TVO airs “Saving Oceans” on July 16 and 21st with Mary Gorman and Farley Mowat

MERIGOMISH – A local woman who had dedicated her efforts to keeping ocean water clean will be featured in a national TV series, Green Heroes.

Mary Gorman of Merigomish, who is also an active member of the Save Our Seas Coalition, will have her story aired Tuesday, July 16 at 7:30 and Sunday, July 21 at 8:30 p.m. on TVO.

The show will be repeated several times after the initial broadcast that is entitled Saving Oceans.  Produced by CineFocus Canada in association with TVO, the six 30-minute series tell stories of people who acted on their ideas and heroically “ventured forth” to protect our planet. From the celebrity to the everyday person, each story details the different paths and interests the Green Heroes have taken in their quests to help save the world.

According to the Green Heroes website, Gorman is described as a woman trying to stop a disaster before it starts: Canada’s own Gulf Oil Spill. Twelve years ago, she turned from fisherman’s wife to Green Heroes after two leases were issued for oil and gas development on the shores of her Nova Scotia home. Knowing spills were likely and would impact 2,000 marine species including endangered ones, Gorman decided to prevent a disaster instead of reacting later. Today she has formed a growing movement with support from celebrities like Ethan Hawke and Jason Priestley. Her struggle and resulting victory led to her winning the inaugural Green Heroes award, as selected by fans of the web channel and a jury of esteemed environmental and broadcast judges.

In addition to Gorman, the Saving Oceans episode will also feature Farley Mowat and Alexandra Cousteau. Mowat is one of Canada’s most widely read authors and best-known conservationists. He is also an active supporter of such groups as Sea Shepherd and Gorman’s mission to protect the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Cousteau is a filmmaker and TV host who has mastered a storytelling tradition to inspire and empower individuals to project not only the ocean and its inhabitants, but also the human communities that rely on freshwater resources.

Save Our Seas and Shores | Moratorium Needed on Exploration and Drilling in the Gulf of St. Lawrence

Join Ethan Hawke- Help Save Right Whales & Save The Gulf of Saint Lawrence

We need your help. Please sign Sierra Club Canada’s letter and share this message to get our leaders to finally hear the deafening blasts that whales endure every single minute of every day when seismic blasting is happening.

A national and grassroots non-profit organization committed to protecting our environment, communities, and future

Eliza Knockwood, Ethan Hawke, Gretchen Fitzgerald & Mary Gorman

For immediate release: May 9th, 2019 Ethan Hawke Lending His Voice to Film, New Campaign to Protect Whales and Gulf of St. Lawrence. Halifax, NS – Starchild Production’s new film The Vanishing Call of the Right Whale featuring Ethan Hawke and Dr. Linda Weilgart will premiere on May 14th in Halifax, NS. The film will […]

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The public will not be allowed to know whether a federal environmental assessment was recommended for Northern Pulp’s proposed effluent treatment plant before it is a moot point. According to the legislation governing it, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency had 45 days from Northern Pulp’s Jan.

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The Gulf of St. Lawrence in eastern Canada is rapidly losing oxygen, declining by as much as 55 percent in some spots since the 1930s – compared to a 2 percent drop globally. Now, new research has found that the region’s dramatic oxygen decline is due largely to climate change and shifts in the major ocean currents that feed the gulf.

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A short documentary narrated by the four-time Academy Award nominee called The Vanishing Call of the Right Whale was unveiled Tuesday in Halifax. Environmentalists are using the documentary to pressure politicians to ban seismic blasting in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where the whales spend the summer.

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The Trudeau government is banning oil and gas work, mining, dumping and bottom trawling – an industrial fishing technique that indiscriminately scrapes the bottom of the ocean surface – in designated marine protected areas. Fisheries and Oceans Minister Jonathan Wilkinson announced the new protection standards on Thursday, while also naming a 12,000 square kilometre stretch …

HALIFAX-Ellen Page is putting her full support behind water protectors at the Alton Gas site. Page, a Hollywood actress who is from Halifax, along with filmmaker Ian Daniel, visited grassroots grandmothers at the Shubenacadie River on Saturday to work on what is said to be a documentary about environmental racism.

Thanking the indomitable Ellen Page for her courage and support in raising awareness regarding #NOPIPE, Alton Gas and ongoing environmental racism issue in Nova Scotia

. Ellen Page and Mary Gorman of Save Our Seas and Shores NS.

This is a Federal Environmental Assessment for Boat Harbour, however we are still waiting for one on the new proposed pipe into the Northumberland Strait.

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Clean up the Pictou County Pulp Mill has 5,889 members. The goal of this group is to create awareness, share information and stories about living around…

NL NDP Says Put Oil and Gas in the Gulf On Hold, Province in “precarious situation”

Breakthrough! This May 6th article (below) in The Telegram indicates Newfoundland’s NDP Party wants oil and gas activity in the Gulf put on hold because jurisdictional issues are unresolved. We hope more politicians will take leadership and protect our Gulf!

