Month: September 2018

By: Ben Cousins The Canadian Press

Published on Sun Oct 25 2015

ANTIGONISH, N.S. — Four-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke will be in northern Nova Scotia Monday to help with the Mi’kmaq community’s water ceremony and support the aboriginal call for a moratorium on oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Hawke, who owns land in the St. George’s Bay area near Antigonish, was contacted by the local Mi’kmaq community to attend the event in support of his neighbours.

“We trying to show the world that the Gulf of St. Lawrence is not available for oil exploration,” said Troy Jerome, executive director of the Mi’gmawei Mawiomi Secretariat. “It’s a race to get oil as opposed to a race protect the environment.”

“When you look at the state of the environment and climate change, I think we should be racing to protect the land where we can.”

The water ceremony is held in each season to give offerings and honour the Mi’kmaq people’s relationship with the water, the fish, the land.

For two years now, the group has been saying there should be a 12-year moratorium to give time to conduct a proper study by a third-party that looks at the Gulf as a whole ecosystem.

Jerome says up until now, studies have only been done by individual provinces.

“The oil is not going to know which side of the border to stop its spill at,” he said. “It’s going to go all over the place.”

“Our salmon do not follow a provincial boundary, they go right through the channel.”

Jerome says officials told him when you combine the provincial studies together, they achieve a comprehensive study for the area.

“For us, that flies in the face of good science.”

The Gulf of St. Lawrence is one of the largest marine breeding regions in Canada with more than 2,000 marine species choosing to spawn, nurse and migrate there year round.

It is also home to endangered whales and hosts some of the largest lobster production in the world.

The Mi’kmaq say the area is a sensitive ecosystem due to its winter ice cover, high winds and counter clockwise currents that only flush into the Atlantic once a year.

Jerome says Atlantic petroleum boards are operating at pace where Nova Scotians don’t feel they have a say about oil drilling.

He says the tourism and fishing industries in the area are obviously concerned, but outside of that, not a whole lot of people really know about what’s going on.

“We want to get people in the Atlantic to become more aware that these kinds of drilling programs are proposed in their water.”

The venue for the water ceremony in Antigonish is also of historical significance.

The site was the location for the events that led to the Marshall Decision.

In 1993, Donald Marshall Jr., a member of the Membertou First Nation, was stopped for fishing in Antigonish County, N.S., for fishing eels without a license.

He claimed he was allowed to catch and sell fish by virtue of a treaty signed with the British Crown.

Six years later, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed Donald Marshall Jr. had a treaty right to catch and sell fish, thus changing the way First Nations people could hunt and catch in Canada.

Source: Metronews.ca

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.

Seismic airgun activity for oil and gas exploration has been approved by the Obama Administration. At present, the Department of Interior is deciding whether to allow seismic surveys for offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean from New Jersey to Florida. The proposed surveys would employ loud and continuous sound blasts that would cause devastating impacts to whales, dolphins, sea turtles, fishes and other marine life, as well as the ecosystem.
Blasts from seismic airguns have been shown to interfere with the mating, feeding, communication, and migration activities of numerous species, including the critically endangered Northern Atlantic right whale which numbers around 300 whales.

http://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/seismic-airgun-activity-off-atlantic-coast-of-u-s-could-harm-thousands-of-marine-animals?utm_campaign=mailto_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

The Gulf of St. Lawrence will soon hear oil industry’s boom: Greens

James Munson iPolitics.ca

2 August 2012

Over the phone, Lindy Weilgart plays a recording of the sonic blasts oil companies use to explore for fossil fuels beneath the seabed.

The muffled low-frequency buzz sounds ominous but much quieter than what a whale or a dolphin, which use sounds to mate and hunt, would hear in the ocean, said Weilgart, an internationally recognized expert in the field at Dalhousie University.

“These are extremely high pressure air guns that release an amount of air, and that cause a hugely loud sound,” said Weilgart.

