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Municipal and regional assessment of “quiet areas” in Sweden
Whale earwax ties 150 years of stress changes to whaling, wars, and
climate
Cue the lawyers: NOAA approves five Atlantic seismic surveys
Court adds new hurdles for BC oil sands pipeline as separate lawsuit calls
for emergency orca protections
Slowdowns could reduce noise impacts of increased Arctic shipping
Don’t get too worked up over Trump’s splashy offshore oil talk
More evidence of fish being affected by shipping, energy development
noise
BC ship-quieting study stymied by lack of orcas
Australia launches world’s first continent-spannning acoustic observatory
Oysters and scallops: no ears, but they still hate loud ocean noises
Municipal and regional assessment of “quiet areas” in
Sweden
Posted: 21 Jan 2019 12:33 AM PST
A new paper from Sweden presents a compelling overview of efforts made
by regions and municipalities in that country to identify areas that are
relatively free of human noise. While these efforts have had only
modest impact on planning and regulation, in a few cases quiet areas are
being protected from noisy development or highlighted in recreational
promotion. This sort of initiative deserves to be more widely replicated.
Any local planners or activists who would like to encourage quiet-area
expansion and protection will find a wealth of references here, and will
appreciate the case reports describing some of the criteria being used in
various cities, towns, and counties. The paper is open-access and can be
readily downloaded as a PDF or html.
The authors found that 41% of Swedish municipalities include quiet areas
in their general plans (all shades of green on map at left), but only 6%
(dark green) have created detailed assessments or strategies for
implementation.
Here’s an example of a map produced by the city of Hörby, where the local
general plan “includes a detailed account of how the quiet areas are to be
protected. For instance, wind farms, shooting ranges, sawmills, and
similar activities are to be avoided.” Other towns have also aimed to
concentrate noisy activities away from currently quieter areas.
The authors examined ten regional initiatives and forty-three municipal
projects in some detail, including looking at the criteria used for
classifying various degrees of “quiet area,” which generally ranged from
very quiet rural settings (25-35dBA) to parks in urban areas with noise
levels that were relatively modest compared to the surrounding
neighborhoods (perhaps 45dBA, with varying standards for times above
this level based on local context).
Since 2013, three municipalities have replicated a Stockholm initiative, a
local “Guide to Silence,” the most active outreach thus far undertaken,
which emphasizes accessibility and the publication of maps, guides, and
signs at quiet locations. Relatedly, three coastal Swedish counties have
pioneered “Consideration Areas,” where visitors are encouraged to
minimize their noise in designated archipelagos, for example by slowing
boats and avoiding noisy activities. While having no legal force, reports
indicate that collaboration and common goodwill have made these efforts
quite successful.
Still, the authors note that “in many cases where mapping of quiet areas
had been performed, it has been used mainly as an inventory,” with little
or no followup in the ten or fifteen years since the initial mapping. Clearly,
there is much more than can be done to move these ideas forward and
establish relative quiet as a resource that is worth protecting and
expanding. This paper is a very useful starting point for learning more
about the possibilities and potentials of quiet area planning.
As a final bit of inspiration, here’s a map of European “potential quiet
areas,” which highlights the pressing need to identify and protect what
quiet places remain, especially in and around developed areas. You can
click on this map to view a larger version that gives a better sense of the
many tiny pockets that deserve our attention ASAP; while the
US, mapping by the National Park Service finds similarly tenuous pockets
of quiet in federal, state, and local public lands that should be prioritized
for protection.
Whale earwax ties 150 years of stress changes to
whaling, wars, and climate
Posted: 12 Dec 2018 07:55 AM PST
A fascinating new study sheds light on changing stress levels in baleen
whales over the course of the past 150 years. Earwax from fin, humpback,
and blue whales accumulates over their lifetimes, a bit like tree rings, and
the researchers were able to track cortisol levels by sampling the layers in
earwax plugs from museum collections. This study averaged the results
from 20 whales; the researchers are now beginning their analysis of over a
hundred new samples.
The takeaway is pretty striking: stress levels track well with increasing
whaling activity through the early and mid 20th century (blue line below),
and dropped dramatically when commercial whaling ended. In the midst
of that span, a lull in whaling was countered by military actions durring
WWII, which seems associated with a smaller spike in stress. And while
stress remained low from the 70s through the 90s, it appears to be
rising again in the past couple of decades; the researchers suggest that
rising sea temperatures are the most closely associated factor in this
recent spike, with other anthropogenic factors including shipping noise
also likely contributing.
A couple of caveats are in order. Most importantly, this study had only
6 earwax samples that extended past the year 2000, so recent trends may
be distorted by the small sample size; the spike in 1995-2000 represents
just four whales, and the final plot points include two fin whales that lived
only a couple of years (interestingly, their stress loads were low, so the
recent dip may be particularly uncertain).
Not surprisingly, there were notable differences between species and a
marked variability over the course of individual whales’ lives that did not
track with global trends in nearly so striking a way. Here is a particular
whale that suggests increased stress in particular years (including a
possible WWII encounter), but which appears less affected by the global
whaling trends, perhaps reflecting where it lived:
All this is really quite exciting, though. We can look forward to much
more robust results as this sort of analysis is expanded to more whales,
and to other hormonal markers. It’s also possible that as samples from
whales that died more recently are included, regional trends related to
increased shipping noise may begin to become apparent. At the same
time, this is a good reminder that as much as we like to focus on acoustic
factors, the stressors affecting modern whale populations are many, with
climate and prey availability being especially pronounced.
