Ocean Conservation Research

Offshore Oil Video: What happens between the Seismic Surveys and the Oil Spills?

Shallow water offshore rig

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As we are closing in on the Outer Continental Shelf leasing program comment period, it appears as if the oilmen are running into a few snags.

The first, of course, was Secretary Ryan Zinke’s arbitrary (and out-of-process) exemption of Floridafrom the plan just two days after it was issued, causing an uproar from elected officials from all coastal states.

OCR Comments to Interior’s dreadful OCS proposal

A tension-leg type oil production platform burns off unrecoverable gas and leaves a plume of smoke. A deep water oil rig with flare boom.

Any US Citizen living within driving distance of the coast is likely aware of the fact that Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI) is proposing that 90% of the US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) be made available to the fossil fuel…

OCR Intern Chris Chin, Director Michael Stocker, and Communication Director Daniela Huson

Rallies and demonstrations are a part of the conservation landscape we typically leave to advocacy groups more honed to these activities. But as we are now in extraordinary times – when science is relegated to an “opinion” and lying is measured in degrees,not as a dichotomous threshold, it behooves us to…

A Party of Ocean Lovers!

We are in the midst of a public comment period for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) proposal to hand over the entire US Outer Continental Shelf to the oilmen. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) a managing agency is required to take public comments when they are proposing changes in how our public assets are being managed.

In the past this also…

Offshore Flaring

It’s hard to determine from where I sit where we’ll end up after the current aggressive disruption of our Federal Government, but it is quite clear that we have had a coup – by an industry that has lots of momentum but is backed into the ropes right now. On many fronts.

My father, himself a surfer on the waves of disruptive technologies, used to jokingly refer to the fate of…

As anticipated, Department of Interior Ryan Zinke announced yesterday that they plan on opening up the entire US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to Oil and Gas leasing. This is despite hundreds of thousands of voices speaking up against this proposal – and a disposition that was settledin consideration of these public, business, and governmental voices who did not want the future that the oilmen…

If you haven’t noticed, pretty much all “Not for Profit, Public Benefit Organizations” are shaking our tin cups this month. This tradition comes from two conventions: The ‘Season of Giving,’ when we all wear our generosity on our sleeves; and for those of you who file “Schedule C” on your tax returns, the squirrelling away of money to diminish your Federal Income Tax liability. Of course we all…

2017 marks OCR’s tenth year as a conservation voice for the sea. We could not have come this far without your support and ongoing love of the ocean. For this we are honored by your vote of confidence, and humbled by the strength of your caring.Thank you! When I founded OCR in 2007, one of our guiding values was to be a measured voice in the sea of emergencies – real, or manufactured, that call…

“Whale Songs” – Prayer Flags by Logan Austeja Daniel Taken from spectrograms of Orca and Pilot Whale songs A bit over a month ago one of our supporters offered to sponsor a fundraising event for OCR, which became “Artists Prayer Flags – Offerings for the Ocean.”I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it sounded fun and gave us a chance to meet and work with some new and long-standing friends. What I…

Measuring and expressing noise

Sub-sea Operations

The word “Noise” resides in an etymological basket along with the words “annoyance” and “obnoxious.” “Noise” is thought to have been derived from the Latin “noxia’ (to hurt or damage), and Middle English “nausea” (to quarrel). Although some etymologies reach back to the Latin “nausea,” meaning “seasickness.” I like this origin because it hones the word to our auditory sense of…

EPA Plaza, Washington DC

(c) Tom Brennan, NYT

A pretty tumultuous week has thwarted my plans of digging into the Barcelona Animal Communications Symposium. In the wake of senseless attacks on tourists on the Barcelona Ramblas, in importance of scientific inquiry pales. We can only hold the victims in our hearts and prayers – a moment of solace for ourselves; against an eternity of loss for the…

A Mob of Meerkats (c) Charles Sharp

A bit over two weeks ago I was in Omaha, Nebraska, at “The 4th International Symposium on Acoustic Communication by Animals.”This event is put up every few years by the Acoustic Society of America (ASA) and allows scientists outside of the marine mammal field to present their research to other bioacousticians and animal behaviorists. With an entire week of…

Mikey lays an egg…

I spent all last week at an animal communications conference in Omaha and wanted to detail that in this week’s newsletter. But it was brought to my attention that our last newsletter needed some tidying up first.

The newsletter topic focused on the uncertainty around the biological impacts of seismic surveys, but the hinge-pin was a paper published in Naturethat got much coverage by suggesting…

This should just about settle it…

The jury still seems to be out on the biological impacts of seismic airgun surveys. While there is ample evidence of migratory, feeding, communication, and other behavioral disruptions in marine mammals, and habitat and dispersal disruptions in fish – along with compromised catch abundance, there has never been an unequivocal correlation between seismic surveys and marine mammal mortality(which…