Dr. Alejandro A. Fernández Ajó, Postdoctoral Scholar, Marine Mammal Institute – OSU Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, & Conservation Sciences, Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna (GEMM) Lab.
I just returned to my home country, Argentina, after over 2 years without leaving the USA due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Being back with my family, my friends, my culture, and speaking my native language feels great and relaxing. However, I returned to a country struggling to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic. I am afraid this post pandemic scenario places Argentina in a vulnerable situation. The need for economic growth could result in decisions or policies that, in the long term, hurt the country, leaving environmental damage for potential economic growth.
Argentina holds extensive oil and gas deposits, including the world’s second largest gas formation, Vaca Muerta. Although offshore (i.e., in the ocean) oil exploration and exploitation are not yet extensively developed, the intention of offshore gas and oil drilling is on the agenda. In July 2021, a public hearing was held with the purpose to consider the environmental impact assessment for carrying out seismic exploration in the North Argentinian basin off the southern coast of the Buenos Aires province. Over 90% of the participants, including scientists, researchers, technicians from various institutions, non-governmental organizations and representatives of the fishing sector spoke against the project and highlighted the negative impacts that such activity can generate on marine life, and to other socioeconomic activities such as tourism and fishing, not only in Argentina but at the regional level.
Seismic prospections are usually done with the purpose for oil and gas exploitation and less frequently for research purposes. In seismic prospections, ships carry out explosions with airguns, whose sound waves reach the seabed, bounce back and are captured by receivers on the ships to map the petroleum deposits in seafloor and identify potential areas for hydrocarbon extractions. The sound emitted by the seismic airguns can reach extremely loud levels of sounds that travel for thousands of miles underwater. Such extreme high levels of sound can alter the behavior of many marine species, from the smallest planktonic species, to the largest marine mammals, masking their communication, causing physical and physiological stress, interfering with their vital functions, and reducing the local availability of prey (Di Iorio & Clark, 2010; Hildebrand, 2009; Weilgart, 2018).
Despite the public rejection and the mounting evidence about the negative impacts and environmental risks associated with such activities, the government approved the initiation of the seismic prospection off the southern coast of Buenos Aires. In response, thousands of people marched along the beaches and the main coastal cities of Argentina to protest against the oil exploration project. The areas where the seismic surveys will be carried out overlap largely with the southern right whale’s migration routes and feeding areas during their spring and summer (Figure 1). Likewise, the area overlaps with highly productive areas in the ocean that hosts great biodiversity of species of ecological and commercial importance, including the feeding areas of seabirds, turtles and other marine mammals. Additionally, the seismic activity will endanger the health of the beaches of the coast of Buenos Aires and Uruguay where thousands of tourists spend the summer to escape from the large cities.
The impacts of these activities to marine wildlife are difficult to control and monitor (Elliott et al. 2019, Gordon et al, 2003), especially for large whales that are a very challenging taxa to study (Hunt et al. 2013). We know that the ability to perceive biologically important sounds is critical to marine mammals, and acoustic disturbance through human-generated noise can interfere with their natural functions. Sounds from seismic surveys are intense and have peak frequency bands overlapping those used by baleen whales (Di Lorio & Clark, 2010); however, evidence of interference with baleen whale acoustic communication, and the effects on their health and physiology are sparse. In this context, the GEMM Lab project GRANITE (Gray Whale Response to Ambient Noise Informed by Technology and Ecology), plans to generate information to fulfill these knowledge gaps and provide tools to aid conservation and management decisions in terms of allowable noise level in whale habitats. I am hopeful such information will reach decision makers and influence their decisions, however, sometimes it is frustrating to see how evidence-based information generated with high quality standards are often ignored.
The recent approval of the seismic exploration in Argentina is an example of my frustration. There is no way that the oil industry can guarantee a low-risk of impact on biodiversity and the environment. There are too many examples of environmental catastrophes related to the oil industries at sea that speak for themselves. Moreover, the promotion of such activities goes against the compromises assumed by the country to work to mitigate the effects of Climate Change, and to achieve the reductions of the greenhouse gas emissions to comply with the Paris Agreement. Decades of research help recognized the areas that would be impacted by these seismic activities as key habitat for the life cycle of whales, penguins, seals and more. But, apparently all these scientific data are ignored at the time of weighing the tradeoffs between “economic development” and environmental impacts. As a conservation biologist, I am questioning what can be done in order to be heard and significantly influence such decisions.
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References:
- Di Iorio, L., & Clark, C. W. (2010). Exposure to seismic survey alters blue whale acoustic communication. Biology Letters, 6(1), 51–54. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2009.0651
- Weilgart, L. (2018). The impact of ocean noise pollution on fish and invertebrates. Report for OceanCare, Switzerland.
- Elliott, B. W., Read, A. J., Godley, B. J., Nelms, S. E., & Nowacek, D. P. (2019). Critical information gaps remain in understanding impacts of industrial seismic surveys on marine vertebrates. In Endangered Species Research (Vol. 39, pp. 247–254). Inter-Research. https://doi.org/10.3354/esr00968
- Gordon, J., Gillespie, D., Potter, J., Frantzis, A., Simmonds, M. P., Swift, R., & Thompson, D. (2003). A review of the effects of seismic surveys on marine mammals. Marine Technology Society Journal, 37(4), 16-34.
- Hunt, K. E., Moore, M. J., Rolland, R. M., Kellar, N. M., Hall, A. J., Kershaw, J., Raverty, S. A., Davis, C. E., Yeates, L. C., Fauquier, D. A., Rowles, T. K., & Kraus, S. D. (2013). Overcoming the challenges of studying conservation physiology in large whales: a review of available methods. Conservation Physiology, cot006–cot006. https://doi.org/10.1093/conphys/cot006
