Author: Neville

Trends create angry summer

Date March 4, 2013 85 reading now

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Ben Cubby

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A few years ago, talking about weather and climate change in the same breath was a cardinal sin for scientists.

Now it’s become impossible to have a conversation about the weather without discussing wider climate trends, according to researchers who prepared the Australian Climate Commission’s latest report. The report, The Angry Summer, says that behind the litany of heat and rainfall records, a clear pattern has emerged.

”Statistically, there is a one in 500 chance that we are talking about natural variation causing all these new records,” said Will Steffen, the report’s lead author and director of the Australian National University’s climate change institute. ”Not too many people would want to put their life savings on a 500-to-1 horse.”

The statistic comes from tallying known weather records from around the world, and measuring the likelihood of record-breaking extremes happening without the influence of extra energy accumulating on Earth due to the build-up of greenhouse gases.

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”We are talking about a massive amount of additional energy, most of which is being held around the surface layers of the ocean, which is driving the increased evaporation and rainfall,” Professor Steffen said.

The tumbling of records has also prompted conversations in the scientific community to turn a corner, he said. Previously, ”weather is not climate” was the mantra, but now the additional boost from greenhouse gases was influencing every event.

”I think the steroids analogy is a useful one,” Professor Steffen said. ”Steroids do not create elite athletes – they are already very good athletes. What happens when athletes start taking steroids is that suddenly the same athletes are breaking more records, more often. We are seeing a similar process with the Earth’s climate.”

This summer was the hottest on Australian record. In the 102 years of uniform national records, there have been 21 days where the continent averaged more than 39 degrees, and eight of those took place this year. Rainfall extremes have smashed records, with rain contributing more to floods and less to watering crops. The effects have continued into autumn.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/trends-create-angry-summer-20130303-2fefl.html#ixzz2MWJ8xLqV

Date March 4, 2013 85 reading now

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Ben Cubby

Environment Editor

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A few years ago, talking about weather and climate change in the same breath was a cardinal sin for scientists.

Now it’s become impossible to have a conversation about the weather without discussing wider climate trends, according to researchers who prepared the Australian Climate Commission’s latest report. The report, The Angry Summer, says that behind the litany of heat and rainfall records, a clear pattern has emerged.

”Statistically, there is a one in 500 chance that we are talking about natural variation causing all these new records,” said Will Steffen, the report’s lead author and director of the Australian National University’s climate change institute. ”Not too many people would want to put their life savings on a 500-to-1 horse.”

The statistic comes from tallying known weather records from around the world, and measuring the likelihood of record-breaking extremes happening without the influence of extra energy accumulating on Earth due to the build-up of greenhouse gases.

Advertisement

”We are talking about a massive amount of additional energy, most of which is being held around the surface layers of the ocean, which is driving the increased evaporation and rainfall,” Professor Steffen said.

The tumbling of records has also prompted conversations in the scientific community to turn a corner, he said. Previously, ”weather is not climate” was the mantra, but now the additional boost from greenhouse gases was influencing every event.

”I think the steroids analogy is a useful one,” Professor Steffen said. ”Steroids do not create elite athletes – they are already very good athletes. What happens when athletes start taking steroids is that suddenly the same athletes are breaking more records, more often. We are seeing a similar process with the Earth’s climate.”

This summer was the hottest on Australian record. In the 102 years of uniform national records, there have been 21 days where the continent averaged more than 39 degrees, and eight of those took place this year. Rainfall extremes have smashed records, with rain contributing more to floods and less to watering crops. The effects have continued into autumn.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/trends-create-angry-summer-20130303-2fefl.html#ixzz2MWJ8xLqV

UN fails to get its hands clean in Haiti

Date March 3, 2013 Category Opinion 15 reading now

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Paul McGeough

Chief foreign correspondent

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Harsh reality … a person with cholera is carted to doctors in Haiti. Photo: Getty Images

And they wonder why people throw bombs. The United Nations rejects any guilt or responsibility for an outbreak of cholera in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that flattened Haiti, despite incontrovertible evidence that the disease was introduced by Nepalese soldiers brought to the island by the UN.

