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,…
Category: Fossil Fuel Industry
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…
Alaska – “ground zero” for climate change
If you happen to be in Homer Alaska this evening (Oct. 7) drop on by the Islands and Ocean Visitor Center I will be giving a presentation sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) about the impacts of petroleum industry…
Increasing evidence of Seismic Survey impacts on marine life
An article was published in the BBC News website referring to a recently published paper by Lucia Di Iorio and Christopher Clark[1] indicating that seismic surveys can interfere with Blue Whale feeding behaviors. The letter mentions that the blue whales…
Report from the Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans workshop
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…
5 Year Outer Continental Shelf leasing plan hearings
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…
Bristol Bay Oil Leases
Alaska’s Bristol Bay is the world’s most productive fishery – 40% of all wild fish eaten in America are pulled from these waters. So it is a puzzlement to many of us that the Minerals Management Service (MMS) is considering…
Offshore oil drilling constrained by military toxics dumping grounds.
Outer Continental Shelf hero Richard Charter sent us a rather depressing article. (excerpted below) It seems that proposed oil operations off the New Jersey coast will be constrained by some very reckless chemical weapons dumping done by our military. This…
House approves offshore drilling
This afternoon the house voted and passed a bill that would allow offshore oil drilling. This bill would change a 30 year moratorium on offshore oil extraction – if it it can be reconciled to a complimentary Senate bill, and then be approved by…