Regional environmental assessment opens Western N.L. offshore

The Telegram – Published on May 06, 2014

NDP advises caution in considering Old Harry and other boundary work

The area offshore Western Newfoundland is poised to open for new oil and gas industry work, including potential new exploration licences for interested players, as the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (CNLOPB) has published its updated Western Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)

The release of the document means the restart of a round of licensing for oil exploration offshore Western Newfoundland, previously placed on hold, pending the completion of the regional environmental review.

The call for bids on those exploration licences will now close in 120 days.

Corridor Resources, a company looking to drill an exploration well on a licence area it already held right to in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, including a prospect known as Old Harry, had placed their plans on hold, at least until the CNLOPB completed its review work.

“We welcome the release of the Strategic Environmental Assessment report … We also have to understand and review the consultation process for Old Harry before commenting further. We do plan to proceed with our exploratory program at Old Harry, which is one of the most promising undrilled offshore petroleum structures in Atlantic Canada,” said a spokesman for the company, in a statement provided in response to questions on Old Harry plans.

The release of the detailed, regional environmental documentation on Monday afternoon completes a review process started in 2011.

The SEA was first completed in 2005 but due for an update. It is, generally speaking, a broad look by the CNLOPB at potential environmental implications of offshore oil exploration and development in a region.

It ultimately feeds decisions by the offshore regulator on applications for individual projects, but does not replace individual environmental assessments for proposed offshore work, such as seismic surveys or drilling.

The new Western region SEA provides summary of existing environmental baseline studies, identifies sensitive environmental areas, maps human activities offshore and notes species of concern. It highlights: areas important for marine mammals; beaches considered critical for breeding of the Piping Plover; migratory routes and rivers for salmon; areas of coral and eelgrass; lobster, herring, capelin, and cod nursery and spawning areas.

It notes seven coastal parks and protected areas under the provincial and federal government in the Western region and an Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area for groundfish, as identified under the Oceans Act.

It also identifies eight, known unexploded ordinance sites.

Fishing areas are identified, but the report also maps the distribution of commercial fishing operations and intensity of work in the region from 2005 to 2011.

The CNLOPB states clearly an oil spill is always possible.

That said, the ultimate finding of the review work — including open house consultations conducted throughout Atlantic Canada and Quebec in September and October 2012, and consultation with various provincial and federal authorities — was that oil and gas exploration offshore Western Newfoundland is considered generally permissable, if standard measures are enforced for keeping negative environmental impacts to a minimum.

In some cases, some areas, as identified in the roughly 750-page report, special mitigation measures would need to be considered.

Yet, even with the best measures, NDP leader Lorraine Michael is advising caution in considering work into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, specifically at the Old Harry prospect. Speaking to The Telegram this morning from Ottawa, where she is participating in an all-party committee presentation on the shrimp fishery, she said exploration work there should be put on hold for now.

“I think the whole Gulf issue is very problematic because of the whole boundary dispute between Quebec and us around Old Harry, No. 1. And that has not been settled yet. So I think we’re putting ourselves in a precarious situation moving ahead with the part (of the prospect) that we do have some recognized jurisdiction over,” she said.

She said granting licences and permits for work in the Gulf, without settling standing disputes with neighbouring provinces, risks increasing the intensity of those disputes. And there is also the consideration of how other provinces might be impacted in the event of an accident.

“I think we should put Old Harry on hold until all this stuff gets worked out,” she said.

Click here for more on Corridor Resources/Old Harry

Meanwhile, the Board is now deep into work on updating its Eastern SEA, including the area with all of the province’s producing oil projects and exploration areas such as the Orphan Basin and Flemish Pass. As reported, public meetings for that regional assessment were held in the fall and the call for comments on the draft report closed in April.

Oil Boom or Bust for the Gulf of St. Lawrence? An op-ed by Angela Carter

Angela Carter was born in Newfoundland and is part of research project studying environmental assessment processes of oil and gas exploration. Read her op-ed below, and listen to her interview on Voice of Bonne Bay community radio, out of Gros Morne, Newfoundland.

Oil Boom or Bust for the Gulf of St. Lawrence? Public Meetings In Progress October 1, 2012

Op-Ed by Angela Carter

Over the next weeks, the global debate around oil and gas development is coming to the doorstep of communities in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Due to unprecedented public concerns expressed about drilling at the Old Harry site (just 70 kilometers off the west coast of Newfoundland), the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board is holding public meetings on the whether major oil and gas development is appropriate in the Western Gulf given the environmental risks.

Public meetings were scheduled on very short notice. They are already in progress in western Newfoundland and will soon continue to Québec, NB, PEI, and NS. The schedules are here http://www.cnlopb.nl.ca/news/nr2012.shtml.

The meetings represent the only opportunity during this process for local people to have any input, voice concerns, and ask questions in person.