Last week, it rejected claims in the name of 8000-plus dead Haitians and another 646,000 who contracted but survived the illness, because the claims were ”not receivable”.

Not receivable? Where does this language come from? Was Ban Ki-moon worried they’d deliver those revoltingly overdone Haitian corpses to the linen-and-silver-service restaurant atop the UN bunker in New York?

And how did the UN write its get-out-of-jail card on this one?

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Thank God for a SOFA – a State of Forces Agreement. Ban Ki-Moon argues that the deal under which the UN operates in Haiti gives it total immunity. Maybe those clever Iraqis were awake to this kind of try-on when they refused to sign a SOFA with the US, meaning no troops could be left behind as it cleared out after the George W. Bush war; and maybe the Afghans aren’t so smart – because the latest guessing is they will sign on for thousands of US troops to remain next year, when the bulk of those still on the ground get out.

The Haiti epidemic did not unfold in a war zone where access for investigators and humanitarian teams might have been impossible. A who’s who of the world’s NGOs and news media already was on the ground.

It was an Al-Jazeera crew that filmed UN soldiers trying to contain a sewage spill on the banks of the stream running past their base. The Associated Press saw overflowing septic tanks and UN landfill pits uphill from the river in which locals washed and did their laundry.

Working it out wasn’t rocket science. The French infectious diseases specialist Dr Renaud Piarroux investigated and concluded the only way to have a south Asian strain of cholera halfway around the world in rural Haiti, in a Nepalese Army base with poor sanitation, was for a soldier to have introduced it. And it was the UN that moved them, without screening, from a known cholera source to a community so in crisis that it was ripe for an outbreak of infectious disease.

But the UN wasn’t going to take that lying down. ”We don’t think the cholera outbreak is attributable to any single factor,” a UN official responded.

Yes, it is – it was the Nepalese poo. Any attempt to dodge blame and to deny responsibility for what happened after the point of defecation is heartless beyond belief.

Why was the UN in Haiti in the first place? Their presence pre-dated the quake. In 2004, about 10,000 troops and assorted others were sent to quell political unrest. Get this – they call it a ”stabilisation” force.

Given that the Haitian people had to cop the cholera epidemic on top of the second most destructive earthquake of all time – more than 300,000 dead, by a local count – it’s not surprising they were angry. A seething Ocxama Moise, the deputy mayor in his town, told The New York Times’s Deborah Sontag how he seriously wanted to kill a few of the Nepalese soldiers, but was talked out of it by friends.

Moise was being so unreasonable. I mean, spare a thought for poor Edmond Mulet, the head of the UN mission. He was moaning publicly that it was ”really unfair to accuse the UN of bringing cholera to Haiti”.

Superstitious locals even took to lynching voodoo priests, blaming them for the cholera curse.

Poor buggers – how were they to know that the real voodoo was up at the UN?

Tension roiled and the UN tried to deflect blame, charging that ”agitators” were trying to take advantage of the epidemic in the lead-up to local elections. Thank God for the UN stabilisation force – otherwise things might really have got out of hand.

The argument that it wasn’t the Nepalese poo that did the damage is predicated on apportioning blame to poor public sanitation in the earthquake zone – only 12 per cent of people have treated and piped water; only 17 per cent have access to pit latrines or better sanitation.

Next, they’ll be suing the families of the collateral damage victims in Iraq and Afghanistan for getting in the way – ”How dare you drive down Abdullah Street when we are shooting?” and ”What right do you have to sleep in your bed when we might drop a bomb through your roof?” Ingrates! Take them to the cleaners …

For all their lackadaisical Caribbean ways, the Haitians might reasonably have thought they had dodged this bullet – twice. Despite cholera raging through Latin America in the 1990s and closer to home, in the Caribbean in the 19th century, not a single case had been recorded in Haiti.

And they’d have been forgiven for thinking that God, or whoever, was on their side – until that quake knocked the bejesus out of them.

But if the UN can’t deal with the cause of this epidemic, why will they not deal adequately with the effect?

Unconscionable and all as it is, let them sweep the first 8000-odd deaths under the carpet. And if it makes them feel better, let the lawyers quibble about the propriety or morality of cash claims by individuals at a time of national calamity.