Cue the lawyers: NOAA approves five Atlantic
seismic surveys
Posted: 01 Dec 2018 11:40 PM PST
NOAA has issued Incidental Harassment Authorizations to five oil and gas
exploration companies, each of which plans to engage in several weeks to
several months worth of surveys off the US Atlantic coast during the oneyear
permit period, which extends through 2019. When the Trump
administration initially announced its rollback of the Obama-era decision
to forego new exploration, it seemed that the lack of Atlantic leasing
opportunities in the 2017-2022 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and
Gas Leasing Program would undermine the economic incentives to invest
in new surveys (and AEI wrote a detailed “don’t worry too much” post).
But the Trump team threw out years of agency staff and scientist work
and is now rewriting the OCS leasing program three years early: their new
Draft 2019-2024 plan opens up six lease areas in the Atlantic in 2020,
2022, and 2024; new surveys will guide both the government and oil
companies as they identify which areas are ripe for development.
However, it is inevitable that court challenges from environmental groups
and perhaps coastal states will slow the process down or derail it
completely. So stay tuned….
The surveys being proposed are broad-brush preliminary overviews of the
region, and so involve somewhat less intense sound-blasting than detailed
site-specific surveys; most of the tracklines are 20-30km apart, and some
100-200km apart, though one survey narrows the spacing to 6km in the
core area (see center, below). But they cover vast areas of the sea, on and
beyond the continental shelf. Here are sample maps showing the survey
lines being proposed:
Most of the activity is well offshore, which helps minimize impacts; from
November through April they are pushed a full 90km offshore to keep
high levels of noise out of North Atlantic Right whale winter breeding and
nursing areas; several other smaller areas are off limits either year-round
or seasonally.
Behavioral impact estimates are surprisingly low (and so perhaps a target
of legal challenge): under a dozen right, sei, and blue whales, and a few
thousand behavioral changes among far more numerous fin and
sperm whales; sea turtles are expected to take the biggest hit, especially in
far offshore sargassum habitat, with tens of thousands being disrupted
and thousands experiencing temporary hearing reductions.
All this region-wide noisemaking, of course, in service of the madness that
is continued oil and gas development in the face of a global climate
imperative to leave untapped reserves in the ground. The US is already
the world leader in oil and gas production and we have thousands of
existing leases that have yet to be developed; the last thing we need is
more straws in the ground—especially in deep offshore waters. I have to
admit, though, that I am no longer as sanguine about the Trumpistas’
offshore crusade as I was when these plans were first floated a year ago.
UPDATE, 12/14: For those of you wanting to raise your voice about this,
you can count on our compatriots at Ocean Conservation Research to keep
you updated on the field of play for public discourse.
Court adds new hurdles for BC oil sands pipeline as
separate lawsuit calls for emergency orca protections
Posted: 13 Nov 2018 11:57 AM PST
Over the past decade, plans for a big expansion of the Trans Mountain
pipeline in British Columbia have garnered pushback from ocean
advocates. In late 2016, the plan gained its final approval from the
Canadian government (see AEI coverage), but in late August, a Federal
Appeals Court overturned that approval, citing the government’s failure to
assess the effects of increased shipping on the dwindling orca population
and shortcomings in consultations with First Nations.
Chief Bob Chamberlin, vice president of the Union of British Columbia
Indian Chiefs, called the ruling “a major win with impacts that will be felt
across the country….Our wild salmon and the orcas that they support are
critically under threat. The increased tanker traffic that the … project
proposes is entirely unacceptable.”
However, Jonathan Wilkinson, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans,
remains confident that the court’s concerns can be addressed. While
acknowledging that the government is still being guided by the courts
about what level of consultation with First Nations is required, he was
confident that the concerns about orca populations have been addressed
by the government’s “very robust” Whales Action Plan, which includes
limits on the chinook salmon fishery, ship-slowing measures, and moving
shipping lanes somewhat further away from key orca feeding areas, saying
that “the work the court was looking for has already been done.”
Wilkinson stresses that the increased tanker traffic—350 tankers per year,
or 700 transits—is a modest addition to the 3500 other large vessels
(container ships and ferries) that ply the waters of this region; he notes
that “If we are going to recover the southern resident killer whale, we need
to take action that will mitigate noise from all of those sources, not simply
six or seven tankers coming out of the terminal every week.”
Still, “they have a lot of work to do now to see if there are ways to lessen or
avoid those impacts under the Species at Risk Act,” said Misty Macduffee,
a biologist with the Rainforest Conservation Foundation. “The Salish Sea
is already too noisy for killer whales, so any traffic you add to it makes a
bad situation worse.”
Given the precarious state of the local resident population, you can be sure
that government regulators will have their feet held to the fire as this
longtime controversy continues. The government has not yet announced
whether it will appeal the recent ruling to the Supreme Court, or send the
concerns back to the National Energy Board to address the shortcomings
highlighted by the Appeals Court.
