Saving Seafood

Mid-Atlantic Seismic Blasts Halted

October 14, 2020 — Oil and gas drilling companies are standing down from seismic testing in the Atlantic Ocean this year, to the relief of environmental groups and wildlife advocates in the Chesapeake Bay region.

The industry said in a status conference before the U.S. District Court in South Carolina that it will not move ahead with testing for oil and gas reserves this year. The current seismic blasting authorizations expire November 30, and renewing them would require another round of environmental review and public comment.

Bay Bulletin first reported two years ago the federal approval for five companies to do seismic surveys in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maryland and Virginia, as a first step to gas and oil offshore drilling.

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Federal government allowing permits for seismic blasting in Atlantic Ocean to expire

October 12, 2020 — All manner of marine life, from plankton to the largest of whales, will be spared from months of nonstop thunderous seismic blasts that could kill or harm them because the oil and gas explorers and the federal government are allowing their permits to expire on Nov. 30 — and it would take at least a year for them to obtain new ones — should they wish to, environmentalists say.

“If you had told me two years ago 2020 would begin and end without any seismic air gun testing I would have been elated; that’s why I’m elated now,” Steve Mashuda, the Seattle-based managing attorney for oceans at Earthjustice, said by telephone.

The San Francisco-based nonprofit is one of several environmental nonprofits that in December 2018 sued in a South Carolina federal court to stop the tests — twice as loud as a jet engine — sought from New Jersey’s Cape May to Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Though New York and New England were not included, the blasts are so powerful they travel thousands of miles. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and a number of other East Coast local, state and federal officials opposed them — the first step in the Trump administration’s initial plan to open the Atlantic Ocean to oil and gas firms.

Read the full story at Newsday

Judge’s ruling likely ends seismic testing off coast for years

October 9, 2020 — Seismic testing off the coast of South Carolina is likely finished for several years after a federal judge dismissed a 2018 lawsuit on Tuesday.

The suit, filed by the Coastal Conservation League, took aim at the National Marine Fisheries Service for issuing preliminary seismic testing permits off the state’s coast.

U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel dismissed the suit because there are currently no pending applications for either of the two permits needed to proceed with seismic testing, and a Nov. 30 application deadline for one, coupled with a lengthy approval process, means any approvals would be moot by the time a trial occurred, Gergel said.

Read the full story at the Charleston Regional Business Journal

Seismic airgun blasting efforts halted in Atlantic Ocean for now

October 5, 2020 — The oil industry will not pursue seismic airgun blasting to investigate offshore petroleum locations in the Atlantic Ocean because permits cannot be reviewed in time.

The Coastal Conservation League, an environmental organization based in Charleston, South Carolina, announced the news after a status conference on the lawsuit that seeks to halt the underwater blasting.

The blasting, which involves loud pules of compressed air into the water column and deep into the seabed, to find oil and gas formations deep under the ocean floor, can disturb or injure whales, sea turtles, and other marine life, according to the New Jersey-based Clean Ocean Action.

But in the August 22, 2014 edition of “Science Notes,” a newsletter published by the federal government’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an agency representative wrote that in more than 30 years of air gun use, “there has been no documented scientific evidence of the noise … adversely affecting marine animal populations or coastal communities.”

Read the full story at WHYY

NORTH CAROLINA: Questions Linger on Offshore Drilling, Seismic

September 25, 2020 — Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., announced this week that President Trump had agreed to prevent drilling for oil and natural gas off the North Carolina coast, but the president has yet to speak publicly on the matter, and his administration says it is still moving forward with permitting for seismic exploration in the Atlantic.

Tillis, whom polls show trailing his Democratic Party challenger Cal Cunningham, announced Monday that Trump had agreed to add North Carolina to a multistate moratorium on Atlantic offshore drilling announced earlier this month.

The president announced Sept. 8 during an event in Jupiter, Florida, an order to extend the moratorium on offshore drilling on Florida’s Gulf Coast and expand it to Florida’s Atlantic Coast, as well as the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. North Carolina was not included at the time.