But is there anything stopping Ban Ki-Moon from doing a serious whip-around of all the missions at the UN, for the $US2.27 billion ($2.2 billion) it would cost to fix Haiti’s water supply and sanitation systems?

It’s hard not to be amazed at how our response to crisis is dictated by who the victims are – 3000 Americans die in the September 11 attacks, and the world goes berserk, spending countless billions on crazy wars and inane security; 8000 [and counting] Haitians die because of the UN’s blind stupidity, and we can’t find what a business buddy calls ”a couple of lazy bills” to fix it?

Bearing all this in mind, it’s worth thinking about all the finger-pointing on this one. The UN is such an easy, over-there target, especially for reactionary types who mewl and puke because sometimes it gets in the way of a good war.

But what, or who, is the UN – it’s you and me; and it’s you too, Julia, Tony, Christine.

Makes you sick, doesn’t it?

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/un-fails-to-get-its-hands-clean-in-haiti-20130302-2fctp.html#ixzz2MRd41Qf1

Sinkhole

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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For the War of 1812 battle, see Battle of the Sink Hole. For a hole in a sink, see Drain (plumbing). For a Sinkhole Server or Internet Sinkhole, see DNS_Sinkhole.

Bahmah Sinkhole in Oman

The Devil’s Hole sinkhole near Hawthorne, Florida, USA.
A sinkhole, also known as a sink, snake hole, swallow hole, swallet, doline, or cenote, is a natural depression or hole in the Earth’s surface caused by karst processes — for example, the chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks[1] or suffosion processes[2] in sandstone. Sinkholes may vary in size from 1 to 600 metres (3.3 to 2,000 ft) both in diameter and depth, and vary in form from soil-lined bowls to bedrock-edged chasms. Sinkholes may be formed gradually or suddenly, and are found worldwide. The different terms for sinkholes are often used interchangeably.[3]

Contents
[hide] 1 Formation mechanisms
2 Occurrence
3 Local names of sinkholes
4 Piping pseudokarst
5 Notable sinkholes
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Formation mechanisms

Sinkholes near the Dead Sea, formed by dissolution of underground salt by incoming freshwater, as a result of a continuing sea level drop.

A special type of sinkhole, formed by rainwater leaking through the pavement and carrying soil into a ruptured sewer pipe.
Sinkholes may capture surface drainage from running or standing water, but may also form in high and dry places in a certain location.

The mechanisms of formation involve natural processes of erosion[4] or gradual removal of slightly soluble bedrock (such as limestone) by percolating water, the collapse of a cave roof, or a lowering of the water table. Sinkholes often form through the process of suffosion. Thus, for example, groundwater may dissolve the carbonate cement holding the sandstone particles together and then carry away the lax particles, gradually forming a void.

Occasionally a sinkhole may exhibit a visible opening into a cave below. In the case of exceptionally large sinkholes, such as the Minyé sinkhole in Papua New Guinea or Cedar Sink at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, a stream or river may be visible across its bottom flowing from one side to the other.

Sinkholes are common where the rock below the land surface is limestone or other carbonate rock, salt beds, or rocks that can naturally be dissolved by circulating ground water. As the rock dissolves, spaces and caverns develop underground. These sinkholes can be dramatic, because the surface land usually stays intact until there is not enough support. Then, a sudden collapse of the land surface can occur.

Sinkholes also form from human activity, such as the rare but still occasional collapse of abandoned mines in places like Louisiana. More commonly, sinkholes occur in urban areas due to water main breaks or sewer collapses when old pipes give way. They can also occur from the overpumping and extraction of groundwater and subsurface fluids. They can also form when natural water-drainage patterns are changed and new water-diversion systems are developed. Some sinkholes form when the land surface is changed, such as when industrial and runoff-storage ponds are created; the substantial weight of the new material can trigger an underground collapse of supporting material, thus causing a sinkhole.