Indeed, less than a week after the Appeals Court decision, and on the very
same day, the government proposed an expansion of orca critical habitat,
while a consortium of environmental groups filed suit in an attempt to
force the government to issue emergency protections in the face of the
orcas’ ongoing population declines.
“Emergency orders are specifically designed for circumstances like this,
when you have a species that needs more than delayed plans and halfmeasures
to survive and recover,” Christianne Wilhelmson, executive
director of the Georgia Strait Alliance, said in a written statement. Last
year, the previous
“I have to say, personally, I was very disappointed in the action that was
taken by the environmental organizations,” said Wilkinson, the fisheries
and ocean minister.“They were the ones who initially asked to convene the
multi-stakeholder forum. They effectively attended one meeting and then
decided that they would pursue a more adversarial approach rather than a
collaborative approach.”
Wilhelmson said the groups were prepared to work with government. “But
the process that they set up was all about talking, not about action,” she
said. “It was clear that this was just another process that was going to take
months and months and months — and the orcas don’t have that.”
Slowdowns could reduce noise impacts of increased
Arctic shipping
Posted: 13 Nov 2018 09:36 AM PST
Several recent studies highlight the heightened risks of increased Arctic
shipping, along with some opportunities to minimize the effects of
shipping noise on specific Arctic species and populations.
With the retreat of sea ice, both the Northwest Passage (along Canada’s
northern coast) and the Northern Sea Route (along Russia’s northern
coast) are seeing increases in commercial and fishing vessel traffic. While
the first cruise ship crossed the Northwest Passage in 2016, Russia’s
Northern Sea Route is the current center of activity, with both container
ships and LNG (natural gas) tankers making pioneering transits without
icebreakers over the past two summers. Total ship numbers are still
modest, as it’s not yet cheaper than the longer route through the Suez
canal, but these test runs are explicitly intended to chart the course for
rapid increases in the coming years; Russia aims to ship 80 million tons of
cargo by 2024, up from 10 million tons in 2017 and 2018, and China is
moving rapidly to implement a “Polar Silk Road” initiative to encourage
companies to build the infrastructure necessary to ramp up this shortcut
to European markets.
Two recent studies address key questions about the biological impact of
increased shipping on Arctic ecosystems. The first, from researchers at
the University of Washington and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks,
examined the ranges of 80 localized subpopulations of seven key Arctic
species, and found that just over half (42) of these would hear increased
shipping noise. Of these, some species are more vulnerable than others:
“Narwhals have all the traits that make them vulnerable to vessel
disturbances — they stick to really specific areas, they’re pretty inflexible
in where they spend the summer, they live in only about a quarter of the
Arctic, and they’re smack dab in the middle of shipping routes,” said coauthor
Kristin Laidre, a polar scientist at UW Applied Physics
Laboratory’s Polar Science Center. “They also rely on sound, and are
notoriously skittish and sensitive to any kind of disturbance.”
In addition to narwhals, beluga and bowhead whales and some
subpopulations of walrus are likely to be vulnerable to increased noise;
ringed and bearded seals, as well as polar bears, will be less vulnerable,
thanks to widespread populations and spending much of the summer on
land rather than in the water. In addition, the researchers stressed that
the Bering Strait is a key chokepoint for both Arctic sea routes, as well as
being a crucial migratory corridor.
“I think we can learn a lot from areas that have already been thinking
about these kinds of conflicts between ships and marine mammal
populations — for example the North Atlantic right whale, or fin and blue
whales around California,” Laidre said. “We could aim to develop some
mitigation strategies in the Arctic that help ships avoid key habitats,
adjust their timing taking into account the migration of animals, make
efforts to minimize sound disturbance, or in general help ships detect and
deviate from animals.”
A second study took a different tack, looking at whether speed reductions
(as implemented in some areas around busy ports) would reduce the noise
impacts. They used an increasingly common metric, “listening space,” the
area or volume of water within which an animal can hear its brethren, its
prey, or other biologically important sounds. The researchers modeled
ship noise in several key chokepoints on the Northwest Passage,
calculating the distance over which vessels sounds would impact the
listening space for several species, and at how much the effect could be
moderated if the ships were slowed in key areas. And indeed, the effects
were significant:
Under quiet conditions, beluga whales experienced a 50 percent listening
space loss when they were 7 to 14 kilometers (4.3 to 8.7 miles) away from
a ship traveling at 25 knots. When ships slowed to 15 knots, whales could
get as close as 2 to 4 kilometers before they experienced the same loss of
listening space.
In other words, when a ship was going faster, the area over which it cut a
beluga’s listening space in half might be more than three times larger.
This difference is important because there are many places where whales
cannot distance themselves from ships in the Arctic (in the narrow Prince
of Wales Strait, animals can maintain a maximum distance of just 7 to 10
kilometers).
As always, the results are not all as simple as that; the researchers found
that for some species, the effects are less in certain weather conditions or
for different kinds of ships (container vs. cruise), and that in some
situations, the effects can actually cover a larger area when ambient noise
is high (as it increasingly is with loss of ice cover). And, as always with
vessel-slowing programs, planners must consider the tradeoffs between
moderating the noise level and increasing the time during which ships are
audible during slower passages.