The sound of the air gun’s explosion has to travel through the ocean, then through hundreds of kilometers of bedrock and finally all the way back up to the surface, where it’s recorded.

The Gulf of St. Lawrence, an inland sea home to blue whales, humpback whales, belugas and countless kinds of fish, has remained largely free of these sounds in the past.

But things are about to get loud, said Weilgart.

As part of Ottawa’s push to boost Canada’s petroleum sector, the contentious spring budget included measures to turn the Gulf into a new oil frontier despite little success in the past and worries among coastal communities in four provinces that an oil slick could destroy fisheries and ecosystems. The budget measures received royal assent in late June.

Now the federal Green Party is trying to rally opposition to oil and gas exploration. Leader Elizabeth May, who began her own career in environmental advocacy in the Maritimes, hosted a news conference in Halifax this morning on the risks of oil exploration.

“The Gulf of St. Lawrence is inappropriate for oil and gas development,” said May in a phone interview after the news conference. “It should be a no-go zone.”

The Gulf is home to thousands of bird and fish species whose ecosystem would be irrevocably damaged by exploration or an accident, said Mary Gorman, the head of Save our Seas and Shoreline, an activist group focused on oil exploration around Nova Scotia.

The Gulf’s counter-clockwise currents only empty into the Atlantic once a year so an oil spill would spread over five coastlines during that time, she said.

Ottawa named the Gulf by name in its spring budget as a target region for petroleum exploration. The budget also amended the Coasting Trade Act so that foreign seismic exploration vessels can now travel in Canadian waters.

But it’s the Gulf’s environmental regulators that really have the Greens worried.

Four separate regulators work in the Gulf.

The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB) and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (CNLOPB) govern the waters off those provinces’ coastlines.

The National Energy Board covers pretty much everything else, except for waters off the Quebec coast, which will soon be jointly managed by Ottawa and that province after they signed an agreement in 2011.

At the moment, oil exploration along Quebec appears to be quiet.

The provincial government is currently waiting to finish a study on the effects of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, before allowing a moratorium on the exploration and extraction method to be lifted.

However, the minister in charge of natural resources indicated this week that onshore oil exploration on Anticosti Island, which sits in the northern part of the Gulf, will not be subject to a moratorium.

Most near-term conflicts over exploration will likely occur closer to the Atlantic provinces, where past exploration has taken place.

There is currently only one viable exploration site in the Gulf, Old Harry, off the southeastern coast of Newfoundland & Labrador, which received and environmental assessment from the CNLOPB last October.

“No significant residual adverse environmental effects, including cumulative environmental effects, will occur as a result of the Project,” says the assessment, which was outsourced to Stantec, an engineering firm.

The CNSOPB and the CNLOPB, created in the aftermath of petroleum discoveries off those provinces’ coastlines in the Atlantic Ocean, don’t have the technical capacity to perform environmental assessments, said Gorman.

“By the terms of their creation, they exist to promote offshore oil and gas exploration,” she said. “The idea that they’re going to do rigorous assessments is a joke.”

And, on top of that, Canada’s policy on seismic exploration and marine animals is not protective enough for a region teeming with as much wildlife as the Gulf, said Weilgart, the expert on marine animals and seismic blasts.

“Canada’s policy is appalling,” said Weilgart, who provided advice to the federal government in 2005 when the policy on the issue was created.

In Australia, if a seismic exploration vessel spots a marine mammal two kilometers away, it has to stop blasting, she said.

In Canada, that same condition kicks in only if the vessel spots a whale at 400 meters, she said. And it only applies to endangered species.

