaining breeding and birthing lagoons are the lagoons of Baja California – Guerrero Negro, San Ignacio, and Bahía Magdalena.
Of course decades of commercial whaling also played into this decimation of safe habitat and almost put the gray whales out of business. It was in fact these very lagoons where some of the most voracious whaling occurred; whalers would go into the lagoons, attack the vulnerable baby whales and then capture and kill the mothers when they came to rescue their babies. This was a dangerous game for the whalers because unlike many baleen whales, the Gray Whale will attack their aggressors. One out of four whalers in the gray whale industry was either killed or maimed in these encounters – crowning the gray whale with the ominous name of “devilfish.”
Nonetheless the whaler’s strategies were so effective that by 1946 there were only a few thousand remaining whales, and commercial exploitation of the stock was no longer viable (and thus banned by the International Whaling Commission).
It was in San Ignacio Lagoon that this bloody history turned a page. In 1972, Pachico Mayoral, a fisherman in the Ejido of San Ignacio was out in his panga when a gray whale approached and began bumping and contacting the panga. Knowing the history and the dangerous behavior of these devilfish, Pachico was terrified. It seems that the devilfish tormented Pachico for hours; bumping and lifting his boat, scratching her belly on the hull, and peering over the gunwales into the boat.
It was during one of these “peering” maneuvers that Pachico gathered his courage and reached out to touch the beast. He says he felt “safe,” – that he realized that the whale ment him no harm.
When he finally returned home his family and community did not believe him. It took a few more encounters for the people to understand that within the whale’s living memory of the slaughter, these animals were forging a different relationship with the humans.
This relationship has blossomed into what is one of the most successful interspecies environmental businesses ever: every year thousands of eco-tourists head down to the lagoons of Baja to meet the “friendly whales.”
I have been taking small groups to the lagoons over the years on what is almost a pilgrimage for some; to meet and interact with the baby whales and their mothers. These journeys are always transformative, and also just plain delightful.
We have been to both Bahía Magdalena and Laguna San Ignacio, though I have preferred the later because the bumpy dirt road across the desert has discouraged the concentrations of tourists you find in Magdalena. This lends to a more intimate experience in San Ignacio.
This will soon be changing though, because the highway department has begun construction of a paved road from the nearest town of San Ignacio to traverse the 60 km to the lagoon, and then head south to connect with the paved road at La Purisima.
The paved road will be a significant asset to the residents of the lagoon, improving access to commerce and tourism. The road will also significantly improve access to medical services for the residents of the lagoon. This road will change the relationship between the humans and the whales – and the human experience of the whale encounters – by dint of the fact that once the road is complete you can just blow out for an afternoon encounter and be back in town by evening.
Once the road connects to La Purisima, it will also become a preferred route for automotive and cargo traffic running north and south between the U.S. Mexico border and Cabo San Lucas because it bypasses the current, and fairly treacherous M-1 that runs between San Ignacio and Loreto.
This raises my concern that once the paved road becomes a main thoroughfare for heavy traffic, that seismic scale vibrations from the road will transfer low frequency noise into the lagoon and potentially compromise the habitat for the Gray whales.
In order to address this concern Ocean Conservation Research has put together a program determine the potential acoustical impacts of the road, measuring low frequency acoustical transmission characteristics of the lagoon/land interface where the road will flank the lagoon.
As with any non-profit we are spending more time gathering funds than doing the actual work. As of July 2009 we’re still shy of the complete budget, but research partner Aaron Thode has placed some hydrophones in the test area to get some benchmarks.
For a more detailed account of the project, see: San Ignacio Lagoon Freeway. Of course if you would like to support this project or participate, just contact me through info@OCR.org
Yet another unfortunate event involving whales and mid-frequency sonar; two minke whales were seen “porpoising” at high speeds in waters where military operations were taking place. Observers also heard extremely loud sonar concurrent to the sightings.
Minke whales are the smallest of the baleen whales, reaching a bit over 30 ft. in length. Porpoising is a shallow and fast skipping across the top of the water, given to porpoises and dolphins, not 11 ton baleen whales.