The public consultation provides an opportunity to ask a tough question: are we on the right track given the global climate change implications of oil? As world-renowned economists Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs have argued, fossil-fuel based societies are also economic fossils. Truly innovative, forward-looking communities, they claim, are focused on the new energy economy and promoting sustainable renewable energy while dramatically decreasing consumption.  These places have a chance for long-term economic stability and healthy communities. The
oil-dependent will be left behind.

An equally tough question is whether or not oil and gas development in the western portion of the Gulf poses serious risks to the environment, health, and long-term economic viability of local communities. DFO has pegged the value of the commercial fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence at $1.5 billion a year.  Yet oil spills and blowouts in other places have shut down fisheries and ruined product reputation for years.

Moreover, oil development is planned along the coast of Gros Morne National Park, our prized UNESCO World Heritage Site. A recent Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society report noted that the tourism sector generates the most revenue in the region, $35 million a year, and employs 1,300 people. Visitors to western Newfoundland come to experience natural beauty, not industrial oil sites. As communities in the Gulf of Mexico learned after the blowout, spills decimate tourism.

More worrisome still are current regulations limiting liability to $30 million dollars. Yet the cost of the Gulf of Mexico spill has run over tens of billions.  Further, there are plenty of examples of oil companies fighting to avoid paying compensation to communities. Legal battles played out over decades after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

Oil companies and public officials commonly argue that everyone benefits from oil and gas—from construction workers to restaurant servers. But global, historical evidence shows that communities where oil is extracted are often burdened with long-term economic, health, and environmental costs, as well as a decline in quality of life.  The communities at the point of extraction seldom experience the majority of the benefits. Most wealth goes to foreign companies or central governments that often don’t use the money wisely or fairly.

These are some of the potential problems posed by offshore oil development in the western Gulf. Citizens might also ask a few more tough questions.

Does the Board have complete baseline data on all key Gulf species and ecosystems? Does the Board have a complete scientific understanding of the impacts of seismic exploration? Has this research been done by independent scientists, researchers who were not paid by industry?

Will the Board follow the example of provinces like Québec, states like Vermont, and countries like France, to ban hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), given the significant negative human health, environmental, and economic impacts of this industry?

Will the Board halt nomination, leasing, exploration, and development activity until this Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is complete?  As noted in the Scoping Document, the point of the SEA is to ensure “the incorporation of environmental considerations at the earliest stages of program planning.” Continuing with oil development activity while the SEA is in progress runs counter to the spirit of the assessment.

Local people have one small window to voice their concerns about the future of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The debate is too important and the stakes are too high to stay at home.

Angela V. Carter, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo

BP’s oiled animals: Where are they now?

By Russell McLendon
Eco-journalist blogs about science, politics and other earthly matters April 16, 2013

Mother Nature Network

A column of smoke rises from the doomed Deepwater Horizon oil rig shortly after Earth Day in 2010. (Photo: National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling)

Three years after the worst oil spill in American history, the Gulf of Mexico is shifting from acute aftermath to the uncharted waters of long-term rehab.

For most Americans, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill ended a few months after it began. Oil giant BP finally capped the mile-deep Macondo oil well on July 15, 2010, and the U.S. government declared its summer-long scourge “effectively dead” by mid-September.

But across the northern Gulf of Mexico — which absorbed 200 million gallons of crude oil in 2010 — the disaster still isn’t over. This Earth Day marks its third anniversary, highlighting a gradual shift from in-your-face emergency to subtle, behind-the-scenes villain.

“You can think of an oil spill as an evolving event,” says Samantha Joye, who runs the University of Georgia’s Joye Research Group and has become a leading expert on the spill. “There are acute impacts — things like oiled birds and marine mammals, ecosystems that were altered. Then there are chronic consequences — long-term impacts where we might not see an immediate effect. The acute effects are fairly straightforward to assess, but the chronic effects are tricky because they require monitoring over a long period of time.”

Joye should know; her research group has been involved with 19 data-gathering cruises in the Gulf since the spill began, and she’s been onboard most of them. The cruises are part of a project called Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf, or ECOGIG, that brings together 14 research institutions “to chart the long-term effects and mechanisms of ecosystem recovery from the Macondo blowout.” The project is currently funded through 2015, but Joye is hoping to stretch it out a little longer.

“We’re looking at a variety of sites around the wellhead and away from the wellhead, and the idea is to monitor these sites over nine years,” Joye tells MNN. “Right now we’re funded through the next three years, but we hope to extend it. Then we’d have nine years of data, which would put us in a pretty good position to say, ‘This is what happened, and this is what’s happening to the ecosystem.’”

An array of scientists are still studying the spill’s various victims, from microbes and deep-sea coral to fish, shrimp and dolphins. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is already one of the most intensely studied oil spills in history, but its size and complexity — not to mention the X factor of chemical dispersants — will likely warrant at least a decade of scrutiny. “We still don’t know what the long-term consequences of the spill are,” Joye says, “with respect to microbiology, fisheries, human health, essentially everything.”