“It’s not precautionary at all,” said Weilgart,

This 32 page report presents the Gulf of St. Lawrence as a unique marine ecosystem that features complex oceanographic processes and also maintains a high biological diversity of marine life. The information provided covers physical systems such as the properties of water, physical oceanography and geological components. The biological aspects include descriptions of macrophytic, planktonic and benthic communities, reptiles, fish, marine birds and mammals. There is also a discussion on the human components such as settlement, industrial activity and governance. By providing relevant information in this format the report highlights the challenge of managing multiple human activities within the context of a dynamic, diverse and unique marine ecosystem. It was produced by Fisheries and Oceans Canada in 2005.

Gulf of St. Lawrence A Unique Ecosystem DFO

Stopping the flow The Guardian Jim Day

October 15, 2013

Series of talks in P.E.I. highlight risks of oil drilling in St. Lawrence

Sylvain Archambault has encountered his share of indifference towards oil and gas exploration and drilling.

The general public, he notes, often view the practice in a “very neutral way.”

Offer them with some cold, hard, disturbing facts, though, and they can quickly snap to attention, says Archambault.

(Click here for times and locations of talks)

He believes information – good, solid information – is the key to winning converts in a growing campaign to rally support to convince government to place a moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.

Archambault, who has a Masters in Science, co-founded the St. Lawrence Coalition in 2010 in the Magdalen Islands because “new projects by Corridor Resources was really giving concerns to the people.”

His coalition has since grown to 85 organizations with 4,500 individuals from all walks of life. Scientists, NGOs, tourism operators and fishermen are among the coalition members.

Archambault and his coalition have their sights set squarely on raising awareness of what he considers serious threats posed by the prospect of oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

“Our main purpose is to document things, inform the people, influence policy and try to gain a Gulf-wide moratorium in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” he said at a media conference in Charlottetown Tuesday.

“There is no rush in going in with oil and gas (exploration and drilling) in the Gulf and we definitely need a comprehensive public review – five provinces plus the federal (government) – to have a global look at this body of water.”

Archambault says Corridor Resources, a junior company with no offshore experience, is proposing to drill in the middle of one of the most productive channels of the entire Gulf in the “Old Harry” prospect between Newfoundland and the Magdalen Islands.

“They have experience on land in New Brunswick – conventional gas, shale gas – but they have no offshore experience,” he says.

He adds the company continues to demonstrate an “arrogant attitude” towards environmental concerns.

Archambault is also concerned with the Quebec government repeatedly voicing its determination to go ahead with oil and gas exploration and perhaps even development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

He notes people often say Newfoundland is drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, so why not drill in the Gulf of St. Lawrence?

“It’s a very, very different picture,” he counters.

“Often the Atlantic is 350 kilometres from the shore…whereas in the Gulf it is a close ecosystem.”

Archambault is in Prince Edward Island this week as the featured speaker in a series of public meetings designed to raise awareness of the serious threats posed by oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The P.E.I. chapter of Save Our Seas and Shores (SOSS P.E.I.) are hosting the series. They are also providing along with Archambault a diverse panel to offer information and to answer questions from the public.

One panelist, marine scientist Irené Novaczek, says the Gulf of St. Lawrence has already been heavily impacted by climate change contributing to the northern cod and the groundfish being “fished down” to a precariously low level.

“Now you add to that more industrial pollution from oil and gas extraction and increased ultra violet light from a thinning ozone layer, you have set yourself up a scenario where the Gulf of St. Lawrence could flip from a precariously healthy ecosystem – damaged that it is now – to a dead zone,” says Novaczek, who serves as an SOSS scientific advisor.

“Industrial activity could be enough to push it over the edge.”

Mike McGeoghegan, president of the P.E.I. Fishermen’s Association, says there has been a lack of consultation with the fishing community in Atlantic Canada.

“I need to have some more answers before I even look at this thing,” he says.

“We need a moratorium on this thing right now until we…find out what is going on.”

P.E.I. tourism operator Peter Baker fears a spill of any kind, with even the perception that oil would wash ashore in P.E.I., would be a dagger to the heart of the province’s tourism industry.

Archambault notes that the Gulf’s unique, biodiverse ecosystem supports a multi-billion dollar fishery and tourism industries.

