Saving Seafood

Retired Oil Rigs off the California Coast Could Find New Lives as Artificial Reefs

May 17, 2019 — Offshore oil and gas drilling has been a contentious issue in California for 50 years, ever since a rig ruptured and spilled 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil off Santa Barbara in 1969. Today it’s spurring a new debate: whether to completely dismantle 27 oil and gas platforms scattered along the southern California coast as they end their working lives, or convert the underwater sections into permanent artificial reefs for marine life.

We know that here and elsewhere, many thousands of fishes and millions of invertebrates use offshore rigs as marine habitat. Working with state fisheries agencies, energy companies have converted decommissioned oil and gas platforms into manmade reefs in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, Brunei and Malaysia.

Californians prize their spectacular coastline, and there are disagreements over the rigs-to-reefs concept. Some conservation groups assert that abandoned oil rigs could release toxic chemicals into the water and create underwater hazards. In contrast, supporters say the submerged sections have become productive reefs that should be left in place.

We are a former research scientist for the U.S. Department of the Interior and a scholar focusing on the fishes of the Pacific coast. In a recent study, we reviewed the history of rigs-to-reefs conversions and decades of published scientific research monitoring the effects of these projects. Based on this record, we conclude that reefing the habitat under decommissioned oil and gas platforms is a viable option for California. It also could serve as a model for decommissioning some of the 7,500 other offshore platforms operating around the world.

Read the full story at EcoWatch

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

Opponents of offshore drilling at New Jersey Shore are breathing sigh of relief

May 13, 2019 — The federal government has stopped pushing for offshore oil drilling off the Atlantic Coast from New Jersey to Florida. And that’s good news for critics of the plan in South Jersey.

The Secretary of the Interior announced recently that plans to allow offshore drilling of oil and gas were postponed indefinitely. Opponents of seismic testing in South Jersey are relieved but say it’s not over yet.

“It’s very good news,” said Vicki Clark, president of the Cape May Chamber of Commerce. “But unless they say it is permanently abandoned, we still feel as though we have to continue to, continue on with our education about why this is not something we want to have anywhere along the Atlantic.”

Read the full story at KYW

ALASKA: Study pinpoints trend toward fisheries specialization

May 10, 2019 — Commercial fishermen in Alaska have gotten older in the past three decades. As it turns out, they’ve become more specialized, too.

Fewer permits overall are in the water; between the early 1990s and 2014, commercial fishing permits in Alaska decreased by 25 percent. On top of that, fewer individual fishermen are moving between fisheries.

From 1988-2014, the number of individuals holding multiple permits declined from 30 percent to 20 percent, according to a study published in the journal Fish and Fisheries.

The bottom line: fishermen are increasingly putting all their economic eggs into one basket, and that makes them more vulnerable to the ups and downs of fishing.

The study was born out of a workgroup that met through the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California Santa Barbara, said co-author Anne Beaudreau, an associate professor of fisheries at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The original intent was to study the long-term effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, but the data on fisheries specialization arose out of that work, she said.

“As we worked on this, we realized there are so many things that have caused long-term changes in the Gulf of Alaska; in the fisheries, it’s really hard to see the long-term effects of the oil spill,” she said. “A lot of the focus of the working group was on the biological effects … this paper sort of came out of the end of that.”

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

NEW YORK: Offshore Oil Drilling Is on Hold

May 3, 2019 — The Trump administration’s plan to allow oil and gas exploration and extraction off the Atlantic Coast is apparently on indefinite hold.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that a federal judge’s March declaration that President Trump’s order revoking a ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic is illegal may force the federal Department of the Interior to wait until that case is resolved before a final decision can be made about which offshore areas would be opened to the fossil-fuel industry.

Separately, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, with the musician Billy Joel by his side, signed legislation on Monday to ban offshore drilling in New York State waters. The legislation, according to a release from the governor’s office, will bar the state from granting permits for oil or gas exploration or drilling in offshore areas controlled by the state.

“This bill says no way are you going to drill off the coast of Long Island and New York,” the governor said in the statement, “because we must lead the way as an alternative to what this federal government is doing.”

The March decision by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason once again rendered 3.8 million acres of the Atlantic Ocean, along with 125 million acres of the Arctic Ocean, off limits to exploration and drilling under a ban President Obama enacted in December 2016, shortly before leaving office.