With the inevitable increase in Arctic shipping, it will be crucial for both
governmental and commercial players take steps to minimize the acoustic
impacts in these remote waters, among the last areas in the seas where
human noise intrusions have been relatively modest.
Don’t get too worked up over Trump’s splashy
offshore oil talk
Posted: 06 Jan 2018 08:53 AM PST
An AEI big-picture commentary
Once again, a Presidential announcement about offshore oil development
has sent the media and environmental advocates into a spasm of
headlines and press releases that presumes the words being uttered in DC
actually reflect on-the-ground (or in this case, under-the-waves) reality. In
late 2016, there was effusive praise for an effectively symbolic Obama
decision to not offer leases in Alaskan and Atlantic waters (AEI’s “much
ado about not much” post questioned the prevailing celebratory outburst).
Fourteen months later, we’ve got a mirror-image outcry over Trump’s
base-pumping proclamation about “unleashing America’s offshore oil and
gas potential” through a National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and
Gas Leasing Program for the years 2019-2024.
This one sure does sound bad: opening up 90 percent of our continental
shelf, with 47 lease areas including regions like New England and the
Pacific Northwest that haven’t even had vague proposals for decades.
Despite the boom in American oil and natural gas production that
occurred during the Obama years, with much of the increased production
being exported, the new administration is intent on exploiting as-yet
untapped deposits, ignoring the climate imperative to leave as much oil in
the ground as we can. Vincent DeVito, a Counselor for Energy Policy at
the Department of Interior, practically twirls his mustache with this
comment from the official DOI press release:
“By proposing to open up nearly the entire OCS for potential oil and gas
exploration, the United States can advance the goal of moving from
aspiring for energy independence to attaining energy dominance. This
decision could bring unprecedented access to America’s extensive offshore
oil and gas resources and allows us to better compete with other oil-rich
nations.”
Sure, that’s just the ticket; these eager beavers can’t wait to dominate a
fading industry—a decade from now, since that’s how long it takes to get
offshore wells on line.
And so begins a two-year planning process that will needlessly and
expensively repeat the one just completed in 2016. For we already have a
National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, with a
finalized plan set to run from 2017-2022, which the government (both
federal and states), oil industry and energy consulting firms, and
environmental groups spent two years and who knows how much money
to complete. As always, these plans are revisited, revised, and
occasionally overhauled every five years. But this gang may not be around
in 2021-2022 when it’ll actually be time to once again jump into this
particular vat of no-fun-for-anyone. So let’s just tear it up and do it all
again now!
UPDATE, 2/16/18: Caroline Ailanthus rightfully notes that diving back
into processing hundreds of thousands of public comments and writing up
a new programmatic EIS will keep BOEM staff from fulfilling their many
other tasks, which include assessing new science and identifying key data
gaps, smaller project-level environmental assessments, and overseeing
new research. She asks, “Do you suppose interfering with research in this
way could be the point of this massive do-over?”
But before we get too caught up with the swarm of freaked out bees in our
bonnet, let’s step back and consider the actual energy development
landscape as it exists in the real world, as distinct from the fever dreams of
this administration’s oil and gas cheerleaders. Of course, we can start
with the obvious global surge toward solar and wind energy and countless
innovative projects aiming to radically improve batteries and foster other
energy infrastructure breakthroughs, or the bipartisan opposition to
opening up more of the OCS demonstrated during the same process two
years ago, which included more than 150 municipalities nationwide and
1,200 local, state, and federal officials, many of whom were presumably
among the over 800,000 comments that were supposedly considered by
Zinke and his team as they prepped this re-do. Already the
Republican Governors of Florida and Maryland are slamming the new
initiative and vowing to fight it.
UPDATE, 1/10/18: Well, that was quick. In response to Florida GOP
Governor Rick Scott’s outcry, DOI Secretary Ryan Zinke announced that
his state will be removed from offshore lease consideration, because, in
Zinke’s words, “Florida is unique and its coasts are heavily reliant on
tourism as an economic driver.” Well, that is exactly the position taken by
nearly every other coastal governor, Democratic and Republican alike.
Stay tuned….
No, we don’t even need to take solace in all this context; all we have to do
is look at the current state of our “leashed” and woefully neglected oil and
gas industry:
First off, when announcing the existing 2017-2022 OCS program, Bureau
of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Abigail Hopper
stressed that “The proposal makes available more than 70% of the
economically recoverable resources, which is ample opportunity for
oil and gas development to meet the nation’s energy needs.” Indeed:
the 6% of the OCS currently being leased is more than enough.
Even this week’s opposite-world announcement from the current
administration is proud to note that BOEM currently manages
about 2,900 active OCS leases, covering almost 15.3 million acres,
while noting that this accounts for 18% of domestic oil production.
Indeed, in July the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) bragged
that Gulf of Mexico crude oil production is at an all-time high, and
will keep rising through 2018 (the extent of their short-term
forecast). Eight new wells came online in 2016, with 7 more on tap
to start flowing by the end of this year. It’s worth noting that this
partly reflects a surge after a five-year lull in
production growth after the Deepwater Horizon blowout triggered a
temporary moratorium on new drilling permits; and taking a wider
view, exploratory drilling and new production wells have been in
steep decline since 2014, largely reflecting the tapping out of the
easier-to-access shelf areas; nearly all new development is in deep
water. (Huh; any chance that all the the idle shelf-drilling
equipment is behind some of the push for new shelf leases?)