From the US based group Oceana.org

According to government estimates, 138,500 whales and dolphins will soon be injured and possibly killed along the East Coast if exploration companies are allowed to use dangerous blasts of noise to search for offshore oil and gas.

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) is considering allowing geophysical companies, working on behalf of oil and gas companies, to use seismic airguns to search for offshore oil and gas in the Atlantic Ocean, from Delaware to Florida. These airguns use compressed air to generate intense pulses of sound, which are 100,000 times more intense than a jet engine.

These loud blasts are used on a recurring basis, going off every ten seconds, for 24 hours a day, often for weeks on end. They are so loud that they penetrate through the ocean, and miles into the seafloor, then bounce back, bringing information to the surface about the location of buried oil and gas deposits.

Airgun blasts harm whales, dolphins, sea turtles and fish. The types of impacts marine mammals may endure include temporary and permanent hearing loss, abandonment of habitat, disruption of mating and feeding, beach strandings and even death. Seismic airguns could devastate marine life, and harm fisheries and coastal economies along the Atlantic coast. Seismic testing in the Atlantic would also be the first major step toward offshore drilling, which further harms the marine environment through leaks, oil spills, habitat destruction and greenhouse gas emissions.

This seismic testing, and all of the consequences that may ensue, are unnecessary because there cannot be any drilling in the Atlantic for at least the next five years, and oil and gas companies already own undeveloped leases on millions of acres of federal lands and water.

Follow the conversation on Twitter at #seismic

Watch this short video – What is Seismic Airgun Testing?

Download a copy of “A Deaf Whale is a Dead Whale: Seismic Airgun Testing for Oil and Gas Threatens Marine Life and Coastal Economies” (PDF)
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Click here to learn more about seismic testing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence

Man-made noise in the oceans may have significant damaging effects on shellfish populations, according to a new international study.

This University of St. Andrews in Scotland press release below describes the study:

Credit: University of St. Andrews

A team of researchers from the Scottish Oceans Institute at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, the University of La Laguna, Canary Islands and the University of Auckland, New Zealand, found that marine invertebrates, such as shellfish, suffered significant body malformations after being exposed to noise.

The team conducted a sound playback experiment on New Zealand scallop larvae, comparing their development to a control group kept in quiet conditions. The results show that the exposed scallops suffered significant development delays, with 46% of them developing body abnormalities, while no malformations were found in the controlled larvae.

The strong impacts observed in the experiment suggest that abnormalities and growth delays could also occur at lower noise levels in the wild, suggesting routine underwater sounds from oil exploration and construction could affect the survival of wild scallops.

Team leader, Dr Aguilar de Soto, from the University of St Andrews and the University of La Laguna said:

Nobody knew that noise exposure could affect the growth of animals so dramatically so it was a real surprise to discover malformations in these microscopic larvae. What is actually going wrong inside the cells is still a mystery that we need to investigate. Shellfish larvae go through radical body changes as they grow and noise seems to disrupt this natural process.

Fishermen worldwide complain about reductions in captures follow seismic surveys used for oil explorations. Our results suggest that noise could be one factor explaining delayed effects on stocks?

MASTS (Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland) senior research fellow Dr Mark Johnson of St Andrews said:

Between shipping, construction and oil explorations, we are making more and more noise in the oceans. There is already concern about the possible effects of this on whales and dolphins. Our results show that even small animals could be affected by noise. It is important to find out what noise levels are safe for shellfish to help reduce our impact on these key links in the food chain?

The full report is published in the Nature Publishing Group journal, Scientific Reports.

Are blasting airguns jeopardizing Atlantic Ocean’s ecosystem?

by Robert Devet Halifax Media Co-op

November 21, 2013

K’JIPUKTUK, HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s offshore oil and gas production is on the upswing. Natural gas is flowing from the Deep Panuke natural gas field on the Scotian Shelf.

