By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Seismic work now underway in the Chukchi Sea in conjunction with marine petroleum exploration is raising eyebrows among scientists concerned about the health of ocean ecosystems.

Seismic exploration refers to the use of air guns fired toward the sea floor. Measuring equipment is then used to interpret the reaction of the blast against the seafloor to determine the geologic nature of the ocean floor.

Their biggest concern is the impact on marine mammals, especially whale populations. The Chukchi Sea is prime habitat for bowhead whales. The impact of potential deflection of migratory patterns, disruption of communications, reproduction and other social behavior among whales could have dire effects on the future of the whales, scientists say.

The noise from air guns firing for the seismic tests will likely frighten whales in the area, unseen by observers, away from feeding areas, said Rick Steiner of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Sea Grant Program. At the source of the air gun blasts, "It sounds like a jet aircraft taking off," Steiner said.

"It is extraordinarily loud. It shoots down through the ocean water into the sea bed, and as it reflects back up, sensors on the boat following the one with the air gun pick up the sound reflected," Steiner said.

Officials with Shell Exploration and Production Co. and ConocoPhillips argue that stipulations in their permits are more than adequate to ensure that seismic surveys will have no discernible effect on marine mammal populations.

The controversy is centered on a decision of the U.S. Minerals Management Service to issue seismic permits June 21, contingent upon the oil companies getting incidental harassment authorization from federal fisheries officials under the Marine Mammals Protection Act.

The permits went to Shell, ConocoPhillips and GX Technologies, of Houston, Texas. Shell and ConocoPhillips are using Western Geophysical as their contractor for the seismic work, MMS officials said.

There are several restrictions and requirements that go along with the seismic agreements, said Rance Wall, of the MMS resource evaluation team in Anchorage.

For example, there is an expectation by marine biologists the most cow-calf whale pairs are at a certain place in the Beaufort Sea, and the companies cannot start seismic work until after the subsistence hunt, he said.

General mitigation measures outlined in the incidental harassment authorization requires that concentrations of whales be avoided. The oil companies have employed trained observers, including Alaska Natives with subsistence hunting experience, to identify whales in the area.

In these vast, turbulent waters, where vision may be challenged by the weather and darkness, the question is how many whales they may spot.

"ConocoPhillips believes that the stipulations contained in these permits are much more than adequate to ensure that its seismic surveys will have no discernible effect on the health, status, habitat, survival or recovery of any marine mammal populations in the Chukchi Sea," said Dawn Patience, the company's spokeswoman.

"If marine mammals are sighted or heard within the monitored areas, ConocoPhillips is required to take certain actions, which may include ramping down or shutting down its operations," she said.

Terzah Tippin Poe, communications manager for Shell, said Shell also has taken actions to minimize any impact on wildlife and the environment in areas where the company operates.

"There are trained observers on the boats, marine mammal observers, and operations will shut down if a marine mammal is seen," Poe said.

"In addition to the measures taken to protect all marine mammals in the areas where we are doing seismic, Shell has negotiated a conflict avoidance agreement with the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission," Poe said. "This agreement ensures we are taking all possible precautions to protect the whales and the subsistence hunt, which is so vital to the people of the North Slope."

Poe is, in fact, a niece of Maggie Ahmaogak, executive director of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. Ahmaogak said the fact that her husband George, a whaling captain and former mayor of the North Slope Borough, is now community affairs manager for Shell in Alaska, is not a conflict of interest. Rather, his position is helpful because he can communicate Inupiat Eskimo whaler concerns to Shell, she said.

In written comments of May 10 to the Minerals Management Service, AEWC strongly opposed offshore oil and gas development in Arctic waters. The testimony noted that treacherous sea and ice conditions make this an extremely risky environment in which to develop oil and gas, especially oil.

What really concerns the AEWC is geophysical exploration activities. "Recent research in the Atlantic Ocean demonstrates that the sounds from seismic exploration can travel as much as 3,000 kilometers (1,863 miles) through the ocean," the AEWC comments read. "We face seismic exploration within only a few miles of our villages and our marine subsistence hunting areas."

Inupiat Eskimos, Maggie Ahmaogak said, have hunted whales for subsistence since time immemorial. Whales are an integral part of the food supply, cultural heritage and history of the Inupiat people, she said, in a telephone interview.

And yet, Ahmaogak told MMS, that agency should bear in mind that conflict avoidance agreements to monitor and mitigate potential impact to bowhead whale subsistence hunts have a limited reach.

"If MMS fails to recognize the need for a balance between numbers of permitted activities and effectiveness of available mitigation measures, the use of the conflict avoidance agreement to manage vessel traffic and to mitigate noise disturbance could easily become overwhelmed by the volume of activity," she said.

