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…
I’ve just filed our comments on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s 2017-2022 Five Year Outer Continental Shelf energy leasing plan. While wind and tidal energy would need leases as well, this plan is singularly focused on oil and gas…
Cuttlefish are perhaps one of the more complicated critters you’re likely to encounter. Related to the squids and the octopus they have many of the same highly visual adaptation of being able to rapidly change color and even textures of…