The sun sets over a bayou near Larose, La., in July 2010. (Photo: Alex Ogle/AFP/Getty Images)

For more on what we do know about the worst oil spill in American history, here’s a three-year checkup on some of the plants, animals and ecosystems it affected:

Coastal wetlands
More than 1,100 miles of shoreline were oiled by the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, according to data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Earlier this year, the Congressional Research Service estimated about 340 miles of those beaches and bayous remain “subject to evaluation and/or cleanup operations.”

In a new report for the spill’s third anniversary, the National Wildlife Federation argues that “cleaning up oiled wetlands is virtually impossible,” since both oil and efforts to remove it can kill coastal plants. As vegetation dies, the loss of roots speeds up erosion and converts land to open water — already a big problem in the Mississippi River Delta. The region has lost about 1,900 square miles of land in the past 80 years, largely due to manmade changes like flood-control levees, reshaped rivers for shipping, and dredged wetlands for oil and gas development. Extracting fossil fuels can also worsen the natural process of land subsidence, as can invasive species like nutria that eat native plants.

Without major swamp rehab — possibly funded by BP’s federal fines, the NWF points out — Louisiana is projected to lose another 1,750 square miles by 2060. That’s bad for wildlife, but about half of Louisiana’s human population also lives in coastal areas less than 3 feet above sea level. And since the Gulf’s wetlands are a natural buffer against hurricanes, their demise is especially ill-timed: On top of BP’s spill and the threat of others, the Gulf Coast must also deal with rising seas and stronger storms thanks to climate change.

An oiled pelican tries to fly at Barataria Bay, La., in June 2010. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Seabirds
Pelicans, gulls and other seabirds were some of the most visible victims in the spill’s early days. Covered with crude that impeded their ability to swim or fly, they showed up helplessly on beaches and shorelines for months. Volunteers scrubbed their feathers with soap in a race to save them, but federal scientists nonetheless counted 6,147 birds killed by oil in the first year alone, compared with 1,252 that were cleaned and released.

The hardest-hit species was the laughing gull, with 2,981 collected from the spill area between April 2010 and May 2011. Nearly 1,200 of those were visibly oiled, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and more than 2,700 were already dead or died later.

Brown pelicans were No. 2, which was troubling given their history in the region. The birds had just come off the U.S. endangerd species list in 2009, thanks to 40 years of work to reverse their collapse from overhunting and DDT exposure. And while they’re no longer on the brink, with thousands now nesting in Louisiana alone, brown pelicans still took a hit from the BP spill. More than 800 were found stranded between April 2010 and May 2011, 40 percent visibly oiled and 70 percent dead or dying. And as the FWS notes, “the number of birds shown may represent only a portion of the total birds affected by the spill.”

Still, birds fall into the “acute” class of oil-spill casualties, Joye says. They’re mainly affected by thick crude on their feathers or in their stomachs, so the breakdown of oil plumes usually correlates with a drop in deaths. Of course, if oil is still killing wildlife further down the food web, the coast may not be clear for seabirds, either.

An oiled Kemp’s ridley sea turtle navigates the Gulf in June 2010. (Photo: Kate Sampson/NMFS)

Sea turtles
The Gulf of Mexico has five types of sea turtles, all of which are on the U.S. endangered species list. But one is particularly vulnerable, having invested almost exclusively in the Gulf as a nesting site while its four neighbors enjoy globe-circling ranges. And in a cruel twist of fate, the BP spill killed more of that species than all other turtles combined.

The Kemp’s ridley turtle lives along eastern North America from Mexico to Nova Scotia, and aside from occasional stops in the Carolinas or Florida, it only nests in the Gulf. Less than a year after the spill began, 809 of all known turtle strandings in the region were Kemp’s ridleys, according to NOAA, as were 481 of all known turtle deaths. By comparison, the agency reported 201 green sea turtles (29 dead), 16 hawksbills (none dead), 88 loggerheads (67 dead) and 32 undetermined species (all dead).

About 240 sea turtles are stranded along the U.S. Gulf Coast in a typical year, but more than 1,100 turned up during the BP spill’s first 12 months — including 450 visibly oiled and 600 dead or dying. And while the death rate is lower now, it has remained high enough to push the estimated three-year death toll past 1,700. Plus, as with birds, the NWF notes that “only a very small portion of dead sea turtles are ever found.”

A pod of striped dolphins swims past a Gulf oil slick on April 29, 2010. (Photo: Ron Wooten/NMFS)

Marine mammals
Whales and dolphins in the northern Gulf have been dying in droves for the past three years, leading NOAA to formally declare an Unusual Mortality Event (UME). As of April 2013, the UME involves 930 cetacean strandings, 95 percent of which were found dead. The die-off actually started in February 2010, two months before the BP spill, but its length and severity have raised concerns that oil made things worse.