And now there are two new kids on the block. This time it’s oil they are after.

Shell Canada spent the summer mapping the geology of a large area in the Shelburne Basin about 300 kilometers south east of Halifax. Next summer BP Exploration (Canada) will follow suit.

Shell for one is happy with the results of its discovery effort. “The initial indication is that the data we’re seeing looks really good,” Shell spokesperson Larry Lalonde told the Chronicle Herald in early September of this year. “We’re quite excited about what we are seeing.”

But local environmental activists are worried. And the concern is not just about spills like the one we saw in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Concerns emerge even in this early discovery stage when geologists are determining how much oil there really is, and where exactly that oil can be found.

Problem is, that discovery process is a very noisy affair.

Seismic testing involves the use of airguns fired from moving ships. The airguns generate loudblasts below the ocean’s surface approximately every 20 seconds. The nature of the resulting seismic waves allow geologists to map the geological strata below the ocean floor.

Many environmentalists believe that the noise generated by airguns, almost as loud as dynamite explosions, has a profoundly negative effect on fish, sea turtles and whales in the seismic testing area.

Beaked Whales spend 98% of their time below the surface and are unlikely to be spotted by observers on board of the seismic testing vessels, biologist Lindy Weilgart tells the Halifax Media Co-op. Photo: WikiCommons.

Lindy Weilgart, a Dalhousie University research associate in Biology, has studied the effects of seismic testing on marine wildlife since she was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University.

Biologist Lindy Weilgart believes more can be done to protect marine wildlife from seismic testing off the coast of Nova Scotia. Photo: Dalhousie University

“When the airgun is fired you actually see a bubble coming to the surface, air is released under incredibly high pressure, and with a very sharp onset,” says Weilgart. “One shot, and if you don’t have ear protectors on you can go deaf.”

Weilgart is not just worried that sea creatures find themselves too close to the airguns and suffer permanent hearing damage. There are other reasons why seismic testing is particularly hard on ocean dwellers, says Weilgart.

Although under water sound drops off faster, it carries much further than it does on land. The sound of the airguns can be heard as far as 4,000 kilometers away. Combine that with how crucial sound is for fish and sea mammals, and you have a big problem.

“Often it is the quiet signals that are important,” says Weilgart. “For instance, fin whales have to listen for the sounds of potential mates, to meet up. For them it could mean the difference between a mating opportunity or not.”

And not just whales. Weilgart mentions studies that show that fish make very poor decisions about handling their prey when in a noisy environment. Even squid are affected.

The impact of seismic testing on ocean wildlife is complex. Weilgart gives example after example to drive home this point.

“We have to look at it in the way the animal experiences it, we have to be animal-centric,” says Weilgart. And behaviour isn’t always a good indicator of what is really going on.

“Sometimes the most vulnerable and most desperate of the individuals will stay, not because they aren’t bothered by the seismic testing, but because they can’t afford to leave, they don’t have the luxury,” says Weilgart.

Sea creatures are not just facing this one seismic survey, they are dealing with other noise sources as well, says Weilgart. Ships, the bow thrusters of oil platforms, the seismic ships themselves make noise.

Then there is stress caused by overfishing and loss of prey, climate change and warming of the oceans, acidification, the list goes on.

Environmental approval for this summer’s seismic testing by Shell was granted by the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, an independent joint federal-provincial agency that regulates all offshore oil and gas activities.

It’s written approval of this summer’s seismic testing effort states that it is not likely to result in significant adverse environmental effects, especially given the precautionary measures to which Shell has committed.

Those precautionary measures consist of independent monitors who travel on board of the ships and watch for whales and turtles, and sensors that pick up sounds made by whales below the ocean surface. Work stops immediately when there is any sign that such ocean wildlife is present.

Mark Butler, Policy Director at the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, does not think that is good enough.

