PG&E's Seismic Tests Will Destroy Whales & Fishing
Whales have been coming close to shore in Avila Beach & Port San Luis Harbor as if to communicate: Please see us, hear us, save us; don't allow PG&E to kill or deafen our family and the ocean's web-of-life. The humpback whales are bringing worldwide attention to PG&E's proposed seismic tests.
Introduction
The photo above shows abundance of marine life in Port San Luis, San Luis Obispo (SLO), California (CA), on August 22, 2012. Photos documenting this abundance of marine life have been shared across the world media, especially the August 18, 2012 photos by Bill Bouton.
These photos show abundant marine life before PG&E's seismic testing. The marine web-of life will not survive the planned sonic tests that could be up to 260 decibels (dB). The Central Coastal California Seismic Imaging Project Environmental Impact Report states there will be many adverse impacts to commercial fishing and suggests fishing could end for an unknown length of time. Significant and unavoidable loss of marine life is also expected.
According to Save our Shores Florida, human death can occur at 160dB.
Therefore, no one can be in the ocean during the weeks of seismic testing. That means no swimming, surfing, diving, kayaking, stand-up paddle (sup) boarding, playing in the water — nothing — nearly all beaches will need to be closed near the testing area. Will the ports of San Luis and Morro Bay also be closed during testing?
The local fishermen are rightfully scared of losing their businesses, homes, and livelihoods. Many hardworking fishermen spoke to the California State Lands Commission Monday, August 20, 2012, yet they were not heard as loudly as the spokesmen from PG&E's Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.
"The process for compensation of commercial fishermen remains vague and does not apparently extend to long-term impacts nor to cascading effects on onshore fishing-dependent businesses," commented Eric Greening, environmentalist and political watchdog of SLO County.
Many question: Will the community of Morro Bay survive without commercial fishing?
Many began to wonder: If the people could choose, would they choose marine life and the community of Morro Bay or PG&E's Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant?
If PG&E were prepared to kill everyone's pet dogs, would the community pay more attention to the pending destruction of our nearshore marine life and the mammals migrating during seismic testing?
Dr. Sylvia Earl on the oceans, "Blue heart of the Planet"
PG&E's Seismic Testing
PG&E is preparing to begin ocean seismic testing November 1, 2012. They expect to receive permits from the CA Department of Fish and Game probably October 3rd or 4th, (but possibly a special meeting in September) and CA Coastal Commission in San Clemente, sometime between October 10th and 12th.
Please send your concerns to these two email contacts: CA Coastal Commision and CA Fish and Game.
Sonic blasts are scheduled to occur from November 1 – December 31, 2012. The underwater sound blasts will occur every 15 seconds around the clock for about 34 days. The END of the season of sonic blasts has been extended from what HAD been a firm limit of December 15th to December 31st by the State Lands Commission. Did the State Lands Commission understand the end date of December 15th was to prevent interference with the gray whale migration?
Moreover, because the time of seismic testing was changed, the State Lands Commission gave PG&E the ability to come back next year for more seismic testing if it cannot complete all the work this year. The State Lands Commission has two new documents which we will discuss in our next month's article.
1) MODIFIED EXHIBIT E – CENTRAL COASTAL CALIFORNIA SEISMIC IMAGING PROJECT
STATEMENT OF FINDINGS Modified Timing Three-Loop Configuration August 20, 2012
2) MODIFIED EXHIBIT F – CENTRAL COASTAL CALIFORNIA SEISMIC IMAGING PROJECT
STATEMENT OF OVERRIDING CONSIDERATIONS Modified Timing Three-Loop Configuration August 20, 2012
Ocean areas to be blasted are from Guadalupe to Cambria. Guadalupe Beach is in Santa Barbara County, and all of the other beaches and coastal towns are in San Luis Obispo County (SLO). This area has qualified for national marine sanctuary designation since 1990.
This map of one blast along with more maps and information are in our June 2012 article.
Shock Waves of One Sonic Blast
State Marine Protected Areas in the testing area will be impacted or destroyed. In fact, this destruction of SLO's marine-web-of-life could be compared to destroying a national marine sanctuary, a nationally and internationally significant ocean ecosystem, much of which may not be restorable.
Save Our Shores Florida (SOSFla) describes the details of underwater sonic blasting at 260dB on their website.
Air guns towed behind boats will fire shots of compressed air into the water that will create intense pulses that travel down to penetrate the seafloor, and rebound back to the surface.
A 260dB sound is very intense. Humans can die from sound alone at 160 dB. As a comparison, damage to human hearing starts at 85dB. A police siren from thirty meters is about 100dB. A loud indoor rock concert is around 120 dB.
Decibels are logarithmic, meaning every 10dB increase translates into roughly ten times more intensity, and sounds approximately twice as loud to the human ear, which also perceives sound logarithmically.
That means the 260dB air gun blast translates to ten quadrillion times more intensity than a police siren at thirty meters, and would sound to humans about 16,384 times as loud.
Death from sound occurs because sound is a pressure wave. This is why you can feel your body vibrate during loud, low sounds (such as those felt during a concert). Intense waves can rip ear, lung, and other vibrating tissues. They also cause internal bleeding.
A blast of 260dB is 10,000 times more intense than the sound of a nuclear explosion at a range of five hundred meters. Yet, this is what marine life off the California central coast would experience.
The high-intensity pulses produced by air guns can cause a range of impacts on marine mammals, fish, and other marine life, including habitat displacement, disruption of vital behaviors essential to foraging and breeding, loss of biological diversity, beach strandings and mortalities.
SOSFla reports that whales, dolphins, and other marine animals that rely on the ocean for life would rather throw themselves on the beaches than be subjected to this literally deadly noise.