"There is a moral and ethical issue here," said Steiner, who said there are economically feasible alternatives to stressing already stressed populations of sea mammals in the Chukchi, Beaufort and Bering seas. "Oil and gas (exploration) in this critical habitat are very troubling."

In addition to disruption of normal movement and feeding by sea mammals, Steiner said exploration and production of oil in these waters poses the threat of oil spills, which could be devastating to fish, birds and mammals, particularly right whales, and their food supply.

Steiner is not alone in his concerns.

The National Environmental Defense Fund, in its comments to MMS, cited a number of harmful effects of high-intensity human-made noise to whales, and other ocean species, including chronic stress, which can compromise viability, suppress immune systems and lower reproduction rates.

A 2003 Acoustical Society of America report, written by two Australian scientists, along with another from the University of Maryland, said it is unknown whether exposure to these air guns has the potential to damage the ears of aquatic vertebrates.

Fish examined for their study, after exposure to operating air guns, sustained extensive damage, apparent as ablated hair cells, with no evidence of repair or replacement of damaged sensory cells up to 58 days after air gun exposure, the report said.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity and Pacific Environment, in Portland, Ore., 12 percent of the Bering Sea's wildlife species are already at risk of decline or extinction due to complex problems ranging from commercial fishing and global climate change to pollution. Species of concern include the Kittlitz's Murrelet and North Pacific Right Whale, northern sea otters, polar bears, rougheye rockfish, northern fur seal and yellow-billed loons.

"The fact that most species of concern in the Bering Sea are listed only as vulnerable, and thus may not be at immediate risk of extinction, is cause for hope," said Whit Sheard, Alaska program director for Pacific Environment. "For many of these species, positive reforms in management could forestall further decline."

The Alaska Marine Conservation Council is also questioning offshore exploration, despite oil companies' contentions that it will be conducted in an environmentally sound way.

AMCC voiced concern recently over Senate Bill 3711, now pending before the Senate. The measure would open new areas of the Gulf of Mexico to petroleum development, and could take direct aim at coastal protection nationwide, said Eric Siy, executive director of AMCC.

Those provisions would place Bristol Bay and the North Aleutian Basin planning area in jeopardy, Siy said.

Offshore oil and gas development in Bristol Bay is hardly a new issue. AMCC officials noted that government studies in the 1980s determined the likelihood of one or more major oil spills if Bristol Bay were developed.

Then-Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper wrote a letter to Sidney Yates, chairman of the House subcommittee on Interior on Feb. 6, 1989, asking his assistance in imposing a deferral on oil and gas exploration in Bristol Bay in the area of sale 92. Leases for that area were awarded in the fall of 1988.

Cowper said the state of Alaska recommended "postponing exploration and development in Bristol Bay because of 1) the region's unequaled fish and wildlife values, 2) its low oil and gas potential, and 3) the reasonable expectation that risks will be significantly reduced by deferring activities."

The former governor, now an energy consultant in Austin, Texas, noted that, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the area is the single most important region of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf for the conservation of marine mammals, and endangered species and the protection and management of fishery resources.

Cowper noted that the environmental impact statement estimated that there was a greater than 50 percent probability that one or more spills exceeding 1,000 barrels of oil would occur over the productive life of the leases.

"Further, the EIS projected major effects to the red king crab population, as well as less serious impacts to tanner crab, salmon, herring and groundfish," the governor wrote. The state estimates the discounted gross economic loss based on first wholesale values to be approximately $563.6 million, he said.

Cowper recommended that the committee adopt instead an approach for Bristol Bay similar to that taken in 1988 for Florida. "In Bristol Bay, like the Florida Keys, the research conducted in preparation for the sale has left several critical questions unanswered," he said.

These include the effects of seismic energy sources on salmon fisheries, patterns and timing of salmon migration through Bristol Bay and the North Aleutian Basin, distribution and abundance of forage fish in and adjacent to the North Aleutian Basin and migratory behavior of egg-bearing female king crab along the north shore of the Alaska Peninsula.

Other unanswered questions include effects of oiled sediment on settling and recruitment of food organisms important to juvenile king crab, effects of oil contamination on gray whales, the importance of the North Aleutian Shelf as a feeding area for gray whales, effects of oil contamination on eelgrass beds along the northern shoreline of the Alaska Peninsula, and an analysis of oil spill response capabilities, he said.

Ultimately exploration of those leases was cut short, not by the committee, but an oil spill. On March 23, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez, heading south from Valdez through Prince William Sound, ran aground on Bligh Reef, creating the most devastating environmental disaster ever caused at sea.

Later that year, the Interior Department declared a moratorium on offshore drilling in Bristol Bay. Six years later, in 1995, the federal government bought back the leases.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at

margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.