This last week has ushered forth two great developments for the ocean. The first is actually a retraction of a Bush-driven policy that would have seriously compromised the National Environmental Policy Act by allowing NOAA to bypass external review when…
Thank-you Snailfish
Sometimes I get so linked in to doing things that I forget to stop and enjoy the show. This October OceanLab and University of Tokyo sent a camera down to one of the world’s deepest trenches and came up with…
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…
Supreme Court rules in favor of the Navy
Sadly the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the US Navy in the recent gambit on the mitigation measures proposed by the California Coastal Commission. The vote was 6-3, with Justices Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy joining an opinion written by…
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…
Supreme Court hears Endangered Species Act Case
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard the Navy Sonar case that originated in California early this year when the Whitehouse attempted to overrule a district court judgment on the US Navy’s proposed sonar exercises off of the California cost. The actual…
Acidification of the oceans and attenuation
The ever-vigilant Jim Cummings – OCR board member and director of Acoustic Ecology Institute sent us the following article that correlates increased acidity in the ocean with decreased acoustical attenuation of sea water. This means that along with all of…
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…
BBC report on IFAW
The BBC reported on an International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) report on ocean noise. While there is nothing “new” in this report per-se, it adds to the legacy of work being done on the issue and increases our global…