It is probable that these animals were keeping as close to, and above the water surface to keep their hearing either out of harms way, or near the surface where some attenuation is afforded. (This is similar to the protective strategy used by the orcas during the Haro Strait incident in 2004).
The article also mentions a decrease in population over the years, though the sonar correlation is only insinuated.
Density of two months of large commercial vessel traffic in the sanctuary, with peak densities seen in the shipping lanes Density of two months of large commercial vessel traffic in the sanctuary, with peak densities seen in the shipping lanes
“Thrilling” is not a word I thought I would ever use in describing an Acoustical Society meeting, but there were moments last week that bordered on just that. Driving this is an intersection of rapidly increasing computer processing power and advancing sensor technologies – put in the hands of some of the nimble intellects that are making up the current crop of bio-acoustic post-docs.
Over the five days of the meeting there were many sessions on “Passive Acoustic Monitoring” (PAM) which presented many of the aspects of putting sensors in the ocean, collecting the data, and then making sense of it all. In practice this often means collecting the vocalizations of whales or dolphins over a period of time and watching the population dynamics change as a consequence of environmental conditions.
The output of these studies can be time-compressed animations of the peregrinations of dolphin schools or whale pods,[i] or in the case of Chris Clark, the acoustical impacts of ship traffic on humpback, fin and right whales.[ii] Dr. Clark’s animated display was a stunning “spatial-temporal” graphic of the changes in the hearing and communication range of these three whale species as a cargo ship passed over their habitat. I will make these graphics available on the OCR website once I get them from Chris, but meanwhile you can find out about the program here: http://stellwagen.noaa.gov/science/passive_acoustics_noise.html
Another telling presentation by Manolo Costellote came from his PAM study of the seasonal migration of fin whales in the Mediterranean Sea over a three year period. During one of the seasons there happened to be a concurrent seismic airgun survey. The monitoring clearly demonstrated that the whales avoided their traditional winter feeding areas throughout and even after of the survey. This indicates the acoustical impacts of airgun surveys reach over hundreds of kilometers for these animals.
Of course Manolo wanted to know where the surveys were taking place, and something about the sizes of the airgun arrays. He managed to locate the company doing the work, but they were predictably uncooperative. Not to be discouraged, he did a little sleuth work and found a “blog” of one of the crew members, which included the entire equipment list; airgun capacities, photographs of the ship, and pretty much everything he needed to calibrate his findings except for the exact locations of the survey (which he derived through some clever data evaluation).
It is work like this which may eventually put the current practices of airgun surveys “on the ropes” until the oil industry can find more benign ways of locating offshore oil.
Many other breakthroughs were presented and new ideas introduced over the course of the week across the field of acoustics. While overall the meeting was still pretty high on the “pencil-pocket” index, our field of marine bioacoustics is going through a thrilling sea change.
Stay tuned!
[i] Kaitlin E. Frasier “Acoustic tracking of whistling dolphins offshore of Southern California”
[ii] Christopher W. Clark “Result ad insights from operational monitoring networks”
Spending the last two days in the company of geophysicists, marine mammologists, petroleum engineers and policy makers was much less grueling than I had anticipated. But the degree of collegiality was uncharacteristic of these affairs – to a point of being downright pleasant.
The purpose of the meeting was to craft a “Mitigations Practices” document for seismic airgun surveys to minimize their acoustic and behavioral impacts on marine mammals. The final product will be a synthesis of our discussions outlining recommended practices and standards for “Marine Mammal Observers,” emerging technologies, survey planning and design, and passive monitoring for marine animals.
While only four of us (out of 40) were from the environmental NGO community, it was comforting to be among a crowd of people – most of whom owe their living to fossil fuels – who were also sincerely concerned about the impacts of their industry on marine habitat. They were quite agreeable to contributing to a document wherein every line put more constraints on their work.
Of course everything must be put in some context; and while each sentence added costs to seismic surveys, with few exceptions the economic beneficiaries of these cost increases were the geophysicists, marine mammologists, and petroleum engineers in the room.
This situation was punctuated twice over the course of the workshop. On the first day it was when Jim Cummings (www.acousticecology.org) delivered a paper that highlighted the behavioral impacts of seismic exploration on marine mammals – pointing out that the noise might do more that just bother or damage animals within a prescribed distance from the surveys. He pointed out that the noise also interfered with their foraging (feeding) efficiency well outside of the “safe exclusion zone” set by common mitigation practices.