Since NOAA began tracking Gulf UMEs in 1991, it has recorded 12 such events in cetaceans. The top two causes were morbillivirus and marine biotoxins, but NOAA’s tests “do not point to these as primary causes of deaths” this time. Thirteen bottlenose dolphins from the current UME have tested positive for Brucella, a bacterium that resembles flu in humans, and scientists are intrigued since it’s never been linked to a U.S. dolphin die-off before. Still, those 13 dolphins represent less than a quarter of all dolphins tested, and just 1 percent of the entire UME, so NOAA suspects this is bigger than Brucella.

In Louisiana’s heavily oiled Barataria Bay, NOAA reports many dolphins’ symptoms are “consistent with those seen in other mammals exposed to oil,” but adds that it’s still investigating the cause. “The Barataria Bay dolphins have severe health problems that are not showing up in dolphins from the un-oiled area, and have not been seen in previous studies of dolphins from other sites,” NOAA says, noting the animals “are underweight, have low hormone levels, low blood sugar, and some show signs of liver damage.”

The Gulf boasts nine dolphin species and a variety of toothed whales, but this UME has hit bottlenose dolphins the hardest. Some 650 have been stranded so far, including at least 130 infant or stillborn calves. That may be partly due to their wide range of Gulf habitats, but these dolphins have also faced a barrage of environmental hardships lately. As one study pointed out last year, the spill was compounded by a severe winter, food shortages, bacterial infections and an influx of cold Mississippi River freshwater. “Unfortunately, it was a ‘perfect storm’ that led to the dolphin deaths,” the researchers concluded.

A dead fish lies near Pass Christian, Miss., in May 2010. (Photo: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)

Fish
Several fish kills struck the Gulf Coast in the spill’s wake, and reports of fish with open sores, strange black streaks and other deformities have continued years later. Yet linking this to oil has been difficult, and authorities say Gulf seafood is now safe. Fishing bans were lifted in the spill’s first year, and many Gulf fisheries are returning to normal.

One fish that isn’t back to normal, though, is the western Atlantic bluefin tuna. It was in trouble before the spill due to overfishing, which had cut its population by 82 percent since the 1970s, according to NOAA, but lately its outlook has been even bleaker. It only spawns in two areas of the northern Gulf, and the BP spill began during its April-May breeding season, oiling about 10 percent of its spawning habitat. Eggs and larvae are more sensitive to oil than adults, and the spill may have reduced the 2010 crop of bluefin babies by 20 percent, according to the NWF, with a potential 4 percent drop in future populations.

But there is hope for bluefin tuna in the Gulf, thanks in part to new fishing rules. NOAA lowered bluefin quotas after the oil spill, and also required anglers to use special “weak hooks” that are less likely to snag bluefin. Still, Joye advises cautious optimism for Gulf fish, citing delayed effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. “After the Valdez spill, it didn’t become apparent that the herring fishery had collapsed for five years,” she says, adding a scientist’s caveat that “they’re very different ecosystems.”

A crab carcass lies near an oiled Mississippi marsh in April 2011. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Crustaceans
The black tide washing into Gulf Coast marshes hurt countless shrimp, crabs, copepods and other crustaceans, with juveniles often faring worst. Shrimp losses were especially hard on the region’s famous seafood industry, which is rooted in a shrimping culture that dates back more than 200 years. Brown, white and pink shrimp seasons were closed for much of 2010, leading to Louisiana’s lowest annual shrimp harvest in decades.

But according to the NWF, shrimp are now one of the few bright spots in the Gulf’s recovery. The group rates their status as “good,” noting that Louisiana’s dismal 2010 shrimping season was followed by a 2011 harvest “commensurate with annual shrimp landings of the past two decades.” Despite some lingering reports of eyeless or otherwise deformed shrimp, the animals now seem relatively stable — good news for wild predators as well as humans, since one year’s shrimp harvest can bring more than $100 million to Louisiana alone. Shrimp are still only as healthy as their habitat, however, and the NWF cites the decline of coastal wetlands as a “long-term threat to shrimp.”

Oil-eating microbes like these played a key role in the BP oil spill. (Photo: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)

Microbes
The smallest actors in the Deepwater Horizon drama may also be among the most important. Joye and other researchers have focused closely on the Gulf’s oil-eating bacteria, which played a key role in the spill by devouring up to 200,000 tons of loose oil. The microbes normally use this ability to get energy from natural oil and gas seeps, which are relatively small, but they swept into action when their habitat was flooded with crude. Joye has been tracking evidence of this, discovering new layers of seafloor sediment created by “marine snow,” or organic debris that sank from the microbes’ oily feasts.

In fact, Joye says the broad use of chemical dispersants in 2010 — often credited with preventing larger, thicker blobs of oil from reaching shore — may have been unnecessary, and possibly unwise. The Gulf already has a natural mechanism for breaking down oil, but BP and U.S. officials embraced dispersants like Corexit without controlled experiments to prove their benefit. And according to a study published in December, mixing Corexit with oil can make the oil 52 times more toxic to plankton.

