Saving Seafood

FLORIDA: Off-shore drilling ban goes to voters

October 25, 2018 — In just a few short weeks, Florida voters will head to the polls to vote on candidates and amendments to the Florida Constitution.

The 12 constitutional amendments on this year’s ballot are the most since 1998. One of those amendments concerns an issue that is a hot topic for Floridians and environmentalists.

Amendment 9 would prohibit offshore oil and gas drilling in state-owned waters. While this amendment is a good first step for Florida, some local officials and international organizations say it’s not enough.

“While Amendment 9 would be a great step and a great showing of public opposition, it still doesn’t get to the heart of the leasing plan that’s in federal waters,” said Loryn Baughman, the U.S. communications associate for Oceana, an ocean conservation and advocacy organization.

Currently, the Gulf of Mexico is split up into three separate sections: the western, central and eastern sections. Oil drilling is allowed in the western and central sections but the eastern section is under a moratorium until 2022 as part of the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006.

“The Trump Administration released a (oil drilling) proposal in January that involves 90 percent of all U.S. waters, including the eastern Gulf,” said Hunter Miller, the Florida Gulf Coast campaign manager for Oceana.

Miller referenced the Deepwater Horizons oil spill that occurred in 2010 and said it’s still not known just how much damage was done ecologically to the fisheries and ocean environments.

Read the full story at The Destin Log

A 14-year-long oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico verges on becoming one of the worst in U.S. history

October 23, 2018 — An oil spill that has been quietly leaking millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico has gone unplugged for so long that it now verges on becoming one of the worst offshore disasters in U.S. history.

Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan. Many of the wells have not been capped, and federal officials estimate that the spill could continue through this century. With no fix in sight, the Taylor offshore spill is threatening to overtake BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster as the largest ever.

As oil continues to spoil the Gulf, the Trump administration is proposing the largest expansion of leases for the oil and gas industry, with the potential to open nearly the entire outer continental shelf to offshore drilling. That includes the Atlantic coast, where drilling hasn’t happened in more than a half century and where hurricanes hit with double the regularity of the Gulf.

Expansion plans come despite fears that the offshore oil industry is poorly regulated and that the planet needs to decrease fossil fuels to combat climate change, as well as the knowledge that 14 years after Ivan took down Taylor’s platform, the broken wells are releasing so much oil that researchers needed respirators to study the damage.

“I don’t think people know that we have this ocean in the United States that’s filled with industry,” said Scott Eustis, an ecologist for the Gulf Restoration Network, as a six-seat plane circled the spill site on a flyover last summer. On the horizon, a forest of oil platforms rose up from the Gulf’s waters, and all that is left of the doomed Taylor platform are rainbow-colored oil slicks that are often visible for miles. He cannot imagine similar development in the Atlantic, where the majority of coastal state governors, lawmakers, attorneys general and residents have aligned against the administration’s proposal.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

ALABAMA: 8 years after Deepwater Horizon, beaches look good, but are they really?

August 24, 2018 — Cory Phipps didn’t know what to expect on the family vacation to the Alabama Gulf Coast this year.

The last time he visited Gulf Shores and Orange Beach was 2008, some 2 years before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill sparked an environmental and economic disaster of monumental proportions.

“We were hoping it would be nice,” the Gadsden resident said in late-July, as he frolicked in the waters off Gulf State Park with his daughters Rory and Tory. “Of course we had heard about the oil spill and all the trouble it caused. But just look around, it’s beautiful. We like Gulf Shores much more than Panama City and some of the other beaches. It’s more family friendly down here.”

On April 20, 2010, an explosion and fire on the Deepwater oil well set in motion what  many experts have called the greatest marine ecological disaster in history. The offshore well was about 40 miles south of Louisiana. The fire and explosion took 11 lives on the rig. And when the gushing well was declared sealed on Sept. 19, 2010, 4.9 million barrels of oil (or about 210 million gallons) had poured into the Gulf, according to U.S. government estimates.

Fisheries and beaches were closed as the oil spill migrated north and east along the Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle coasts. Hotels and condos went empty and cities that rely on tourism, such as Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, became veritable ghost towns at the height of the season.