“The recent announcement that the Trump administration is backing down on oil and gas exploration off the Atlantic Seaboard is good news,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said in an email on Tuesday, “as is Governor Cuomo’s signing yesterday of state legislation that would prohibit drilling for oil or gas exploration in state offshore waters.”

Read the full story at The East Hampton Star

Sound and fury: Trump administration pushes forward on seismic mapping in Atlantic

May 2, 2019 — The Trump administration is pressing ahead with processing permits that would allow companies to search for oil and gas deposits using potentially harmful seismic blasts in the Atlantic Ocean, despite its decision to delay an unprecedented plan to sell federal leases on nearly the entire U.S. outer continental shelf.

Seven geology companies are vying for permits at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of the Interior Department, to map the ocean floor from New Jersey to Florida using seismic sound waves that, according to some scientists, harm fish and marine mammals, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale that relies on echo location to find food and mates and to keep in touch with its rare offspring.

Bureau officials confirmed this week that permits are being considered regardless of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s decision to shelve its five-year leasing plan in federal waters on the outer continental shelf. The decision followed a ruling in March by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason that President Trump’s revocation of an Obama administration ban on oil and gas industry drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans is illegal. Only Congress can undo the ban, the judge said.

Seismic mapping is also being challenged in court by conservation groups and state attorneys general along the Eastern Seaboard. A federal judge in South Carolina is considering an injunction request against any work moving forward until the case is decided. Oil and gas leases and seismic mapping are also opposed by Democratic and Republican governors along the coast, along with congressional and state lawmakers.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

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

Feds seek to get S.C. claims tossed in seismic testing suit

April 25, 2019 — As cross-arguments continue between the many parties in a federal lawsuit seeking to block seismic testing off coastal waters of East Coast states, three more municipalities in the Carolinas will get their voices heard, while the federal government tries to get some of South Carolina’s specific claims tossed.

Conservation groups, including Georgia’s One Hundred Miles, filed the suit in December in order to stop the seismic testing that is the precursor to offshore oil and gas drilling. The federal government already awarded five companies permits for incidental harassment of marine mammals that would occur during seismic testing.

The federal defendants — the National Marine Fisheries Services, NMFS Assistant Administrator Chris Oliver and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — argue in a Monday filing that South Carolina “states four novel and legally baseless theories raised by no other party in this suit.”

Those claims, according to the federal attorneys, are that 2017 orders by the president and the Commerce secretary were invalid because “they retract putative policies” from the Obama administration, that they seismic testing is a public nuisance, that any survey activities would constitute trespassing and that the survey activities violate admiralty law.

Read the full story at The Brunswick News

Report finds ‘alarming unaddressed deficiencies’ in US offshore oil drilling

April 18, 2019 — Even as the Trump administration has taken steps to expand offshore oil drilling, a new report shows that thousands of oil spills are still happening and that workers in the oil and gas industry are still dying on the job.

The report comes from Oceana, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to protecting and restoring the oceans, which has sued the federal government to stop seismic airgun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean. The blasting is the first step needed to allow offshore drilling, when seismic airguns are used to find oil and gas deep under the ocean. Every state along the Atlantic coast has opposed the blasting, worried that spills could hurt tourism and local fisheries. Some scientists say the testing could also hurt marine life, including the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale. The group tied its report, released Thursday, to the ninth anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to show what has been happening since the government promised to hold the industry accountable to higher safety standards.

Read the full story at CNN

NEW JERSEY: Shore congressman introduces legislation to ban offshore oil, gas projects

April 1, 2019 — A freshman Shore congressman has introduced a bill to ban offshore drilling and seismic testing off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

The Coastal and Marine Economies Protection Act, proposed by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat representing most of South Jersey and the southern half of the state’s coastal areas, and Rep. Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, would permanently ban oil and gas leasing.

“Our local economy is dependent on fishing, tourism and wildlife watching – the bottom line is offshore oil and gas drilling isn’t worth the risk,” Van Drew said. “It is time to get rid of the harmful and dangerous practice of offshore drilling once and for all.”

The congressman expects the Department of Interior to include both coasts in its next five-year Oil and Gas Leasing Program.

The National Marine Fisheries Service authorized permits late last year under the Marine Mammal Protection Act for five companies to use air guns for seismic surveys from Delaware to central Florida.

Read the full story at WHYY