At the same time, Joye also cautions against overestimating the bacteria. “I think they’ve played a very big role in consuming and altering the oil, but they certainly didn’t eat it all,” she says. “There’s still a lot of oil out there in certain places. There tends to be this incorrect assumption that the microbes ate all the oil.” While they do get energy from oil, she explains, they can’t get nutrients from it. “It’s important to keep in mind that if you keep pumping hydrocarbons into the system, you’ll eventually overwhelm it.”

A brittle starfish clings to dead coral on the Gulf floor in March 2012. (Photo: Charles Fisher/PSU/NSF)

Coral
Deep-sea coral colonies grow painfully slowly — a human fingernail grows up to 2,000 times faster — but they can persist for millennia, forming intricate networks along the seabed. This unfortunately put them on the front lines of the BP spill, though, and some of the Gulf’s ancient deep-sea reefs were damaged or killed. Surveys conducted shortly after the spill showed a range of responses, with relatively healthy colonies 12 or more miles away from the wellhead but more signs of distress closer to the source.

Coral research also supports Joye’s skepticism about using dispersants to fight oil spills. One recent study, for example, exposed two species of coral larvae to a series of mixtures that fell into three categories: oil from the Macondo well, Corexit dispersants and oil mixed with Corexit. Although the responses varied based on species and solution, all three led to lower settlement and survival rates — including Corexit by itself. In fact, exposure to Corexit 9500 resulted in “settlement failure and complete larval mortality” at doses of 50 to 100 parts per million. “I don’t think we know nearly enough about the impacts of Corexit,” Joye says. “I’m very nervous about using dispersants as a first line of defense in an oil spill, but I worry that’s the mentality we’re headed toward.”

The extent of damage to Gulf coral remains unclear, she adds, arguing it’s too soon to know despite “some evidence of recovery.” Yet given their growth rates, the NWF warns “recovery of dead and damaged corals to pre-spill conditions could take centuries.”

Humans
Despite all the damage to wild plants and animals throughout the Gulf, no species was closer to the Deepwater Horizon disaster than humans. Eleven people died in the initial explosion that destroyed the rig, making it a human tragedy first and foremost.

Thousands upon thousands of people have also been affected in the three years since, and in a wide range of ways. Some were physically sickened by oil or its fumes during the cleanup, while others lost fortunes or entire businesses to prolonged slumps in fishing, shrimping and tourism. BP set up a $20 billion fund to compensate the spill’s myriad victims, of which about $8.2 billion has been distributed so far. The oil giant must also make amends with Gulf Coast residents in other ways: Last fall, it pleaded guilty to 12 felony charges as part of a $4.5 billion settlement with the U.S. government, the largest such fine in American history. It also reached a $7.8 billion settlement last spring with private-sector plaintiffs, and a civil trial is currently under way in New Orleans.

Humans’ relationship with the spill is complicated, however, by the fact it wouldn’t have occurred without us. While it was an accident by all accounts, there is ample evidence it could have been prevented. That was the first conclusion listed by the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which reported not only that spill was avoidable, but that its causes “can be traced to a series of identifiable mistakes made by BP, Halliburton and Transocean that reveal such systematic failures in risk management that they place in doubt the safety culture of the entire industry.”

A BP engineer was arrested last year for allegedly trying to destroy evidence about the spill, three employees have been charged with manslaughter in connection with the explosion, and an executive has been charged with lying to investigators about how much oil was leaking. The U.S. Justice Department has accused BP of gross negligence and a “culture of corporate recklessness,” but the oil spill commission casts broader blame: “Deepwater energy exploration and production, particularly at the frontiers of experience, involve risks for which neither industry nor government has been adequately prepared.”

***

There’s not much anyone can do now to help wildlife overcome the spill, Joye says, aside from keeping a close ecological eye on the northern Gulf. But even if it is too soon to judge the region’s recovery, there may still be important lessons to learn in the meantime.

“I think the biggest thing we’ve learned is the variability in response time,” she says. “Some parts of the system seem to be responding pretty quickly and approaching pre-spill conditions, and others are still not functioning correctly.” Beyond appreciating the complexity of the Gulf’s comeback, Joye also suggests reflecting on our own roles in the disaster. “This entire incident is a call to arms. People need to be aware of the consequences of deepwater drilling and aware of how they use energy,” she says. “We all play a critical role in the sustenance of the planet, and we need to be good stewards.”

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/bps-oiled-animals-where-are-they-now

Celebrate Oceans Day – Indian Head Beach, Stephenville, NL

INVITATION TO CELEBRATE WORLD OCEAN DAY!

WHEN: Sunday, June 8th, 2014 –  2 pm (WEATHER PERMITTING!)

WHERE: Indian Head Beach, Stephenville, NL (Gather near the parking lot near Tip Top Auto)

This Sunday, June 8th at 2 pm, join the Port au Port / Bay St. George Fracking Awareness Group and a network of organizations and volunteers in all five provinces surrounding the Gulf to celebrate Oceans Day.

The groups are jointly asking for a moratorium on oil and gas exploration and development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, whose waters touch all our shores.

Please join in for a garbage clean-up of Indian Head Beach, Stephenville, NL. Gather near the parking lot of Tip Top Auto with your gloves; garbage bags will be provided.

