The human quests for national safety and for ocean bed oil and gas reserves have both led to increasing intensity of human-caused, unnatural noises in the world’s oceans.

Near the Kuril Islands there are extensive gas and oil extraction facilities. The noise they create has had a fatal effect on a dwindling population of gray whales, whose winter feeding grounds coincide with these facilities. The gray  whale population in this area has crashed, presumably because the animals avoid their winter feeding grounds due to avoidance of the noise.

The Inupiat on Alaska’s north slope hope and pray that the American quest for new oil reserves does not lead to further exploration offshore, because the bowhead whale, now back up to around 10,000 animals, would be adversely affected by the noise of further oil exploration and that of drilling rigs. Their Indian cousins, the Gwich’in, have argued that oil exploration and drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, or ANWR, would similarly be bad news for the caribou herd on which they have always relied. Those in favor of drilling in ANWR instead of offshore reply that the precedent set in Prudhoe Bay indicates that caribou need not be adversely affected and in fact, that herd has increased since the oil fields went in. At this time, it does appear that offshore drilling would be more harmful than would drilling in ANWR, given these data. Nevertheless, the Gwich’in groups have been told for years by an “environmentalist” organization that the caribou would suffer from the presence of another oil field. They believe this information and fear for their future, thus they lobby both the US and Canada along these lines.

Offshore of eastern Newfoundland, seismic exploration for oil was done with dynamite.

The resulting seabed damage and the noise and turbidity may have severely damaged the spawning grounds and success of the Atlantic cod and other species. The decline of the cod in particular may be related to this oil exploration. Newfoundlanders are skeptical that the promises of their government that oil fields offshore would bring them wealth, when all they have noted so far has been a decline in their fish stocks.

Offshore of the eastern and southern US, and eastward to the Canary Islands, there have been many instances of stranded toothed cetaceans subsequent to Navy exercises with the use of low and mid frequency sonar for detection of enemy submarines. Apparently, these bursts of mid-ocean sound are damaging to cetaceans and perhaps also to fish species.

The developed countries of the world need more oil and gas, and they all need to be secure from the threat of offshore submarine attacks with rockets. This dilemma may not be solved in the near future. Legislative bodies in developed countries are not likely to stop sonar scanning of the ocean for enemy submarines and they are not likely to stop the exploration and drilling of the seabed for oil and gas reserves. We humans are going to pursue both safety and resources for as long as any threat of attack exists, and for as long as there are no substitutes for oceanic oil and gas. The human species has prioritized itself and will continue to do so.

IWMC hopes that a genuine effort will be made by both scientists and legislative bodies to find ways to mitigate these effects of our needs and apprehensions. The dangers of oil spills are always with us and our use of these finite resources can not be sustainable, by definition. In the future, it is anticipated that ocean bed supplies of methane shall be exploited, presumably with the same or greater levels of noise intensity and even more pollution of the surrounding area.

The creatures of our oceans are adaptable, as proven by their survival through millions of years.

Sustainable use and habitat conservation are both vital to our continued existence on this planet. Because we are optimists, we believe that this is possible and that humans will learn how to conduct security operations in more benign ways. Good luck, Homo sapiens!