Likewise, The Center for Energy Studies at LSU released a report last
spring that saw nationwide crude oil production increasing 33% by
by 2023, and maintaining that high level through the end of its
projection period in 2029, largely driven by a 45% increase in Gulf
of Mexico production.
But new oil development is not just taking place in the Gulf: oil field
spending nationwide is set to rise 15% in 2018, to more than $100
billion, after a 47% increase in 2017, outpacing the international
trends. (Wait, what? Not only is America already great, we’re
also already dominant!) Notably, the stated limiting factor is not a
lack of reserves, but rather cash constraints as companies finance
this surge. If so, how many companies are going to be eager to plow
significantly more money into harder to develop offshore leases?
(Especially considering the 7-10 year timeline for getting a new
offshore well online, even in the Gulf of Mexico where the leasing
and permit process is far less of a public hot-button issue.)
One more straw for this wobbling camel’s back: less than half of existing,
already purchased oil and gas leases are currently being explored or
developed. As of the end of 2015—the last annual report available at
the time the Trump team began banging the drum for lifting the
“burden” on oil and gas companies—a record 7950 purchased leases
were idle on federal land, while at the same time a record number of
leases were in production and federal onshore oil production had
increased 70% in the previous decade. If we really want to continue
spewing carbon into the atmosphere, we can do it without heading
out to sea.
We surely can, considering the recent discoveries on shore, all of which
are much easier to permit and develop. As one of those fantastically indepth
New Yorker pieces recently reported:
In September, 2016, the Apache Corporation, a Houston-based oil-andgas-exploration
company, announced the discovery of a new field in the
Permian Basin, called Alpine High, which is estimated to contain seventyfive
trillion cubic feet of gas and three billion barrels of oil. Two months
after the Alpine High discovery was announced, the U.S. Geological
Survey revealed that another area within the Permian, the Wolfcamp
shale, likely contains twenty billion barrels of oil. The agency called the
deposit “the largest estimated continuous oil accumulation . . . assessed in
the United States to date.” Wolfcamp is also thought to have sixteen
trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Between 2007 and 2012,
assessments of how much recoverable oil remained in the
Permian Basin increased by more than eight hundred per cent.
And speaking of US energy dominance, not even considering the longshunned
offshore territory Trump is so eager to “unleash”:
Rystad Energy, an oil-and-gas consultancy, estimates that, for the first
time in history, the U.S. holds more oil reserves than either
Saudi Arabia or Russia. More than half of the U.S. total is embedded
in shale. Technological advances have decreased the cost of fracking to the
point that it is becoming competitive with traditional means of extraction.
Production in the Permian Basin has doubled in the past five years, to two
million barrels a day, and the break-even cost of a fracked well in the
region has plummeted to as low as twenty-five dollars a barrel. This has
had dramatic consequences for more expensive means of production,
such as coal-tar extraction and ocean drilling. (Emphasis added; i.e., the
easier-to-recover onshore deposits are even more likely to attract
investment, before companies go fishing for offshore reserves.)
Taking all these little-known facts into account, perhaps the specter of
vast new oil fields along nearly the entire US coast is not nearly as scary as
we might at first presume.
UPDATE, 1/10/18: WaPo notes one reason that oil companies may
prefer to develop new offshore leases rather than existing onshore ones: it
can be cheaper to export oil and gas from offshore wells, since they don’t
have to build controversial pipelines to get their raw material to refineries
along the coast.
UPDATE, 2/9/18: Here’s another good look at the many hurdles
standing in the way of implementing Trump’s rush to develop offshore
waters, focusing especially on the many avenues of state leverage to slow
or stop the process.
But that’s not the only rollback of Obama-era decisions that the
Trumpistas announced this week: they also announced a proposed rule
that would abolish safety regulations added after the Deepwater Horizon
blowout. This one may have more potential to come to fruition, depending
on how strict the rule-making process is about hewing to best available
science and technology. The 2016 regulations tightened controls on
blowout preventers (the key equipment that failed in 2010’s disaster), as
well as the design and lining of wells, and included a provision requiring
real-time monitoring of subsea drilling and spill containment equipment.
These sorts of safety measures should be considered all the more crucial
as Gulf of Mexico development moves off the continental shelf and
increasingly into extremely deep waters; 3000-7000 feet is routine, with
some pushing 10,000 feet, and that’s before continuing through the
seabed for another 10-20,000 feet to the oil and gas reservoirs.
UPDATE, 2/3/18: Not surprisingly, the administrations rush to reject
Obama-era policies is often neglecting established legal frameworks for
making and changing regulations. This NYT article suggests that some of
the environmental rollbacks could fare poorly during court challenges.
Even the oil industry is concerned:

“Privately, oil executives who are pleased with Mr. Trump’s desire to strip
away regulations have expressed frustration at the Interior Department’s
methods, worrying that they could bog down the efforts in a legal morass.
‘What’s important is, let’s step back and go back to regular order, and let
the process run its course,’ said Jack Gerard, head of the American
Petroleum Institute, which lobbies on behalf of oil companies.”
