Editor’s Note: See the CRE State of the Science Report on Seismic Exploration which clearly demonstrates that the statements made in the following article regarding the adverse affects of seismic exploration are not science based.
USA Today
Critics oppose plan to use sound waves that could kill thousands of sea mammals.
ASBURY PARK, N.J. — To hunt for undersea oil and natural gas, energy companies pound the sea floor with pulses of sound — blasts of compressed air, thousands of times louder than a jet airliner at takeoff.
“It’s like sitting in your living room with dynamite going off every 10 seconds,” said Nancy Sopka, an advocate with the Washington-based environmental group Oceana, which opposes the high-tech prospecting in the Atlantic.
It’s been an issue quietly simmering among conservation groups and the fishing industry, since they saw a draft environmental impact statement from the U.S. Department of Interior that estimated more than 138,000 dolphins, whales and sea turtles could be affected if the high-powered sound surveys go on for eight years.
“Imagine if the fishermen proposed to do this (injure mammals by accident). They get into trouble if they take one,” said Cynthia A. Zipf of Clean Ocean Action, a Sandy Hook, N.J.-based environmental group.
Opponents of offshore drilling are exaggerating the danger to marine life, said James Benton, executive director of the New Jersey Petroleum Council.
“Noise from seismic surveys is comparable to the sound of a sperm whale ‘echo-locating’ for prey and to naturally occurring and other ocean sound sources, including wind and wave action, rain, and shipping operations,” Benton said in a statement. “The study actually said that the potential for adverse effects on marine mammals is minor. Opponents of domestic-energy production and economic development incorrectly present that as a projection of injury and death.”
Seismic surveys already are regulated by the federal government under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, and “operators make great efforts to prevent potential impacts on marine mammals,” Benton said.
There’s no explicit plans yet to drill off the East Coast, but the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement prepared the impact statement to pave the way for prospecting. “They want to get the information back (from surveys) so they can make the decision on opening the Atlantic to leases,” Sopka said.
But at the moment there is not a lot of pressure from the industry to start hunting for ocean oil, said Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service, an industry news source.
“I don’t think the Baltimore Canyon or anywhere offshore of the middle Atlantic states is a subject of hot pursuit for those looking for oil,” said Kloza. There is much more interest in western shale formations and the deepwater Gulf of Mexico fields, he said.
“There just isn’t much happening in the northern Atlantic,” Kloza said.
Marshaling resistance
Long opposed in principle to oil and gas exploration off the Atlantic coast, the groups are trying to marshal political pressure to prevent the Interior Department from permitting seismic tests, a decision that will come up for consideration a third time in January. The proposed testing program could cover the sea floor from a few miles south of Cape May, N.J., to mid-Florida.
Given the strength of previous political opposition to oil exploration here, “they’ve given up on the Jersey Shore. But sound travels,” Zipf said.
Changes are already coming. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is updating its guidelines for judging how man-made sounds — seismic testing, ship noise, Navy sonar tests — can affect marine mammals. One likely change will drop the threshold level at which noise is considered to pose dangers to ocean wildlife.
For years NOAA had the threshold level at 160 decibels — much louder than a jet engine — but the new guidelines could drop that threshold to 120 decibels, about the sound of a chainsaw.
Oceana is suggesting to the Obama administration that a new environmental impact statement should wait for the new advice on sound thresholds.
The last possibilities for granting federal sea floor leases to actually drill off Virginia were canceled in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Another round of leases won’t happen until at least 2018, “so what’s the rush?” Sopka said.
Zipf, a 29-year veteran of fighting ocean dumping and offshore energy development, said she’s learned to trust more in political organizing than government process.
“It’s almost an art form for these environmental impact statements to get around the problems, to get what the applicant wants,” she said. “I believe in the power of the people. We are the ones who are going to stop this.”
This is a very telling article. “Facts” flying all over the place–who is an interested citizen to believe?
The posted article states, “For years NOAA had the threshold level at 160 decibels — much louder than a jet engine — but the new guidelines could drop that threshold to 120 decibels, about the sound of a chainsaw.” Apparently, the article’s comparisons to jet engines and chain saws were meant to alarm readers that the 160 and 120 dB sound levels are harmful in the oceans. In fact, extensive study over years has revealed no harm from these sound levels.
160 dB is the level NMFS has historically used to regulate so-called behavioral effects from oil and gas seismic on most marine mammals. NMFS also uses 160 dB to regulate Navy seismic airguns. The Navy’s DEIS for its Atlantic take rules states, “Results from two years (2009–2010) of intensive monitoring by independent scientists and Navy observers in Southern California Range Complex and Hawaii Range Complex have recorded an estimated 161,894 marine mammals with no evidence of distress or unusual behavior observed during Navy activities.“
At page 7115 of its Federal Register notice of the proposed Navy Atlantic take rules, NMFS explains, “The Navy has submitted reports from more than 60 major exercises conducted in the HRC and SOCAL, and off the Atlantic Coast, that indicate no behavioral disturbance was observed.”
At pages 148-150, the Navy’s application for the proposed Atlantic take rules states that “no observable behavioral disturbance, injury, or mortality was noted” during Navy operations over the last few years.
Like Navy seismic airguns, there is no evidence that oil and gas seismic airguns at 160 dB or the even lower 120 dB hurt marine mammals or anything else.
We are puzzled by the posted article’s statement that “the new guidelines could drop that threshold to 120 decibels, about the sound of a chainsaw.” This statement is inconsistent with NMFS’ statements about its contemplated revisions to acoustic criteria guidelines.
NMFS has not proposed any specific numbers for changes to the current 160 dB acoustic criteria for most Level B behavioral takes. However, NMFS does state in the Arctic DSEIS that it is “exploring additional methods of augmenting the use of a dose-response-like curve to address contextual factors beyond received level (such as distance from the sound or behavioral state of the animal), as well as the more chronic effects of sound source operated over longer periods of time. Currently, based on the limited data available and what it suggests is appropriate, NMFS plans to have different basic acoustic thresholds for mysticetes, odontocetes, and pinnipeds, with the recognition that sometimes there may be sufficient data to suggest that a species within one of those groups is ‘sensitive’ and should have different (lower) acoustic threshold.”
This possible new approach to Level B acoustic criteria does not mention 120 dB. It would probably result in different behavioral effects acoustic criteria for different marine mammals. Some of these new criteria would probably be higher than 160 dB.
These issues are discussed in more detail, and supporting links are provided, in CRE’s comments on NMFS DSEIS for the Arctic, which are available at:
http://www.thecre.com/creipd/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/CRE-Comments-on-Artic-SEIS.pdf
As someone who studies hearing in whales and dolphins, it troubles me to see oversimplifications of dB levels and marine mammals without regard to the frequency of the sound. Someone could easily blast me personally with 160 dB of 30 kHz sound and I would likely not be aware of it. Similarly (but at the opposite end of the hearing spectrum) a bottlenose dolphin listening hard for 120 dB of 1 kHz sound would similarly likely not hear it at all. It doesn’t matter if you attach words about in-air sound measurements (which are incorrectly applied to underwater references) of chain saws. When I measured the hearing of false killer whales, Risso’s dolphins and bottlenose dolphins they simply did not hear well at very low frequencies below 1 kHz. We have a striking scientific need for measuring the hearing of the great whales, but the scientific data we have to date indicates that most odontocetes do not hear well at low frequencies where most seismic energy is produced. Sound levels depend on what the listener can hear.