At 3 pm we will celebrate our clean beach. Bring a picnic, refreshments, and music, your children and friends. Everyone is welcome!

We will have a Prayer of Appreciation for the nourishment our bays provide and pledge to keep them clean.

Gulf Review Shelved – Bernard Richard interview (CBC)

Listen to this excellent CBC radio interview about Bernard Richard’s review and public consultation which was terminated by the C-NLOPB.

February 23, 2013
Gulf Review Shelved
A review of the Old Harry oil project in the Gulf of St.Lawrence, including public consultation, has been shelved. CBC’s Central Morning radio show speaks with the man who was supposed to be in charge of it.

Coalition Calls on Leaders to Act Immediately to Stop Oil and Gas Exploration in Gulf Of St. Lawrence

Save Our Seas and Shores For Immediate Release

October 4, 2010

PICTOU, NS – Today’s decision by the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (CNLOPB) to allow seismic blasting in the Gulf of St. Lawrence was met with shock and concern by a coalition calling for a moratorium on oil and gas development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The coalition – made of aboriginal, fishing, and environmental organizations – is calling on municipal, provincial, federal, and aboriginal leaders to act swiftly to halt the testing.

“With this decision, the CNLOPB has approved an activity that could damage this entire precious ecosystem,” according to Mary Gorman of the Save Our Seas and Shores, “We want this decision reversed immediately, and action taken to allow jurisdictions bordering on the Gulf to have a say in its future.”

“Seismic testing could start very soon, potentially damaging marine mammals like blue whales, and disrupting fish and fisheries. This approval has given oil and gas as a toehold in the Gulf that could lead to full scale drilling,” according to Danielle Giroux of Attention Fragile (Magdalen Islands). “Fishermen I work for need more say over protecting the Gulf. We want the CNLOPB’s decision reversed immediately.”

“An oil spill in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would impact fish stocks and coastal communities in Quebec, PEI, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia,and Newfoundland. Moreover, the national importance of this ecosystem must be upheld.” says Gretchen Fitzgerald of the Sierra Club Canada – Atlantic Chapter. “ Federal laws to protect endangered species and fish habitat recognize the importance of protecting our shared biodiversity and resources. This decision is not reflecting this shared responsibility or concerns expressed by groups around the Gulf.”

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Farley Mowat vs. the zombies: game on ~ Michael Harris, iPolitics

By Michael Harris iPolitics Insight Jul 14, 2013

Farley Mowat and Mary Gorman (Credit: CineFocus Canada)

“I am on permanent call by God.”

That is how Farley Mowat at 92, bearded, blue-eyed, and bemused, describes his presence in the waiting-room of eternity.

This should be a time to make morning tea for his wife, Claire, listen to the bullfrogs harrumphing in the two ponds on his 200-acre sanctuary in River Bourgeois Cape Breton, and reflect on the closet-full of books in his study, all 44 of them, that he has written over an extraordinary life.

Instead, he has donned his literary armour and is riding out to face yet another dragon threatening the beauty and balance of nature – a proposed deep water oil-drilling operation in the heart of the Gulf of St. Lawrence – a project given the innocuous name “Old Harry.”

“I am doing this against my will in a way, getting involved at this time in life when I might get the Big Call tomorrow.  But the bastards who have set this thing in motion are taking a perverse pleasure in doing it and must be opposed.  They have decided to call their development “Old Harry”.  The great swindle, you know, to give it a nice name that conjures up Uncle Harry.  I suspect that they don’t know that in literature, ‘Old Harry’ is a synonym for the devil.”

Metaphysical resonances notwithstanding, the five provinces that border the proposed development would have hell to pay if there were ever a spill like the one that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico at BP’s Deep Water Horizon rig.

That’s because the channels and straits that make up the Gulf of St. Lawrence move in a counter-clockwise fashion, which means that the vast area is only flushed into the wider ocean once a year.  Spilled oil would ride the mostly landlocked Gulf currents for a long time.  That would put thousands of species, some of them already endangered, like the Blue Whale, at greater risk.

Making matters potentially worse, the site of the proposed development is the deep Laurentian Channel, the main artery in and out of the Gulf for 2,200 marine species – including Blue whale, Right whale and Leatherback turtle.

In Canada’s pending Gulf War, Farley Mowat, lone-wolf and single-handed crusader, has a strong ally this time.  Mary Gorman, a lobster fisherman’s wife turned unpaid activist, has been battling to protect the Gulf of St. Lawrence for 25 years.

“I like her because she’s got guts,” Mowat says, “and I trust her instincts. Mary is a daughter of the Gulf, one of the animals who lives here. She senses what is coming”.

In 1988, Gorman led the Battle of Boat Harbour to stop a local mill from dumping 26 million gallons of effluent into the Northumberland Strait near Pictou Landing First Nations community.

“I like her because she’s got guts,” Mowat says, “and I trust her instincts.  Mary is a daughter of the Gulf, one of the animals who lives here.  She senses what is coming.”