[edit] Occurrence

Sinkholes are frequently linked with karst landscapes. In such regions, there may be hundreds or even thousands of sinkholes in a small area so that the surface as seen from the air looks pock-marked, and there are no surface streams because all drainage occurs sub-surface. Examples of karst landscapes dotted with numerous enormous sinkholes are Khammouan Mountains (Laos) and Mamo Plateau (Papua New Guinea).[5] The largest known sinkholes formed in sandstone are Sima Humboldt and Sima Martel in Venezuela.[5]

The most impressive sinkholes form in thick layers of homogenous limestone. Their formation is facilitated by high groundwater flow, often caused by high rainfall; such rainfall causes formation of the giant sinkholes in Nakanaï Mountains, New Britain island in Papua New Guinea.[6] On the contact of limestone and insoluble rock below it, powerful underground rivers may form, creating large underground voids.

In such conditions the largest known sinkholes of the world have formed, like the 662-metre (2,172 ft) deep Xiaozhai tiankeng (Chongqing, China), giant sótanos in Querétaro and San Luis Potosí states in Mexico and others.[5][7][8]

Unusual processes have formed the enormous sinkholes of Sistema Zacatón in Tamaulipas (Mexico), where more than 20 sinkholes and other karst formations have been shaped by volcanically heated, acidic groundwater.[9][10] This has secured not only the formation of the deepest water-filled sinkhole in the world — Zacatón — but also unique processes of travertine sedimentation in upper parts of sinkholes, leading to sealing of these sinkholes with travertine lids.[10]

The state of Florida in the United States is known for having frequent sinkholes collapses, especially in the central part of the state. The Murge area in southern Italy also has numerous sinkholes. Sinkholes can be formed in retention ponds from large amounts of rain.[citation needed]

The Great Blue Hole, located near Ambergris Caye, Belize.

Volcanic Aerosols, Not Pollutants, Tamped Down Recent Earth Warming

Mar. 1, 2013 — A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain sight — dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide.

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The study results essentially exonerate Asia, including India and China, two countries that are estimated to have increased their industrial sulfur dioxide emissions by about 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning, said lead study author Ryan Neely, who led the research as part of his CU-Boulder doctoral thesis. Small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth’s surface eventually rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet.

Neely said previous observations suggest that increases in stratospheric aerosols since 2000 have counterbalanced as much as 25 percent of the warming scientists blame on human greenhouse gas emissions. “This new study indicates it is emissions from small to moderate volcanoes that have been slowing the warming of the planet,” said Neely, a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint venture of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A paper on the subject was published online in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Co-authors include Professors Brian Toon and Jeffrey Thayer from CU-Boulder; Susan Solomon, a former NOAA scientist now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jean Paul Vernier from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; Catherine Alvarez, Karen Rosenlof and John Daniel from NOAA; and Jason English, Michael Mills and Charles Bardeen from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

The new project was undertaken in part to resolve conflicting results of two recent studies on the origins of the sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere, including a 2009 study led by the late David Hoffman of NOAA indicating aerosol increases in the stratosphere may have come from rising emissions of sulfur dioxide from India and China. In contrast, a 2011 study led by Vernier — who also provided essential observation data for the new GRL study — showed moderate volcanic eruptions play a role in increasing particulates in the stratosphere, Neely said.

The new GRL study also builds on a 2011 study led by Solomon showing stratospheric aerosols offset about a quarter of the greenhouse effect warming on Earth during the past decade, said Neely, also a postdoctoral fellow in NCAR’s Advanced Study Program.

The new study relies on long-term measurements of changes in the stratospheric aerosol layer’s “optical depth,” which is a measure of transparency, said Neely. Since 2000, the optical depth in the stratospheric aerosol layer has increased by about 4 to 7 percent, meaning it is slightly more opaque now than in previous years.

“The biggest implication here is that scientists need to pay more attention to small and moderate volcanic eruptions when trying to understand changes in Earth’s climate,” said Toon of CU-Boulder’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. “But overall these eruptions are not going to counter the greenhouse effect. Emissions of volcanic gases go up and down, helping to cool or heat the planet, while greenhouse gas emissions from human activity just continue to go up.”

