I have been invited by ‘Compassionate Trickster’ and Mythology Maven Caroline Casey to speak about the Ocean today. Caroline has a fabulous gift of weaving our contemporary political, cultural, and ecological events into the fabric of human archetypal and mythological…
US Warfare Training Range moves ahead in Florida
As it appears that the US Navy will be proceeding with the US Warfare Training Range (USWTR) off of Florida, I dug into our participation in the process to trace how these decisions are made. The original 554 page Environmental…
Come Visit the Whales of San Ignacio Lagoon!
We are gathering participants for our annual trip to the whale lagoons of Baja California! If you are not familiar with this wonderful phenomenon, it is an opportunity to “get up close and personal” with these iconic, majestic, and playful…
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…
Acoustic Harassment Devices potential cause for whale strandings
In response to our last article on noise impacts on terrestrial animals, OCR Board Member Seven Lutz sent out this London Times Online article about an increase in bottlenose whales stranding in Whales and Scotland. One potential cause indicated in…
BBC finds that noise pollution threatens animals!
A recent article in the BBC “Earth News” presents a good overview of how various noises impact animals. The article is a condensation of a scientific “lit review” written by Jesse Barber, Kevin Crooks, and Kurt Fristrup. Some folks may…
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…
Reminder: Ocean Policy Task Force hearing and Party!
For San Francisco Bay Area folks this is a reminder that the White House CEQ Ocean Policy Task Force will be convening on Thursday September 17. This will be the season’s big ocean-lovers gathering and should be fun. Some of…