With Elizabeth May, she co-founded the Save our Seas and Shoreline Coalition to challenge oil and gas leases that had been granted off the pristine shores of Cape Breton Island.

Gorman says that the federal government has literally passed responsibility for protecting marine habitat to the very people who favour development, virtually erasing the line between industry and government.

“How did the protection of marine habitat end up in the hands of the offshore petroleum industry?” Gorman asked. “As it stands now, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment Canada have signed memorandum of understanding with offshore boards deferring DFO and EC’s marine protection to these boards.”

(In April 2011, Gorman was voted a Canadian Green Hero.  A documentary produced by Cinefocus Canada and based on Gorman’s fight to protect the Gulf of St. Lawrence will air on TVO on July 16 at 7:30 pm and again on July 21 at 8:30 pm.  Mowat appears in the film.)

As for Gorman’s question, Farley Mowat thinks he knows why government has abdicated protection of the environment to bodies representing the petroleum industry. Sipping his illicit glass of chardonnay (his doctor has forbidden it), he says something has gone wrong with our national fermentation process; instead of wine, we are now producing vinegar as a country.

“Under the current system, the environment and resource development cannot be reconciled.  The ones in power just don’t think the right way.  It’s as if we are being governed by an alien species.  It’s as if something rises from the Ottawa River and affects them all.  They become zombies.”

Nor does Mowat believe that the anti-environment phenomenon is exclusive to the Canadian government.

“Governments worldwide do their best to diminish it, belittle it, until it gradually melts away.  The policy now is to crucify the environment.  Peter Kent wasn’t even a good illusion of an environment minister.”

Our interview is put on hold with the arrival of Mark, who is in charge of maintenance at the local fishplant.  Farley tells him about the electrical switch that needs fixing and the gaps around the upstairs windows that are letting the ants in.  As they talk, I take a slow inventory of the room full of memories of the author’s life – shells, bones, a silver mermaid, and the light fixture in the living room which has a desiccated hornet’s nest where the light bulb should be.  Before he leaves, Mark comments on Farley’s list of tasks.

“As you always tell me, this house is rotting from the top down.”

My puckish host returns seamlessly to the matter we had been discussing.  To make his point about how governments work to discredit environmentalists, Mowat talks admiringly of his friend Paul Watson, who is now a fugitive from international justice.  The author says the warrant against Watson from Costa Rica is trumped up with the connivance of Japan and countries like Canada.

“All he tried to do was keep the Japanese from whaling in protected areas.  Now there is an Interpol red alert on Paul and he is a stateless person sailing on the high seas in the South Pacific.  The only place he can land is deserted atolls inhabited by hermit crabs.”

But there was one other place he did land while he was being pursued and before he took to sea – the farmhouse looking out to sea from a hill on Grand Gulley Road at River Bourgeoise – the Mowat retreat.

We walk into his main-floor writing room (a stately Underwood manual typewriter commands the desk)  and I stop in front of a faded wanted poster, front-on and in profile, of Farley Mowat hanging on the wall.

“No one in Canada knows this but I entertained Paul when the authorities were looking for him and didn’t know where he was.  The same authorities, I might add, who used to listen to my phone calls when they saw me as a ‘left-wing rebel.’  I just laughed about it and said ‘Good morning chaps’ whenever I used the phone.”

We walk into his main-floor writing room (a stately Underwood manual typewriter commands the desk)  and I stop in front of a faded wanted poster, front-on and in profile, of Farley Mowat hanging on the wall.  He laughs and tells me that it was Jack McClelland’s idea after Mowat was prevented from entering the U.S. on a book tour.

“Oh yeah, Farley My Discovery of America!  They let me into Siberia to talk about my work but not the United States.  I wrote the thing in three weeks.  Fastest book I ever wrote.”

There is a dinner of home-made quiche and a salad made from greens from the Mowats’ fenced garden on the hillside, and a little of the forbidden chardonnay.  Sea-shell pink peonies pose lavishly in their vase.  I mention the photograph of Pierre Trudeau and Mowat in the living room.  There is always a story.

“You know Pierre and Margaret came to visit us in the Magdalen Islands.  He was travelling quietly that day – showed up in an ice-breaker and came ashore by helicopter.  Margaret was pregnant with Justin.  Just before dinner, I asked Pierre if he wanted to walk the grounds.  I had half an acre planted in hemp seeds given to me by the mayor of Port Hope.  Trudeau knew what they were but made no comment until I asked him what he thought of the grounds.  “It’s a fine garden, Farley, but isn’t it time you cut your grass?”

Before I left, my host asked simply “Care for something to read?”  I was escorted back into his study, where he opened the closet door where his books stood in a long, lovely line.  I chose And No Bird Sang, his reminisces of the war when Captain Mowat bedevilled authority.

The war goes on and he still does.

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He is currently working on a book about the Harper majority government to be published in the autumn of 2014 by Penguin Canada.