Scientists: Tougher oil and gas rules needed in gulf to protect rare whale

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Two years in the past, scientists introduced they’d found a brand new species in the Gulf of Mexico: Rice’s whale, which they referred to as one of many rarest whales on the planet.

The endangered species — solely about 50 are believed to exist — lives in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Environmental scientists and advocacy teams at the moment are urgent the federal authorities to set more durable restrictions on oil and gas firms working in the gulf to stop the whale from going extinct.

“It’s not too often that we discover new species of whales. And to discover that was exciting, but it was also a little bit bittersweet because they are so critically endangered,” stated Kristin Carden, a senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity oceans program.

Discovered by scientists on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the whale can weigh up to 60,000 kilos — about the identical as a firetruck — and is a part of the baleen whale household, toothless whales that use bushy fringes referred to as baleen to filter meals from seawater. It’s the one baleen whale identified to dwell in the gulf, and Carden stated its isolation led to it evolving into its personal species.

Rice’s whales often hang around close to the northeastern Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida, however a single whale has been noticed off the coast of Texas, suggesting they transfer all through the gulf. Scientists on the National Marine Fisheries Service, additionally referred to as NOAA Fisheries, are conducting analysis to perceive the whales’ migration patterns.

According to NOAA, the most significant threats Rice’s whales face are power exploration and improvement, oil spills and chemical compounds used to disperse oil after a spill. The whales have been hit onerous by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which killed 11 staff when a British Petroleum drilling platform exploded and sank, spilling 4 million barrels of oil into the gulf over 87 days.

NOAA estimates that about 22% of the whale inhabitants was misplaced due to the spill, together with numerous different marine mammals, sea turtles, fish, birds and different wildlife.

“The loss of any individual Rice’s whale is a pretty big blow to the overall population,” Carden stated.

Other threats are ocean noise from transport visitors and from seismic blasting — when highly effective horns are used to blast the seafloor to map offshore oil and gas reserves. The noise can confuse the whales, which relaxation at night time inside 50 ft of the gulf’s floor, and intrude with their communication, making it more durable for them to discover meals, navigate and mate, in accordance to NOAA.

Late final 12 months, about 100 scientists warned in a letter to the Biden administration that measures are urgently needed to cut back mortality of the Rice’s whale — and if none are taken, the world might see the primary human-caused extinction of a whale species.

Carden stated it’s crucial to cut back “human-caused activity” in the gulf, which has 1000’s of energetic oil wells and underwater pipelines.

The oil and gas trade is a significant a part of the Texas economic system. According to data from Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, Texas oil and pure gas producers are paying file quantities of manufacturing taxes to the state. The oil trade paid $666 million in April 2022 and the pure gas trade paid $413 million in May, which the Texas Oil and Gas Association says are the best quantities in Texas historical past.

In 2020, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit in a Maryland federal courtroom on behalf of Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and the Turtle Island Restoration Network, arguing that oil and gas firms negatively impression endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico and that federal regulatory companies just like the NOAA are usually not doing sufficient to stop that.

The environmental teams declare {that a} greater than 700-page analysis released in 2020 by NOAA Fisheries of the oil and gas trade’s projected impression on creatures in the Gulf of Mexico over the subsequent 50 years “greatly underestimates the degree to which oil and gas development is going to hurt or harm the species,” stated Chris Eaton, a senior lawyer at Earthjustice.

The lawsuit argues that the evaluation — also referred to as a organic opinion — is a flawed evaluation of the danger of large spills just like the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and asks the federal decide to power NOAA Fisheries to write a brand new report.

Eaton stated the organic opinion additionally failed to think about local weather change impacts like extra highly effective hurricanes in the gulf that would severely injury oil and gas amenities and trigger extra oil spills.

Lisa Belskis, a spokesperson for NOAA, stated in a written assertion that the company “utilized the best available science in the development of its biological opinion” by analyzing oil and gas exercise in the gulf.

Belskis stated the company did “consider and take into account the effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident on marine life and habitats.”

She stated the company doesn’t touch upon pending litigation.

The Endangered Species Act requires federal companies that regulate offshore oil operations to be certain that their actions are usually not probably to injury threatened species or their habitats.

In November, NOAA requested the decide to dismiss the lawsuit and give its scientists two years to see if a reevaluation of its organic opinion for the Gulf of Mexico is needed.

“The concern is that in two years, they’re going to produce a new biological opinion that’s basically going to repeat most, if not all, of the same errors that the current one has,” Eaton stated.

Last week, the decide denied the company’s request to dismiss the case and despatched each events to mediation. Eaton stated he isn’t certain what’s going to occur in mediation, however he expects it’ll contain discussing potential interim mitigation or protecting measures for Rice’s whales.

Carden stated she worries {that a} drawn-out courtroom case will imply nothing shall be achieved to protect the whales in the quick time period.

“The only way to really truly mitigate harm to Rice’s whales is not to drill at all,” she stated. “It would be a tragedy to watch this whale species go extinct, so soon after we learned that it was there.”

Disclosure: The Texas comptroller of public accounts has been a monetary supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that’s funded in half by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no position in the Tribune’s journalism. Find an entire list of them here.