Read the full story at the Montgomery Advertiser

Researchers complete Deepwater Horizon zone research

August 16, 2018 — An international team of researchers has completed a seven-year baseline study of fish populations in the Gulf of Mexico in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The study, recently published in the journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries, outlines the marine makeup of the gulf from the United States to Mexico and Cuba. According to the researchers, a lack of data has limited their abilities to fully understand the oil spill’s impact.

“Neither the fish nor oil spills know national boundaries,” said principal investigator Steve Murawski, professor at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science. “Providing seamless data for the gulf as a whole is imperative if we are to prepare adequately for future oil spills.”

The research was funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, which was established through a $500 million financial commitment from BP to study the environmental impact of Deepwater Horizon.

Overall, oil contamination in fish from the northern gulf continues to decline, though no assessed areas were completely oil free.

During 12 separate research expeditions, marine biologists systematically caught 15,000 fish of 166 species from 343 locations. They divided the gulf into six zones, to help best differentiate population changes. The most notable decline since the disaster is of the red snapper and southern hake in the northern gulf, the location of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Map Of Gulf Of Mexico Fisheries Prepares For Future Disasters

July 10, 2018 — A study seven years in the making by University of South Florida researchers has created a map of how many species live in the Gulf of Mexico. This will give experts an idea of how much damage would take place from a future oil spill.

The study took so long to complete because 12 separate expeditions were needed to cover the entire Gulf, including the waters off Mexico and Cuba. USF biologist and professor Steve Murawski said this information will be priceless.

“One of the criticisms of the Deepwater Horizon episode is before the spill, we had no environmental baseline for many of the things that are of interest and importance, and understanding the environment,” he said, “and now we have that baseline.”

Surprisingly, Murawski said researchers didn’t see a significant dropoff in the numbers of fish around the oil spill site, except for red snapper and hake.

Read the full story at WLRN

USF-led study discovers what lives in the gulf after BP disaster

July 6, 2018 — Eight years ago, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank off Louisiana, one of the big problems facing scientists trying to assess the damage caused by the oil spill was that no one knew much about what lives in the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s no longer a problem, according to the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Sciences.

Partially funded by money that BP had to pay in the wake of the 2010 disaster, USF scientists joined with colleagues from three other universities to put together the first-ever comprehensive look at what fish and other wildlife call the gulf their home.

Compiling the data for their study, just published in the scientific journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries, required 12 separate voyages over seven years on the USF research ship R/V Weatherbird II. That included two trips to Mexico and one to Cuba, according to lead research scientist Steve Murawski of USF.

During those voyages the scientists caught 15,000 fish of 166 species from 343 locations. They tested the specimens for oil residues and other pollutants. Overall, the degree of oil contamination of fish from the northern gulf continues to decline, the report said, but none of the areas assessed so far have been free of oil.

One surprise in their findings, Murawski said, was that the part of the gulf with the lowest diversity of fish species is the area of the gulf with the greatest number of offshore oil rigs.

“They’ve had 50 to 60 years of oil development there,” he said. “So that may be one of the at-risk areas” in case of a future oil spill. A disaster like Deepwater Horizon could more easily wipe out the fish living there to the point where they could not bounce back, he explained.

Read the full story at the Tampa Bay Times

ENVIRONMENTALISTS SUE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IN TAMPA OVER OFFSHORE DRILLING

June 22, 2018 — Earthjustice, on behalf of three conservation groups, sued the Trump administration Thursday (June 21) alleging that it failed to complete a legally required consultation about offshore drilling’s harms to threatened and endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are required under the Endangered Species Act to complete a consultation with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on its oversight of oil and gas operations that could impact threatened and endangered species. The last time the agencies completed a consultation, called a biological opinion, was in 2007, three years before the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster which led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, according to Earthjustice.

With the lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Tampa, the Gulf Restoration Network, Sierra Club, and Center for Biological Diversity are challenging the agencies for unreasonably delaying completion of a new consultation and seeking a court order to compel them to complete it within three months. A new biological opinion likely would result in additional safeguards to prevent further harm to sea turtles, whales, and other threatened and endangered species from oil and gas operations in the Gulf.

