Is the hunt for oil contributing to Farewell Spit whale strandings?

Friday, 29 June 2018

Is seismic testing a contributory factor in making whales strand?

OPINION: Living close to the world's worst whale trap of Farewell Spit has given me the opportunity over the years to cover heaps of strandings in Golden Bay.

And to ponder why they happen. More and more I am convinced that seismic testing of sub-seafloor strata for oil around Taranaki is an increasing culprit.

Before Rangihaeata in Golden Bay was built up, these concrete power poles - which still remain - were once used to secure rotting whales, the old way of dealing with them .

It's a hard call, postulating why these super-intelligent and acutely sonar-literate creatures find themselves in such a predicament. The common theory has always been that their echo-guidance systems become disorientated in wide, shallow, inshore waters such as Golden Bay.

My late friend Buzz Davis of Tukurua spent years in his wheelchair watching whales from the cliff top of his Tukurua home.

*** Why whales strand themselves, and how to help

* Video: Devastating vision from Farewell Spit

* Photos: Whales as far as the eye can see**

After much research he came up with a theory that mineralisation around the two offshore freshwater vents associated with Pupu Springs had the effect of uniquely playing havoc with their depth sounding sonar, causing them to read say 15m depth when the actual was more like 3m or 4m.

He pitched his theory to the the Scripps' Oceanographic Institute in California, who said his evidence was compelling and they intended coming out to investigate.

Disorientation for whatever reason may explain why whale strandings in Golden Bay have occurred since time immemorial. The low tide on the inside of Farewell Spit can go out 7km on the mudflats on a super low tide, retreating at a fast walking pace.

Early European records and Maori oral history puts pilot whale strandings at roughly five yearly intervals. Pre-european Maori treated them as a big bonus food source while early European settlers eagerly rushed out to render them down for lamp oil. 'Blackfish' they were called back then.

This five-yearly pattern continued right up until the mid-1970s when the strandings started closing up to become the annual events around Farewell Spit that they are today.

It is not coincidental that offshore seismic exploration started for oil in the Taranaki Bight in the 1970s, only a short 100km whale swim away from Golden Bay. A coincidence too that there were no strandings last season (summer 2017/18), the first season without seismic testing in a long while.

Over 2000 whale strandings are historically recorded by our National Museum (Te Papa). Historically, most have occurred in just four locations; Farewell Spit, Chatham Islands, Muriwai, and the Mahia Peninsula.

Pilot whales are the most common whales to beach en masse in this country, making up over 90 per cent of all marine mammal strandings around our coastline. Their herd instinct is so strong that pod members will choose to stay with a stranded few.

Has the worst natural whale trap inside Farewell Spit now combined with the worst effects of man, rather seismic oil prospectors, to produce the world's most deadly whale trap ever?

Seismic surveys produce some of the most loudest and most intense noises in the ocean. One can only imagine the possible harmful effects of these powerful sounds on acoustically sensitive marine mammals like whales and dolphins. Close enough, it can kill them outright.

Mostly the effects are insidious. Advanced studies have shown that physical and physiological effects include damage to body tissues, permanent reduction in auditory and echolocation sensitivity, and chronic stress. Put more crudely, they go mad. Indirect effects include reduced prey availability because fish are affected too.

At one stranding a few years back, a DOC officer commented to me that the whales seemed emaciated and in poor condition. 'They look starved, completely malnourished,' he said. Maybe their food source had dried up, run out of town by the seismic shocks. Fish hate seismic shocks too.

When they put in the Dry Road around Westhaven Inlet in the late 1920s, using cart loads of explosives, residents noticed all the fish in the inlet disappeared, coming back only after the cessation of explosive works.

Seismic testing is no different, the powerful seismic waves sent out by the likes of the world's largest seismic testing vessel Amazon Warrior which was here last year are nothing less than massive depth charges.

This ship blasts out every 10 seconds, every hour, 24-h0urs a day for five months, the ship towing air cannons and seismic arrays kilometres long to hunt for oil up to 4km deep in the seabed, often within a couple of kilometres of the foreshore. That ship may as well be as obnoxious as any hostile battleship in our waters.

It should be said some scientific-touted studies have shown no effects of seismic surveys on whales and dolphins, but these have invariably been commissioned by the oil industry. The majority of reputable studies now show more and more convincing evidence that marine mammals are severely affected by a continual barrage of human-made seismic shocks.

In September 2015, the US Navy instructed its vessels to limit the use of sonar around migrating blue whales after deputations from Californians. Here in 2013, DOC implemented their Code of Conduct for Minimising Acoustic Disturbance to Marine Mammals. But it's not mandatory, barely considered by predatory oil prospectors bent on making big bucks.

A pod of stranded whales is a heart-rending sight. Encumbered by their bulk and crush of their internal organs out of their watery habitat, they nevertheless lay without struggle or obvious panic. But their baleful eyes and distressed crooning sounds cannot help but evoke compassion.

I recall wading in knee deep water out to one pilot whale stranding and seeing a barely one metre-long newborn calf floundering around the legs of the rescuers in a desperate search for its mother.

Finally it found her, and started squeaking in excitement. But an attempt to feed proved impossible in the shallow water which soon turned milky white as mum whale did her best to squirt out more milk. They both ended up dying there on the mudflats along with 90 other whales that day.

The last whale in New Zealand was harpooned in 1965, by the Peranos operating out of the Marlborough Sounds. Attitudes to whales and saving them has sure changed a lot since then, but economics not politics are still the biggest driver in our society.

When I was a young cartographic trainee in the DSIR we were shuffled between map jobs dependent on economic fads. When the price of gold skyrocketed we suddenly had gold exploration maps to do. When the oil shocks came we were told to immediately shelve those gold maps and start geophysical anomaly maps, intended for use by oil prospectors.

One of my jobs became Sheet 7 Taranaki Total Force Anomalies map, an area including all of the Taranaki Bight and Tasman Sea north of Mt Egmont/Taranaki. Of course it was too early to link the exploratory effort back then to whales strandings in Golden Bay. But I have no doubt now the two are strongly connected.

The Labour government is quite right to call a halt to all offshore oil testing for now. Marine mammals have a right to a moratorium until the shocking effects of seismic exploration is more fully determined.