What monitors are able to observe is just the tip of the iceberg, Butler says. Thick fog and big waves can make it very difficult to see a tail flick somewhere in that vast expanse of ocean.

Butler is also not happy that the exploration by Shell was taking place during the summer. He believes that it is better to stop seismic testing during sensitive periods.

“People don’t realize how much life comes into our waters in the spring and summer to feed, it’s like a highway out there,” says Butler.

This is why Butler asked that Shell postpone the seismic testing until later in the year, but Shell refused, arguing that the project was already approved and that bad weather in winter was too much of a risk to the crew.

“If you are striving, as some would perhaps suggest, for no environmental impact than there would be no man-made activities on land or on sea,” says Stuart Pinks, CEO of the Offshore Petroleum Board.

“But the purpose of the environmental assessment is to make sure that there is no significant adverse impact and to minimize any impact that has been identified to the lowest extent possible,” Pinks says.

Minimizing impact may be a matter of degree, but for Weilgart we’re not cautious enough.

“You can’t keep asking the animal to adapt, there is not enough luxury and play in the system,” says Weilgart. “The oceans are not doing well, and now you are throwing this at them.”

“At the very minimum you have to be precautionary.”

Follow Robert Devet on Twitter @DevetRobert

http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/offshore-seismic-testing-puts-wildlife-risk-biolog/19939

Joann Alberstat Chronicle Herald

March 8, 2013

Shell Canada’s proposed seismic survey could have an impact on the migration patterns of bluefin tuna off the coast of Nova Scotia, the federal Fisheries Department says.

A department official has told the industry regulator that the global energy giant should have a more detailed plan to avoid interfering with migrating tuna, or the midshore fishery, on the Scotian Shelf.

“New information on bluefin tuna migrations indicate that they travel along the shelf edge during the same time as the proposed seismic activity,” Donald Humphrey said Wednesday in an email to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board.

Humphrey, with the habitat management division, also said department staff have heard from several area fisherman who have asked Shell for more information about the seismic program but have not had a response.

“I would like to emphasize the importance of engaging these stakeholders,” the filing says.

Calgary-based Shell, a subsidiary of the Dutch oil and gas company, plans to start a 3-D seismic survey program of six deepwater blocks. The parcels are located about 350 kilometres south of Halifax.

Shell wants to explore almost 12,200 square kilometres of an area known as the Shelburne Basin.

The wide-azimuth surveys, part of a $1-billion exploration program planned over six years, will help the company examine the basin for potential drilling sites.

The survey program will run from April to September, with more work scheduled during the same time frame in 2014.

The 3-D surveys involve several vessels towing air-gun source arrays, with the two outer vessels also towing streamers.

While DFO has raised concerns about bluefin tuna, an Eastern Shore fisherman said Friday he’s concerned about the possible impact the survey could have on the snow crab fishery.

Peter Connors said scientific studies about the potential impact of seismic work on fish species have been inconclusive.

“The scientists aren’t prepared to say that it does cause any harm. It may or may not. We really don’t know,” the Sober Island fisherman said.

Connors, who is president of the Eastern Shore Fishermen’s Protective Association, also fishes lobster and halibut, which is another species found in the deepwater area that Shell wants to be explore.

Because the survey work would take several months, fishermen are also talking to Shell about minimizing the seismic program’s impact on various fisheries, he said.

A spokesman for aboriginal fishermen in Truro said the seismic work would also be done in an area that has swordfishing.

“They are aware of the longliners and are addressing that issue,” Roger Hunka, director of the Maritime Aboriginal Aquatic Resources Secretariat, said of the dialogue swordfisherman are having with Shell.

A Shell spokesman said the company has consulted with fisheries representatives and will continue to do so.

“We have made efforts to provide project information regularly and respond to any questions or concerns,” Stephen Doolan said in an email.

The board said earlier this week that it takes all stakeholder comments into account in deciding on the survey plan.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/911706-ottawa-shell-survey-could-affect-bluefin-tuna