This week I delivered a paper on the historic noise levels in the ocean prior to industrialized whaling. It turns out that the ocean was pretty noisy back in 1800, but the noise was all biological − with a preponderance…
Author: mstocker
Central Coast Seismic Interview, Thur. Oct 11, 2pm KPFA
I will be discussing the controversial Diablo Canyon seismic survey proposal today on Caroline Casey’s “Visionary Activist Show” at 2pm PST on KPFA. Pacifica shows up on various frequencies in the Bay Area and can be found online at KPFA.org.…
Airgun surveys are the real gateway to Arctic Oil
Finally after a whole season of a frightening “comedy of errors,” Shell Oil has postponed a large part of their Arctic exploratory drilling project until next year. They will be building infrastructure in the time they have remaining this season,…
El Diablo on California’s Central Coast
In the early spring of this year I was apprised of a proposed seismic survey action on the California Central Coast. The project taken on by PG&E is to map the geology, fault lines, and earthquake potential of the areas…
Ongoing Whale Behavioral Response Study
With as much effort that has gone into understanding how noise impacts marine mammals − and all of the contention that orbits around setting appropriate exposure mitigation levels, we still know very little about which noises (and how much) have…
Video Series: Intro to Odontocetes & Mysticetes
The latest edition to our video series on bioacoustics discusses the distinctions between Mysticetes and Odontocetes (whales, porpoises, and dolphins). http://ocr.org/portfolio/intro-to-odontocetes-mysticetes/ Enjoy!
New discovery of songful bowheads
It’s always a delight to learn something new about ocean life. Some 40 years ago whale researcher Roger Payne came to understand that Humpback whales sang complex, beautiful, and patterned songs. Their haunting melodies released in an LP as “The…
Bio-acoustics Video Series
After a bit of time in development we are finally launching our Bioacoustics Video Series. Accessible from both the OCR website as well as for general distribution on the OCR YouTube channel, these pieces are (and will be) mini-lectures on…
NYT Report of whales “self-mitigating” for noise exposure a bit misleading.
A New York Times article is making the rounds about how a captive false killer whale has demonstrated a mechanism for attenuating potentially damaging noises. Paul Nachtigall, the principal investigator of the study has conditioned the subject to de-sensitize its…
Unabashed U.S. Navy Environmental Impact Statements
A few weeks ago we put out a newsletter commenting on the candor of the U.S. Navy in the release of their Hawaii-Southern California Testing and Training Range “Draft Environmental Impact Statement (HSTT-DEIS). I’ve just sent in our comment letter…