I spent last week in San Diego attending a workshop sponsored by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on the impacts of human generated noise on marine fish and invertebrates. Having watched the field of ocean noise impacts roll…
Category: Seismic Surveys
Fossil Fuel Noise in the Arctic – website launches!
If you have been anywhere within earshot of the media recently you may have noticed that the Oilmen are on a bit of a rampage. Any sustainable energy program, environmental regulation, or legal challenge that does not promote their agenda…
The Arctic is changing fast, and it’s going to cost us a lot
I’ve just finished reviewing a 1600 page “Draft Environmental Impact Statement” (DEIS) issued for public comments about the five year plan for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. The objective of the “draft” is to provide US citizens the…
Some good news in improving technologies!
Perhaps one of the more salient benefits of our work on ocean noise pollution is that unlike solid and chemical pollution, when the noise goes away, it is gone. This gives us reasons for optimism, particularly as we see efforts…
Adriatic Sea Sperm whale stranding revisited
In December 2009 seven Sperm whales were found stranded on the beaches of Gargano on the Adriatic Sea. Necropsies on two of the whales found that their digestive systems were choked up with plastic, so the headlines at the time…
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.…
Low level seismic survey noise interrupts Blue Whale calls
A recent publication by Lucia Di Lorio and Chris Clark reveals a significant difference in Blue Whale call behavior as a consequence of seismic survey noise generated by “sparkers” – an impulse generator which uses an electrical discharge spark to…
Norwegian fishermen get a little testy over seismic surveys
Norwegians have known for years that seismic surveys compromise fisheries. Some of the benchmark studies confirming this have come from Norwegian scientists.[1] While US fisheries interests have not been able to get much traction on this issue (for a host…
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…