BOEM says sesimic surveys in Gulf of Mexico harmful to marine wildlife -

Oh fer fuck sakes… I have four years worth of pics of marine mammals rubbing up on the paravanes during shooting, and dolphins hanging out right over the guns as they’re going off (probably because the bubbles tickle in some pervy way… but hey, what do you expect from dolphins? They’re pervier than sailors) from my time working seismic. You can’t convince me that they actually got any input from actual Marine Mammal Observers on this one, because the ones we had would have called bullshit on this study pretty quick.

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I’ve had Whale Watchers on anchor jobs before and I thought that was stupid but this kicks it up another notch.

I never could see a difference of more or less whales or dolphins or porpoises on the prospect. I think if any are irritated by the noise it’s only a few and they move on. It’s not like the crew is transiting across the ocean at 30 kts and sneak up on a pod. It’s been s little while but the last time I was doing seismic we had to have at least one gun popping during line changes in case something would sneak up on us at 30 kts.

I did have a MMO onboard who was convinced that they were being harmed. Said she saw a pilot whale swimming alongside with a confused look on its face, LOL. She was twice the age of the average MMO and probably had underarm hair. She would not be a good source of information.

Ohhhhhhh. I think we had the same one on ours… if you and I aren’t both from the same seismic boat. I remember our fruitcake quite well though. Fortunately they never let her near the hydrophone monitoring or she might have told us they were screaming. :roll_eyes:

I’ve been away and so have scrolled back to see what has been discussed apart from our Norwegian friend. I was really pleased to see this thread. So much has been said about the harm seismic has been doing that I began to think that the dolphins coasting along under the bow of my seismic ship back in the 1970s while we were shooting must have been a dream. But no, some of you have had the same experience, but what can we do in the face of ignorance and influence?

We used to see dolphins when we were shooting, too. In the parts of Africa where we were working, MMOs were not required; so we didn’t shut down for mammals. They seemed especially interested in our doors, head, and tail buoys.

I’ll have to call bullshit on dolphins hanging out on top of pneumatic guns. I’ve seen many species scattered through our gear. Also caught a lot of mahi during lane changes.

I’ve got pics of them just hanging out between the gun floats while we were shooting. I’ll have to find them to show you I guess. They sure didn’t seem to give two shits that we were shooting though.