Read the full story at the Tampa Bay Reporter

Suit: Offshore drilling done in absence of required report

June 22, 2018 — Three conservation groups said in a lawsuit filed Thursday that federal wildlife agencies have failed for years to complete required consultations and reporting on the effects that oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico could have on endangered species.

The suit comes more than a decade since the last such report was done, and more than eight years since the huge 2010 BP oil spill, the groups said.

The Gulf Restoration Network, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity released a copy of their lawsuit as it was being filed in U.S. District Court in Florida. Defendants named are the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The suit says the Endangered Species Act requires those agencies since 2007 to consult with the agencies overseeing Gulf drilling and to publish an opinion on the possible effects of such drilling on endangered species, including various species of whales and sea turtles.

Such consultations and reporting haven’t been conducted since well before the 2010 explosion of the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, a disaster that spilled millions of gallons into the Gulf, the lawsuit says. It added that the result is that hundreds of offshore oil and gas projects have been approved based on outdated information.

The lawsuit seeks an order requiring completion of a consultation in 90 days.

After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which also killed 11 rig workers, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement decided a new consultation was needed and asked the two agencies to begin work on one in 2010, the suit says.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

Trump just erased an Obama-era policy to protect the oceans

June 21, 2018 — President Trump on Wednesday ended an eight-year-old policy to protect oceans, which was created as hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from a broken well, covering more than 65,000 square miles, killing untold numbers of wildlife and devastating fisheries in several Gulf Coast states.

President Barack Obama mentioned the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest and costliest oil spill in the nation’s history, in the second sentence of an executive order that detailed the first national ocean policy and called on federal agencies to work closely with states and local governments to manage the waters off their coasts.

“The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and resulting environmental crisis is a stark reminder of how vulnerable our marine environments are, and how much communities and the nation rely on healthy and resilient ocean and coastal ecosystems,” Obama’s July 2010 order said.

In contrast, Trump’s order does not mention the explosion that killed nearly a dozen workers and the spill of 210 million gallons of oil. The second sentence gives a nod to domestic energy production, the jobs it could provide and the financial rewards that can be reaped.

“Ocean industries employ millions of Americans and support a strong national economy. Domestic energy production from Federal waters strengthens the nation’s security and reduces reliance on imported energy,” his order reads.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Rhode Islanders march against offshore drilling

March 5, 2018 — PROVIDENCE, R.I. — More than a hundred Rhode Island residents gathered at the State House Wednesday to protest the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management proposal to lift the long-standing ban on offshore fossil fuel drilling in large swaths of US coastal waters.

The protest, organized by Save the Bay, an independent, nonprofit organization devoted to protecting and improving Narragansett Bay, was preceded by a press conference wherein several state officials spoke out against BOEM’s proposal.

Concerned RI residents packed into the State Room as Governor Gina Raimondo, Senator Dawn Euer, Mayor Scott Avedesian of Warwick and others railed against the expansion of offshore drilling in RI and elsewhere.  The proposal came after President Donald Trump’s latest executive order to reverse existing policy that protects waters from oil and gas drilling.

According to BOEM, the proposal, “The Five Year Program, is an “important component” of the President’s executive order to allow domestic oil and natural gas production “as a means to support economic growth and job creation and enhance energy security.”

“While offshore oil and gas exploration and development will never be totally risk-free, since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill, the U.S. Department of the Interior has made, and is continuing to make, substantial reforms to improve the safety and reduce the environmental impacts of OCS oil and gas activity,” reads the proposal.

However at Thursday’s press conference, Raimondo said the proposal is a “terrifying” move in the wrong direction, citing “tragedies like Exxon Valdez and the BP oil spill.”

“We should be focusing on harnessing our offshore wind power – not digging for oil off our coast. The proposal that came out of Washington in January to open up our coastal waters to offshore drilling is terrifying,” Raimondo said, to thunderous applause.  “Rhode Island won’t stand for it.”

Reaching the coastlines of all five Gulf Coasts, the long-term impacts of the Deepwater spill are still felt today, taking a devastating impacts on birds, mammals, fish, and other creatures.

Read the full story at the Narragansett Times