Before Seismic Testing
SLO's coast is a vulnerable gap between two national marine sanctuaries, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The National Ocean And Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has studied these waters. Two documents describe the "before seismic testing" variety and abundance of the marine web-of-life in SLO County.
1) A Biogeographic Assessment of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, "A Review of Boundary Expansion Concepts for NOAA'S National Marine Sanctuary Program," November 2005
2) A Biogeographic Assessment off North/Central California: In Support of the National Marine Sanctuaries of Cordell Bank, Gulf of the Farallones and Monterey Bay, "Phase II Environmental Setting and Update to Marine Birds and Mammals," October 2007
NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries and NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Foundation Asks Questions
Will PG&E Fully Assess the "missed fault?"
Carl Neiburger reported the 14-year cover-up by PG&E in the SLO Tribune on November 5, 1981. "PG&E found evidence of an earthquake fault within 500 feet of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in 1967, but chose not to pursue it to avoid ‘additional speculation and possibly delay the project.'"
In their June 4, 2012 letter , The Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility (A4NR) asked the CA State Lands Commission to require PG&E to specifically delineate the changes in its offshore and onshore study plans necessary to gather data to fully assess the "missed fault" recommendations of Dr. Douglas Hamilton, as graphically mapped in the DEIR comment submitted by geologist Erik Layman. (Central Coastal California Seismic Imaging Project)
Dr. Hamilton was part of PG&E's Diablo geosciences team from 1971 to 1988.
Rochelle Becker, Executive Director of A4NR states that the CA Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Judge proposed decision in the Diablo seismic funding case stated that they expect PG&E to include Dr. Hamilton's scope and that is what ratepayers expect for their multimillion dollar expenditure.
Dr. Douglas Hamilton's point in his testimony before the CPUC, February 10, 2012: "…nothing in the planned additional surveys, both onshore and offshore, offers any prospect for any result beyond marginal improvement to what is already known."
Andrew Christie, Director of the Santa Lucia Sierra Club states: "PG&E says they will incorporate the additional onshore areas he pointed out they had ignored in their initial survey design; they have not said they are deleting offshore areas he pointed out as already sufficiently studied, or sought his input on which areas those are, beyond the now-deleted Cambria Stepover."
PG&E's Broken Environmental Promises
As stated in our December 2011 article, PG&E's original application to the CPUC dated July 7, 1967, in the agreement, item 7 (State of California Application no. 49051) states: "In the event critical problems relating to aquatic or recreational uses occur after and as a result of installation, Pacific agrees to continue its cooperative investigations with the objective of modifying operation or design to eliminate these problems. In the event that adverse effects accrue to aquatic life or recreation uses due to plant construction or operation, Pacific will provide reasonable mitigation for the losses incurred, provided such mitigation will not interfere with the construction or operation of the plant unless otherwise agreed."
The December 2011 article documents while PG&E was promising to protect the marine environment, they were caught skewing the data that omitted known marine damage by its Diablo Canyon reactors. Now, PG&E is proposing seismic tests that will destroy the nearshore marine web-of-life.
Conclusion
Our California Central Coast San Luis Obispo nearshore waters have qualified for national marine sanctuary designation since 1990 when a bill went to Congress. However, our community has not been successful in establishing a sanctuary, and now we could lose all of our marine life. Perhaps then we will be granted a national marine sanctuary for the restoration of the web-of-life and the fishing community of Morro Bay.
In 2008, a new seismic fault line, the Shoreline Fault, was found less that a half-mile from the plant. The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant would not be permitted, due to this and the other multiple seismic threats, if it were planned to be constructed today on the location it currently sits. (See Marine Sanctuaries, April 2012)
After many weeks of sonic blasting every 15 seconds- 24 hours a day, will any marine life be left? Local fishermen have been told that commercial fishing will end for an unknown length of time. Environmentalists are told that the deaths and damage to mammals will be unavoidable — whales, porpoises, dolphins, sea otters, seals, sea lions, elephant seals, and the entire marine web-of-life in the seismic testing area.
Evidently, the corporate need to continue using an old nuclear power plant which sits on earthquake faults is more important than nearshore and migrating marine life, vital fishing communities, tourism (#1 business in SLO), and federal and state laws that protect marine life. We are told the seismic tests are for our safety.
Eric Greening's observations from the CA State Lands Commission vote for PG&E's seismic permit: "They are having this impact without any clear picture of what overriding 'safety' need would be met once the information is gathered. Before we rush to kill so much sea life, shouldn't we be asking if ANYTHING will be achieved? That is why I asked the questions I did about the Overriding Considerations. What actual changes in Diablo would be triggered by what information? Would truly alarming information cause them to abandon relicensing or shut the plant down? There is absolutely no reason to anticipate this."
The loss of marine life is expected to be significant and unavoidable. The project will result in "significant impacts to fin, humpback, and blue whales; the harbor porpoise and the Southern sea otter. The nearshore marine web-of-life in the testing area will be destroyed and may take years to restore. For example, rockfish need to be 20 years old to be able to reproduce!
How many throughout California would put solar on their roofs if it would save our incredible marine life and commercial fishing in San Luis Obispo County?
Now, nuclear may only provide about 10% of California energy, and more alternative energy sources keep lowering this percentage.
Nuclear plants will eventually shut down due to the radiation. The question is not "if," but "when" will they shut down. Nuclear power plants are not sustainable.
In conclusion, P.J. Webb, attorney and Vice Chair of the Advisory Council of Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary states:
"There are known earthquake faults in the area where the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant sits. The proposed tests will not change that fact. There is a known Eden of wildlife existing in the offshore waters. The proposed tests will change those circumstances. Please do not destroy what exists in seeking to determine what is already known."
Sylvia Earle, well-known ocean researcher shares her wish that we join her in protecting the vital blue heart of the planet.