The key to the new results was the combined use of two sophisticated computer models, including the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model, or WACCM, Version 3, developed by NCAR and which is widely used around the world by scientists to study the atmosphere. The team coupled WACCM with a second model, the Community Aerosol and Radiation Model for Atmosphere, or CARMA, which allows researchers to calculate properties of specific aerosols and which has been under development by a team led by Toon for the past several decades.

Neely said the team used the Janus supercomputer on campus to conduct seven computer “runs,” each simulating 10 years of atmospheric activity tied to both coal-burning activities in Asia and to emissions by volcanoes around the world. Each run took about a week of computer time using 192 processors, allowing the team to separate coal-burning pollution in Asia from aerosol contributions from moderate, global volcanic eruptions. The project would have taken a single computer processor roughly 25 years to complete, said Neely.

The scientists said 10-year climate data sets like the one gathered for the new study are not long enough to determine climate change trends. “This paper addresses a question of immediate relevance to our understanding of the human impact on climate,” said Neely. “It should interest those examining the sources of decadal climate variability, the global impact of local pollution and the role of volcanoes.”

While small and moderate volcanoes mask some of the human-caused warming of the planet, larger volcanoes can have a much bigger effect, said Toon. When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, it emitted millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere that cooled Earth slightly for the next several years.

The research for the new study was funded in part through a NOAA/ ESRL-CIRES Graduate Fellowship to Neely. The National Science Foundation and NASA also provided funding for the research project. The Janus supercomputer is supported by NSF and CU-Boulder and is a joint effort of CU-Boulder, CU Denver and NCAR.

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New Study Reveals How Sensitive US East Coast Regions May Be to Ocean Acidification

Mar. 1, 2013 — A continental-scale chemical survey in the waters of the eastern U.S. and Gulf of Mexico is helping researchers determine how distinct bodies of water will resist changes in acidity. The study, which measures varying levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other forms of carbon in the ocean, was conducted by scientists from 11 institutions across the U.S. and was published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.

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“Before now, we haven’t had a very clear picture of acidification status on the east coast of the U.S.,” says Zhaohui ‘Aleck’ Wang, the study’s lead author and a chemical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). “It’s important that we start to understand it, because increase in ocean acidity could deeply affect marine life along the coast and has important implications for people who rely on aquaculture and fisheries both commercially and recreationally.”

Coastal ocean acidification, Wang says, can occur when excess carbon dioxide is absorbed by, flushed into or generated in coastal waters, setting off a chain of chemical reactions that lowers the water’s pH, making it more acidic. The process disproportionately affects species like oysters, snails, pteropods, and coral, since those organisms cannot effectively form shells in a more acidic environment.

According to the survey, says Wang, different regions of coastal ocean will respond to an influx of CO2 in different ways. “If you put the same amount of CO2 into both the Gulf of Maine and the Gulf of Mexico right now, the ecosystem in the Gulf of Maine would probably feel the effects more dramatically,” he says. “Acidity is already relatively high in that region, and the saturation of calcium carbonate — the mineral that many organisms need to make shells — is particularly low. It’s not a great situation.”

Excess CO2 can enter coastal waters from a variety of different sources, Wang says. One large source is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has been steadily increasing in concentration worldwide for the past hundred and fifty years. The higher those levels of atmospheric CO2 rise, more CO2 gas will be absorbed into seawater by contact, says Wang. Another potential culprit, he notes, is nutrient-rich runoff from land. Rainfall and other surface flows can wash fertilizers and other byproducts of human activities into river systems and ground water, and ultimately, into the coastal ocean, delivering an excess of nutrients and often an explosion of biological activity that can lead to decreased oxygen and increased CO2 and acidity.

“This happens regularly in the Gulf of Mexico,” says Wang. “The Mississippi River dumps enormous amounts of nitrogen and other nutrients into the Gulf, which spawns large algal blooms that lead to production of large amount of organic matter. In the process of decomposing the organic matter, the microbes consume oxygen in the water and leave carbon dioxide behind, making the water more acidic. If this process happens in the Gulf of Maine, the ecosystem there may be even more vulnerable since the Gulf of Maine is a semi-enclosed system and it may take longer time for low pH, low oxygen water to disperse.”