In response to the new regulatory provisions, the oil industry cried that
the cost of complying with these safety measures would cripple offshore
development, tossing around scary numbers that resurfaced in news
reports this week as economic justification for the rollbacks: the “flawed
and costly” “unnecessary burdens” would result in a reduction of $45
billion in industry capital spending on new wells over ten years, and the
loss of 50,000 jobs. But look closer at the American Petroleum Institute’s
talking points from 2015, which began the spread of these numbers (and
added the prospect of US GDP taking a $27 billion hit over ten years).
These figures, if they came to pass, would amount to a 10% reduction in
capital investments in the Gulf of Mexico, an 11% reduction in total
employment in the industry there, and a possible 15% reduction in
regional oil and gas production—though the 2017 projections of Gulf of
Mexico production cited above, both of which came out after the rules
took effect, clearly call the API claims into question. And that GDP hit?
Again, IF it this ghost of economic impact becomes real, the annual $2.7
billion touted is a drop in the GDP bucket; the most recent reported GDP
is $19.5 trillion.
I don’t know about you, but I’d stomach a one-hundredth of one percent
drop in GDP—as well our globally dominant US oil boom being 10%
smaller—in order to make another Deepwater Horizon SNAFU a bit less
likely. (See Ocean Conservation Research’s scathing commentary on the
nickels and dimes that the oil industry is clawing back from consumers
and the earth, via their minions in the Trump adminstration.)
Of course, all these “reassuring” factoids about our thriving oil
and gas industry does nothing to ease my angst about the
elephant in the atmosphere. I present them here not to
champion the heedless rush to burn all we can before it’s too
late, but to shed some light on what those inside the industry
are working with as they consider the risks and rewards of
moving into new offshore regions. As they look ahead a decade or
more, it’s hard to imagine there’ll be all that many oilmen ready to throw
their gold dollars into the oceanic wishing well.
However, there is at least some chance that these 47 offshore lease areas
may loosen some purse strings enough to take advantage one of Trump’s
earlier moves, which opened the door to new seismic surveys on some of
the Atlantic continental shelf. Those plans led to much gnashing of teeth
among enviros, though industry insiders doubted there’d be many, or
perhaps any, takers unless leasing was on the horizon.
{In case you’re wondering, those surveys are the initial noise-producing
activity that turns my acoustic ecology ear to the issue of offshore oil and
gas development, which also triggers increased ship noise from service
vessels as well as sprawling subsea oil processing facilities that roar day
and night for the decades of production. For another take on how all
the Trumpian offshore shenanigans relate to acoustic issues, see this
summary from Ocean Conservation Research, which addresses several
other odious proposals that I haven’t touched on, and this November 2018
OCR update.}
Still, if the seismic survey shoe drops, there may be at least some tentative
oil industry toes dipped into the water, which could involve bidding on a
few leases, whether or not they are ever likely to be developed—bidding on
lease blocks is a cheap way to stake out a bit of ground, just in case. (A
case in point is the over 400 leased blocks that the oil and gas industry
abandoned in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas between 2008 and
2016, as it became clear they would be too costly to pursue.)
Some of you may want to discourage such shoe-dropping and toe-dipping
by adding your voices to the next batch of hundreds of thousands
comments being submitted about this new boondoggle, which will include
at least four comment opportunities. In addition to the Draft Proposed
Program, which opens for comments on January 8, BOEM will soon
initiate a Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, and after
these, there will be a Proposed Final Program and a final PEIS to weigh in
on. If you want to chime in, here’s the link to the National Program page.
And once again, look to Ocean Conservation Research for an impassioned
call to submit comments and join public protest events in coastal cities.
And that, I think it’s safe to say, is “the rest of the story”—in all its
metaphor-mixing extravagance!
More evidence of fish being affected by shipping,
energy development noise
Posted: 04 Jan 2018 04:02 AM PST
A couple of recent studies have added to the increasing evidence that
anthropogenic ocean noise can have deleterious effects on fish. As the
years go by, it’s becoming clear that it’s not just whales and dolphins that
are struggling with human noise in the sea.
A lab-based study of European sea bass found that recordings of pile
driving sounds (often associated with bridge, port, or wind farm
construction) and of drilling sounds triggered subtle yet troubling changes
in behavior. The sudden bursts of pile driving induced a startle response,
while both kinds of sounds increased stress, as measured by the fishes’
respiration rate. In addition, both sources of human noise appeared to
suppress their normal predator inspection behavior, which could make
them more susceptible to predation (though after a half hour of drilling
noise, the bass returned to normal anti-predator behavior).
Ilaria Spiga, a doctoral candidate at Newcastle University and the lead
author of the study, explained, “Exposure to underwater noises can make
it harder for fishes to detect and react to predators. . . If fishes actively
avoid areas where these sounds are present it could prevent them from
entering spawning grounds, or affect communication between
individuals.”
