Overlapping Seismic Surveys – BOEM
While the plan to set the seismic survey industry loose on the Mid Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) has only seemed like a three-alarm fire for just the last few years, this plan was first hatched over ten years ago in a sort-of “camel’s nose under the tent” maneuver. The Department of the Interior (DOI) suggested that as there had been no surveys since the 1970’s, the OCS was due for a new assessment with more modern technologies.
This occurred when there was still a moratorium on offshore oil development, so the argument was easy to make that new surveys weren’t really necessary. But when a continuing resolution on the moratorium expired at the end of the last Bush term, the survey industry began salivating. Not only did they want to survey the Mid-Atlantic OCS, they (with the blessings of the DOI) wanted to privatize the data – which is essentially privatizing an inventory of assets that really belong to the American people.
Privatizing the data confers a financial value on it that in turn stimulates competition to gather the data. And while this may look good in economic terms, it also paves the way for redundant surveys by many different companies – where really only one would be needed. Given that these surveys wreck environmental damage; this strategy promises to maximize environmental damage for the sake of generating arguably superfluous profits for the Geophysical contractors.
Back in 2015 we went to Washington DC to speak with NOAA Fisheries chief Eileen Sobeck about this – and the possibility that Fisheries might consider figuring in a metric for multiple and concurrent noise exposures, as it would more accurately represent actual damage to marine mammals and protected species.
Without giving us a reason, she stated that she wasn’t interested in doing this. But we did manage to get the required Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHAs) for the surveys buried down in the inbox for another couple of years.
Of course this has again changed with this current administration wanting to open up the entire OCS to oil exploitation. Helping pave the way are a number of attempts to eviscerate the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which if done would all but eliminate the need for the IHAs. The problem with this for the Administration is that most Americans like our marine mammals (80%) and want to protect them. And at this point we are too far into the election season to expose congressional shills for the oil industry to any potential blow-back from voters.
So while we have been hearing all along that the IHAs will be approved any moment now, some of us in the conservation business are thinking that they may not resurface until after the November elections. But we are “keeping our powder dry,” and in a couple of weeks we’ll be heading back to Washington DC to see if we can put some more sticks into the spokes of the wheels of this ill-advised proposal.