Wang and his colleagues conducted their fieldwork in 2007 aboard the R/V Ronald H. Brown. Starting in the waters off Galveston, Texas, they worked their way around the Louisiana and west Florida coasts, past the Florida Straight, and up the eastern seaboard, collecting samples along nine different transects that ran from the coast to deep ocean off the shelf break, up to 480km (300 miles) offshore.

During the cruise, the researchers measured seawater samples for total dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), which is made up of a combination of carbonate, bicarbonate, dissolved CO2 and carbonic acid. The team compared this measurement to the water’s total alkalinity, a measure of how much base is in a water sample. The ratio of the two is a marker for water’s ability to “buffer” or resist changes in acidity. Waters with a high ratio of alkalinity to DIC, Wang says, would be less susceptible to acidification than waters that showed a much lower ratio.

After analyzing their data, Wang and colleagues found that, despite a “dead zone” of low oxygen and high acidity outside the mouth of the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico on the whole showed a high ratio of alkalinity to DIC, meaning it would be more resistant to acidification. As the team traveled farther north, however, they saw the ratio steadily decreases north of Georgia. The waters in the Gulf of Maine, Wang says, on average had the lowest alkalinity to DIC ratio of any region along the eastern seaboard, meaning that it would be especially vulnerable to acidification should CO2 levels rise in those waters.

While it’s unclear exactly why the ratio of alkalinity to DIC is low in those northern waters, Wang thinks part of the issue may be linked to alkalinity sources to the region. For example, the Labrador Coastal Current brings relatively fresh, low alkalinity water down from the Labrador Sea to the Gulf of Maine and Middle Atlantic Bight.

If this current is the major source of alkalinity to the region, he says, it may mean that the Gulf of Maine’s fate could be linked to changes in global climate that, through melting sea ice and glaciers, increase the flow of fresh water to the Gulf of Maine. However, whether this freshening is accompanied by a decreases in seawater alkalinity and “buffer” capacity remains unknown.

Since the waters of the northeast U.S. are already susceptible to rising acidity, Wang says this raises big questions about how species of marine life — many of which are important to the commercial fishing and shellfish industry there — will fare in the future. “For example, how are oysters going to do? What about other shellfish? If the food chain changes, how are fish going to be impacted?” Wang asks. “There’s a whole range of ecological and sociological questions.” There is a great need for need for more robust coastal ocean chemistry monitoring and coastal ocean acidification studies, he adds. A better understanding of the changing chemistry will help fisheries regulators to better manage the stocks.

Also collaborating on the study were Rik Wanninkhof and Tsung-Hung Peng from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Wei-Jun Cai and Wei-Jen Huang of the University of Georgia, Robert H. Byrne of the University of South Florida, and Xinping Hu of Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi.

This research was supported by the NOAA Global Carbon Cycle Program.

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Concern for whales after seismic testing approved

By Cath McAloon, ABCUpdated March 1, 2013, 9:16 pm

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Environmentalists say the Federal Government’s decision to approve seismic testing off Victoria’s south-west coast could endanger blue whale populations.

Environment Minister Tony Burke this week approved an application by energy company WHL to conduct the testing in the Otway Basin, south-west of Port Campbell.

It involves shooting high-energy air pressure into the ocean.

It will occur in November and December in an area known to be frequented by endangered blue whales.

The Government says special conditions will be enforced during testing to protect migrating whales.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Department of Sustainability and Environment says the conditions include a requirement to switch the seismic source to a lower setting if whales are sighted in the area.

There will be dedicated “marine mammal observers” on board the seismic testing vessel for the duration of the survey.

But Matthew Collis from International Fund for Animal Welfare says the conditions do not go far enough.

“The Government’s seismic guidelines clearly say they should try to avoid areas and times when blue whales are present – yet this area has seen the largest ever sighting of blue whales at exactly the same time that the company is proposing to undertake seismic testing,” he said.

He says whales could be forced away from areas they need to feed in.
“These are whales that were hunted to near extinction in previous centuries and have not yet recovered barely at all, so it’s really important that critical habitat areas… are protected and that’s why we are so disappointed by the decision.”