OCR mathematician Tom Reuterdahl and I have just finished a modeling exercise aimed at determining how loud the ocean was prior to industrial whaling. The premise of the investigation is that while some 50,000 cargo ships are now plying the…
Author: mstocker
An unusual climate of cooperation
I find myself again in Washington DC, this time for a workshop on “Marine Mammals and Sound” sponsored by an interagency group which includes NOAA, the Minerals Management Service, and the Navy. (Interagency cooperation will be one of the hallmarks…
A little louder please, I can’t hear you.
Mark Spalding from The Ocean Foundation sent us an article in Science Daily this week which discusses the findings of Susan Parks and colleagues regarding how North American Right whales are increasing their vocalization levels to overcome the background noise…
Ocean Gala – Peter Benchley Awards
Ocean conservation allies and colleagues from the Blue Frontier Campaign are sponsoring the annual “Peter Benchley Awards,” a gala event to recognize leading ocean heroes. This year’s recipients include NOAA Secretary Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Academy Award winning producer Louis Psihoyos…
A Psalm for World Ocean Day 2010
Today is World Ocean Day. Proposed and observed since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and designated in 2009 by the United Nations to celebrate the ocean. But given the disaster currently expanding into the Gulf of Mexico,…
Offshore Oil – Bigger than Texas!
I’ve just returned from the annual Offshore Technologies Conference in Houston, Texas. Texas is known for BIG and this event was no exception: Some 40,000 people from around the world were checking out some of the largest single hunks of…
That nasty oil spill
It is our policy to only focus on ocean noise pollution issues to keep our message clear. But a good number of people have requested information on the ongoing state of affairs in the Gulf on Mexico. Oil spills are…
Field Report from the Washington DC
I am spending this week in Washington DC in response to the recent announcement by the Obama Administration that offshore oil deposits will be evaluated for exploration and production. There has been (and will be) a series of public hearings…
Field Report from the Acoustics Society Meeting
I am spending the week in Baltimore, Maryland with a large aggregation of acousticians – perhaps 2000 folks, presenting papers and conferring about all matters acoustic. (A good collective pronoun might be a “treatment of acousticians…”) The field of acoustics…
OCR featured in National Geographic Online article
Last week after President Obama announced that offshore areas would be opened for oil exploration and extraction I received a call from National Geographic writer Marianne Lavelle. She was doing research for an article published online yesterday about seismic surveys.…