The question of communication was at the heart of a new study from the
same team that has been investigating how shipping noise can reduce the
communication space of whales. The new research, led by Jenni
Stanley, focuses on two key commercial fish, cod and haddock. Utilizing
the network of bottom-mounted hydrophones that they’ve deployed in
Massachusetts Bay for the past decade, the researchers recorded the
grunts of cod and the “knocks” of haddock, along with the noise of ships in
the area. The most striking effect was the difference in noise levels
between the cod’s winter spawning site near the Boston shipping lanes
and their spring spawning site near the fishing fleets of Cape Ann, north of
Boston. While there were many more boats near the spring site, these
smaller vessels resulted in overall sound levels 11-15dB lower than at the
winter site, which in turn allowed the cod to maintain dramatically larger
communication space. (The distances over which cod could be heard were
not measured directly, but rather calculated based on the source levels of
their grunts and the prevailing levels of ship noise.)
At the quieter spring sites, the mean communication distance was 15
meters (below 11m during the noisiest 10% of the time, and over 19m at
the quietest 10% of times), while in the winter sites, they could only be
heard out to 2.7 meters (with 10% extremes of under 2.1m and over 3.4m
at the very best of times). The haddock spawning sites had intermediate
noise levels, and at their loudest could be heard at slightly longer range
than the winter cod, though a weaker form of their call had the shortest
range of any of those assessed.
The authors note (see full paper here):
Mounting evidence suggests that acoustic communication can affect the
survival and reproductive success of fishes, including direct evidence for
Atlantic cod. . . .Unlike haddock who have a wide acoustic repertoire,
Atlantic cod are thought to be less versatile vocalists during courtship. . .
If anthropogenic sound reduces the efficiency of the vocalizations utilized
by these species, this interference could potentially impact their
reproductive success and survival through the incorrect assessment of the
quality of potential mates or competitors, reduction in the ability to attract
mates and/or the mistiming of gamete release.
While stressing that we still have much to learn about how fish may
compensate for noise (by using other cues to find each other, vocalizing
during quieter moments, increasing the intensity of their sounds, etc.), the
authors conclude:
This research highlights the need to gain a better understanding of the
spatial and temporal use of unique habitats that are predictably used for
critical life history events in declining populations. Identifying and better
understanding these consequences [at all levels of the food chain] is
important to advancing the management of shared acoustic space.
BC ship-quieting study stymied by lack of orcas
Posted: 04 Jan 2018 12:29 AM PST
Last fall’s innovative 2-month voluntary slow-down of ships traveling to
and from the Port of Vancouver was successful on one count—average
overall shipping noise was reduced by 44%—but a stark absence of the
normally abundant resident orcas stymied the equally important second
line of inquiry: how would reducing the noise level, but spreading more
moderate noise over longer time periods, affect orca behavior?
About 60 percent of the ships transiting Haro Strait complied with the
voluntary speed restrictions; even this level of participation succeeded in
reducing the overall level of ship noise by 2.5 decibels, very close to the
3dB target set by the International Whaling Commission a decade ago.
Thanks to the logarithmic scale of decibel measurements, a 3dB reduction
amounts to cutting the sound energy in half. This is great news, a realworld
confirmation that the noise of global shipping can be reduced
relatively easily—albeit by increasing transit time.
It’s this element that marine mammal experts remain uncertain about.
Slower ships remain audible for longer during their passage, though at a
lower volume; perhaps worse, the quiet periods between the passage of
large ships became notably shorter and noisier, thanks to the lingering
presence of ships in the mid-distance. What is more livable: a constant
lower noise level or trading off louder periods for interims with relatively
little noise? As researcher Scott Veirs notes. “I’m not sure which I would
prefer, but we definitely don’t know which the whales prefer.”
An excellent in-depth article on the Seattle nonprofit news site Crosscut
tells the tale of the researchers waiting on shore to monitor whale
behavior. But rather than seeing whales on most days, there were no orcas
at all during the first month of the slowdown, and only six appearances in
the second month. A stark lack of salmon kept the orcas out of the area;
salmon shortages are the primary factor driving the decline in the
Southern Resident orca population. A recent modeling study by a diverse
group of researchers suggested that increasing salmon numbers by 15%
while also reducing shipping noise by half would allow the resident
population to recover. (The decrease in salmon numbers is compounded
by a boom in populations of seals and sea lions, who also eat salmon.)
The Crosscut piece zeroes in on the questions facing British Columbia,
where new oil and gas ports and expansion of existing pipelines could add
even more ships to the mix:
Piloting his 31-foot research boat Wishart back to Seattle from the San
Juan Island study site, Rob Williams mused on his 20 years studying
killer whales. “A whole lot of science has been done already,” he said. It
may be time to start making some difficult policy decisions about vessel
noise, Williams said, and that means weighing safety issues and economic
tradeoffs alongside concern for the whales. A number of factors, including
the Canadian government’s approval of Kinder Morgan’s pipeline to
export oil to Asia, could drive future increases in Port of Vancouver vessel
traffic.
“What we have to do next is to have some really uncomfortable
conversations. . .about how much of this acoustic space do we think it is
fair to ask the whales to give up.” Williams said. “And how much are we
willing to give up to have killer whales persist?”
“And those aren’t science questions,” he continued. “They are really tough
value judgments.”
Australia launches world’s first continent-spannning
acoustic observatory
Posted: 11 Dec 2017 12:40 PM PST
The burgeoning field of soundscape ecology (also dubbed ecoacoustics) is
poised to take a remarkable leap forward during the just-beginning
Australian summer of 2018. By mid-year, researchers plan to install 400
microphones in 100 locations spanning the continent’s seven diverse
ecoregions.
