A Canadian environmental law firm filed a suit today to halt the potential of seismic blasting in a marine protected area that the group says would violate Canadian environmental law.
“A marine protected area is a marine protected area because its supposed to be off limits to harmful activity. And its just completely inappropriate that intrusive or harmful research would happen there,” said Ecojustice lawyer, Lara Tessaro.
The U.S. research vessel requesting entry to Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents, a marine protected habitat off the BC coast, would conduct seismic testing for about a month to study how the area was formed tectonically.
According to Ecojustice, the seismic blasts at 180 decibels every 2 or 3 minutes would cause intense acoustic disturbance for the marine animals in the area, most specifically the blue whales in the area.
Tessaro said that such disturbance could cause temporary or even permanent hearing loss to an animal that relies on its hearing as much as humans rely on sight. She said such loss could alter the behavior of whales’ eating and communication patterns, and could even cause whales to flee the area, the first marine protected area under the Oceans Act, entirely.
“That, for an endangered whale, could be serious,” said Tessaro.
If approved for entry, the research vessel could enter Canadian waters sometime this month.
Because the matter is under litigation the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not providing any comment at this time.
Christine McLaren reports for The Tyee
science vs hearsay
It's a standard ploy by environmental groups to go to court (13 August article by Judith Lavoie) to stop a project by legal fine print rather than by reason of science. The project they wish to stop is designed specifically to understand the plumbing system of the seabed volcanic vents ecosystem of the Endeavor Marine Protected Area. It is led by Professor Toomey at the University of Oregon; it would not damage marine life.
The environmental groups have known of the pending study for over a year and a half; however, they waited until the research vessel was about to begin the study to announce by press release and application to the court the reasons they are against it. They did not submit their objections for open scientific review. With experienced lawyers, and with judges unfamiliar with the issues, they may succeed in court where they failed in consultations. Maybe after the judges, and the public, become aware of what has been lost by killing the academic research project, they will lift the injunction, but by then it will be too late. The ship will have moved on to other academic studies, elsewhere on the globe. In this case, there are no winners.
craziness
And another victory for those enviros who prostitute the Precautionary Principle, which, I'm willing to bet, is being invoked in this case too.
Another scientist's perspective
0.7% percent of the oceans are protected in Canada - not a whole lot. So scientists need to get creative and find other places to conduct their research, preferably in the other 99.3% of the oceans that are not protected - otherwise the term "marine protected area" is meaningless. Proponents of the seismic testing claim that the environmental groups knew about the project beforehand and were waiting for an opportune time to sue. This is nonsense - it's more likely that they had tried to halt the testing, and when unsuccessful, sued as a last resort. But so what? Regardless of the technicalities, the fact remains that seismic testing in Endeavor is illegal, and for good reason. Indeed, the scientists probably knew about this when they were planning the project, but were counting on ways to skirt the law. Hopefully they will learn that, no matter how noble their intentions, science is not above the law.