I’ve just finished up a week in Pittsburgh, PA at an Acoustics Society conference. Because sound and acoustics intersect so many fields, Society meetings are some of the most diverse gatherings of disciplines under one roof – with sessions on…
Last week found the OCR office and staff (Gwynn and myself) with a few hundred other ocean conservationists and activists out in Washington DC attending the fifth annual Blue Vision Summit. This convening has been growing in stature since its…
I’ve just spent that last couple of days in Houston at the annual Offshore Technologies Conference (OTC). Like many things in Texas, this event is HUGE – with some 90,000+ attendees from around the globe kicking tires and otherwise assessing…
Every year in April there are two events that give us all a chance to pause and appreciate; to dip deeply into gratitude and remember the vigilance and effort it takes to deter the voracious appetites of “capital market forces”…
Five years ago today a un-controlled gas “kick” blew apart a sub-standard well installation that began what is to this point the largest single fossil fuel disaster in human history (if you exclude the 2005 US Energy Policy Act). From…
Just a few weeks ago a notice came across my desk about a marine mammal acoustics symposium hosted by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) at the whaling museum in New Bedford Massachusetts. The occasion was to celebrate the legacy of…
As the comment period for the Outer Continental Shelf 2017 – 2022 Five Year Plan (OCS 2017-2022 DPP) came to a close we received a ruling on the NRDC et. al. vs. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on the agency’s…
Back in August of 2014 the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) attempted to mitigate public outrage for a hastily made decision on opening up the US Atlantic continental shelf to seismic surveys by publishing an unsubstantiated puff piece on…
Noise impacts come in two flavors: Noise that is too loud, and noise that sounds awful. There is a degree of subjectivity under the “awful” category. For example; the awful din of your neighbor’s barking dog probably doesn’t meet their…
In the early years of the ocean noise discussion there were heated debates about whether or not introduced noise was really harmful to marine life. Our understanding was shallow and the tools blunt. Even when animals washed ashore deafened, dead,…