{"id":38337,"date":"2018-09-26T09:48:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T14:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38337"},"modified":"2018-09-26T09:48:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T14:48:12","slug":"mud-and-confusion-oil-and-gas-industry-goes-on-defense-as-studies-show-offshore-exploration-could-kill-zooplankton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38337","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Mud and Confusion&#8217;: Oil and Gas Industry Goes On Defense as Studies Show Offshore Exploration Could Kill Zooplankton"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2018\/09\/25\/oil-gas-industry-seismic-survey-offshore-exploration-kill-zooplankton\">&#8216;Mud and Confusion&#8217;: Oil and Gas Industry Goes On Defense as Studies Show Offshore Exploration Could Kill Zooplankton<\/a><\/h3>\n<article class=\"node-13196 node node-blog node-promoted view-mode-full clearfix\">\n<div class=\"field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/oil-rig-santa-barbara-channel-ca_credit-dirtsailor2003_creative-commons.jpg?itok=TxTs5InE\" alt=\"Oil rig in Santa Barbara Channel\" width=\"826\" height=\"553\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-social-bar clearfix\">\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-share-wrapper new-horizontal-fb-wrapper clearfix\"><span class=\"dquo\">\u201c<\/span>We knew it was going to cause a stir,\u201d said\u00a0Australian marine scientist Dr. Robert\u00a0McCauley.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p>McCauley was referring to the results of an experiment testing the impacts of a common oil and gas industry technique\u00a0in waters off southern Australia, which were reported in a scientific paper in June\u00a02017.<\/p>\n<p>The world\u2019s powerful offshore oil and gas industry has\u00a0used seismic surveys for decades as the primary way to locate fossil fuels under the ocean\u00a0floor.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Impacts of Seismic\u00a0Surveys<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Seismic surveys involve an underwater air gun pulled behind a boat and fired at intervals, and as the shock waves bounce\u00a0off the sea floor and return\u00a0to sensors, they help reveal where oil and gas might\u00a0be.<\/p>\n<p>McCauley, an associate professor at Curtin University in Western Australia, and his colleagues wanted to know what these seismic surveys did to zooplankton \u2014 an organism at the base of the marine food\u00a0web.<\/p>\n<p>According to their results, published in the Nature journal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41559-017-0195\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ecology and Evolution<\/a>, there was a two to three-fold increase in the number of dead zooplankton at a distance of at least 1.2 kilomenters\u00a0(about three-quarters of a\u00a0mile) from the air gun after the blasts. That is\u00a0much farther than previous reports of impacts out to only 10 meters\u00a0or so (roughly 33\u00a0feet).<\/p>\n<p>But as reported in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2018\/sep\/25\/whitewash-us-oil-and-gas-lobbyists-try-to-discredit-australian-seismic-research\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Guardian Australia<\/a>, two major <span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span> oil and gas industry groups have been writing to regulators describing McCauley\u2019s findings as \u201cseriously flawed\u201d while commissioning other unnamed experts who have also criticized the\u00a0study.<\/p>\n<p>McCauley, who has been researching the impacts of seismic surveys on marine life since the early 1990s, told Guardian Australia the criticisms of his research were a\u00a0\u201cwhitewash.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Mud and Confusion&#8217;: Oil and Gas Industry Goes On Defense as Studies Show Offshore Exploration Could Kill Zooplankton \u201cWe knew it was going to cause a stir,\u201d said\u00a0Australian marine scientist Dr. Robert\u00a0McCauley. McCauley was referring to the results of an experiment testing the impacts of a common oil and gas industry technique\u00a0in waters off southern [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5317,11559,21925,21923,1729,21924,21922],"class_list":["post-38337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-desmog-blog","tag-graham-readfearn","tag-marine-life","tag-offshore-exploration","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-seismic-surveys","tag-zooplankton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38338,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38337\/revisions\/38338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}