Tillis said Monday that he had spoken with Trump who agreed North Carolina would be included in the presidential memorandum withdrawing new leasing for offshore oil and gas developments for the next 12 years.

Also on Monday, the Department of Justice filed a document with the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, Charleston Division, stating that Trump’s memorandum “has no legal effect” on the status of the applications to conduct seismic surveys in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf that are pending before the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full story at Coastal Review Online

Groups say seismic blasts are hurting belugas in Cook Inlet

October 8, 2019 — Two conservation groups want the federal government to stop allowing seismic surveying in Cook Inlet. The Cook Inletkeeper and Center for Biological Diversity said the noise is harming beluga whales.

The survey work by Hilcorp involves blasting high pressure seismic airguns into the water. The sound waves that result help map the ocean floor and point to areas where oil and gas finds are likely.

Bob Shavelson, with the Cook Inletkeeper, said studies show loud noises can harm Cook Inlet beluga whales, which are considered highly endangered. He’s also concerned about the impacts on other creatures that inhabit the area where Hilcorp is testing.

“Imagine if a heavy metal band set up under your bedroom window,” Shavelson said. “How that would be if they were pounding 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for a couple months on end. You would go nuts.”

Read the full story at KTVA

Scientist calls for more research into seismic surveys as they leave lobsters flat on their backs

July 26, 2019 — Research by the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart and Curtin University in Western Australia found lobsters exposed to the air guns used in seismic surveys had damaged statocysts, an organ similar to the human inner ear.

One of the researchers, Ryan Day, said this left the lobsters with an impaired ability to right themselves when flipped over.

“They really rely on this ability to right themselves and to control when they are escaping from a predator,” he said.

The lobsters received the equivalent of a full survey passing within 300–500 metres.

“In all experiments we didn’t detect any sign of recovery, even one year after,” Dr Day said.

The results have prompted a renewed call by Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson for the practice to be investigated.

Read the full story at ABC

Interior: Nine seismic testing permits in process

May 16, 2019 — Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee that the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management remains working on seismic airgun testing permits — a key prerequisite to offshore oil and gas drilling — while issues regarding the legality of the Trump administration’s offshore leasing plan work their way through the federal court system.

In late March, a federal district judge in Alaska ruled Executive Order 13795, and subsequent efforts by the Trump administration to open up offshore drilling access in waters off Alaska and the Atlantic Coast, were illegal in attempting to repeal former President Barack Obama’s withdrawal of unleased lands in those areas under Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

Since that point, there’s been some confusion about what the Interior Department will and won’t do. Attorneys for the federal government stated in a May 9 status report — in the seismic testing lawsuit in federal court in Charleston, S.C. — that neither the department nor Bernhardt made any announcement that Interior “may wait until the resolution of any potential appeal” of that ruling before making decisions on authorizing offshore activities.

Read the full story at The Brunswick News

Gov. Cuomo signs New York offshore drilling ban alongside Billy Joel

April 30, 2019 — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, joined by musician Billy Joel, a Long Island native, signed legislation Monday at Jones Beach banning offshore drilling in New York’s waters, a move that supporters believe will thwart the Trump administration’s hopes to open the Eastern Seaboard for oil and gas exploration.

The bill, sponsored by State Sen. Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Beach) and Assemb. Steven Englebright (D-Setauket) and approved by the State Legislature in February,  will prohibit state agencies from processing applications for pipelines or any other transportation and distribution services needed to facilitate offshore drilling.

“Today’s bill says no how, no way are you going to drill the coast off Long Island and New York,” Cuomo said at an event with elected officials from both counties at the Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh. “It’s not going to happen as long as we are in charge of this state.”

The Interior Department announced in January 2018 that it intended to hold 47 lease sales in more than two dozen planning areas, nine of them along the Eastern Seaboard, between 2019 and 2024. The other tracts are in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Alaska and off the West Coast. The department granted an exclusion prohibiting drilling off the shores of Florida, citing that state’s reliance on tourism.

Read the full story at Newsday