On the second day things got a little hot when Dr. Lindy Weilgart (Dalhousie University) suggested that a “no action alternative” be used when the risks of environmental damage mandated that surveys not take place.
So back to the context: While we in the environmental NGO community were pleased to be invited to the table, by participating we had already accepted the inevitability of seismic surveys.
One of the many responses I received when I announced that I would be attending the workshop was from Mac Hawley, who quipped that “mitigation” and “seismic surveys” were an oxymoron. I concurred stating that “mitigation” and “airguns” don’t belong in the same sentence unless the word “solar” is also included.
At the end of the day it was not a total giveaway. Dr. Weilgart did get precautionary language into the document. Jim Cummings did get some wording about broader considerations for behavioral and synergistic impacts. I wrote a piece on “Objectives and Outcomes” to clarify the fact that the document was not designed to “make sure that survey operators met the established guidelines;” rather it was to make sure that their practices, above all, are performed with the overarching objective of conserving marine life.
Illustrated letter from Laura Honda's "Green Team" 4th-6th graders
Last Thursday was the final public hearing on the 5 year Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) leasing program. While this was the last chance to stand up in public to express yourself about the program, it is not the last chance to comment, as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has opened up the public comment period to September 20. (See below for instructions.)
Secretary Salazar was handed the parting gift that the previous administration handed to the oil men – in the form of an oil field leasing program for our coastal oceans that presupposed the continued exploitation of petroleum as our national energy strategy for the future.
Fortunately Secretary Salazar was able to put that assumption on “pause” so he could take in the opinions of the public on this critical issue.
Part of extending the comment period involved staging four public hearings on each of the coasts that would be affected by offshore oil production. The first hearing was in New Jersey, the second in New Orleans, the third in Alaska, and the fourth in San Francisco.
All of the hearings were very well attended. A majority of the public – including elected officials – were more supportive of alternative energy uses of the OCS over oil and gas. This included the hearings in New Orleans, where the public is familiar with what the oil economy brings. About 30% of the public in New Orleans was in favor of oil and gas development. In the other locations the public was predominantly against new fossil fuel development.
Many of the oil folks were complaining that the hearings were loaded against them; with hundreds of conservationists dressed as polar bears, otters and dolphins creating a carnival atmosphere outside of the hearings, and the public presentations mostly against oil drilling. But as the proponents had the same opportunities to express their opinions that everyone else had, this argument is a bit specious.
In the context of this setting, it seemed as if the oil proponents are “against the ropes” on this issue. Most of them couched their presentations within the understanding that solar, wind, and wave energy were going to be the future of our national energy policy. Even Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the “Duchess of Drill Baby Drill,” stated that oil extraction would need to be done in environmentally sound manner to be acceptable.
The hearings were a clear expression of the public sentiment on the oil economy. I deeply respect Secretary Salazar and his staff for sitting though four days of the same few arguments recited over and over again by both sides of the issue, with the only distinction being how well the presenters handled the microphone.
There were hundreds of folks entering comments in all locations, so actual delivered comments were based on “the luck of the draw.” I got up really early to register so I was able to put in my 3 minutes on the potential dangers of seafloor processing noise. My presentation was a summary of our letter, which I also submitted:
I also submitted a package of letters from Laura Honda’s Manor School “Green Team.” The package came to me last week just in time and contained about 30 beautifully illustrated appeals for conservation. While I’d love to share every one, the summary letter really gets to the point:
If you want to submit your own letter, you can take cues from these letters, or write your own vers libre on your concerns about drilling for oil, continuing with our oil-based economy, or your concerns about the impacts of offshore wind and wave power.
To get more informed about the entire program, see the Interior website here:
I have faith that Secretary Salazar will use his wisdom to sort out a cogent and forward-looking energy strategy from the hearings and from your comments.
A few weeks back we submitted comments on the US Navy’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the expansion of Anti-submarine Warfare exercises in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). The DEIS, at some 950 pages was very wordy, though we found it lacking on many counts.