At each location in this Australian Acoustic Observatory (A20), two
acoustic recorders will be placed in relatively wet habitats for that biome
(wetland, river, creek, drainage, depression) and two in relatively dry
areas. Every six months or so, researchers will swap out the SD cards at
each location and upload all the files to the project website, where
everyone can engage with this extraordinary dataset.
David Watson, one of the Chief Investigators, noted in an introductory
article:
One of the strengths of this project is our ability to use sound to picture
time. We can prepare fascinating visualisations that contain months’
worth of data in a single image.
Some of the effects we’re measuring, such as the impact of cane toads and
other invasive species, have very obvious acoustic signatures. They are
dramatic to hear, but even more striking to see in a sonograph (essentially
a graph of sound).
We’ve pioneered the use of false-colour spectrograms to visualise long
duration recordings. These make clear the flattening effect of invasive
species, or the long-term subtle shifts caused by climate change.
You absolutely want to check out those two links he provides! The first is
to a short article containing an interactive 24-hr spectrogram which plays
several minutes from each of three different times of day; the second is a
thorough project description that was shared at conferences when they
were in the pilot phase last year, and includes a deeper look at their
innovative approach to spectrograms and the types of information they
expect to glean in various habitats. It all promises to be a fascinating and
exciting step forward for soundscape ecology.
Oysters and scallops: no ears, but they still hate loud
ocean noises
Posted: 30 Nov 2017 10:15 AM PST
A recent line of research ups the ante on how widespread the impacts of
human noise in the ocean may be. Oysters appear to suddenly and
dramatically close up in response to low frequency noise at intensities that
are relatively common—beginning at sound as levels as low as 120dB, and
ramping up rapidly above 140dB. The figure at left shows how fast the
shells closed at top and the degree of closing at bottom (from the minimal
to maximal responses observed). Effects were strongest from 10-200Hz, a
frequency range that includes shipping and seismic survey sounds.
While oysters, like many other shellfish and crustaceans, do not have ears,
they are sensitive to vibrations; earlier oyster studies speculate that they
may be responding to subtle seabed vibrations, though it’s also possible
their tissues are responding to water-borne particle motion. Another
recent paper looked at scallop behavior and mortality after exposure to
airguns, and reports that negative effects were seen for months after
exposure:
“Exposure to seismic signals was found to significantly increase mortality,
particularly over a chronic (months postexposure) time scale, though not
beyond naturally occurring rates of mortality. Exposure did not elicit
energetically expensive behaviors, but scallops showed significant changes
in behavioral patterns during exposure, through a reduction in classic
behaviors and demonstration of a nonclassic “flinch” response to air gun
signals. … Hemolymph (blood analog) physiology showed a compromised
capacity for homeostasis and potential immunodeficiency, … with effects
observed over acute (hours to days) and chronic (months) scales. … Given
the scope of physiological disruption, we conclude that seismic exposure
can harm scallops.”
As our colleagues at Ocean Conservation stress in their coverage of these
new developments, all this is part of a rapidly expanding awareness of the
ways that our noise compromises ocean life far beyond the whales and
dolphins that were the focus of initial concern and research. Early this
year saw the publication of a comprehensive review of the potential
impacts of marine seismic surveys on fish & invertebrates. The authors
point out that on many topics (fish catch rates, startle responses, tissue
damage) results have been mixed/contradictory, with some studies
finding negative impacts and others finding no response; their paper lays
out key areas for future research that could begin to clarify these
ambiguities.
The authors of a 2016 study on the effects of shipping and construction
noise on lobsters and clams paint the picture quite clearly:
Tim Leighton, Professor of Ultrasonics and Underwater Acoustics and
study co-author, said: “There has been much discussion over the last
decade of the extent to which whales, dolphins and fish stocks, might be
disturbed by the sounds from shipping, windfarms and their construction,
seismic exploration etc. However, one set of ocean denizens has until now
been ignored, and unlike these other classes, they cannot easily move
away from loud man-made sound sources. These are the bottom feeders,
such as crabs, shellfish and invertebrates similar to the ones in our study,
which are crucial to healthy and commercially successful oceans because
they form the bottom of the food chain.” Co-author Dr Chris Hauton,
Associate Professor in Invertebrate Ecophysiology and Immune Function,
added: “I think these findings raise the prospect that anthropogenic
sounds in the marine environment are impacting marine invertebrate
species in ways that have not been previously anticipated.”
The Leighton and Hauton study, using sound playbacks mimicking a ship
at 100 yards and wind farm construction at 60 yards, found that both
lobsters and clams changed their digging behaviors, and triggered changes
in their overall activity level (lobsters increased, clams decreased); they
found no marked effects on brittlestar activity.
Clearly, we are still in the early stages of understanding how our noises
may be changing ocean ecosystems. In addition, the recent review paper
affirms a longstanding concern that noise may act as a synergistic
stressor, making animals more susceptible to other known stressors such
as food shortages or rising ocean temperatures, noting that “Single
stressors related to sound exposure may show no effects in isolation but
when combined with other stressors effects may become pronounced.”
New study designs are beginning to tease out these inter-relationships,
giving researchers and ocean managers new tools that can move both
science and policy forward in constructive ways.
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