[Coral-List] Air Guns on Social Media

[Eugene Shinn]

Thanks Doug, I scanned through those "peer review" articles. They all 
take negative slants and none describe controlled experiments or hard 
data. What we need to know is: Evidence of cause? What distance from 
source? What species are most susceptible and to what frequencies and 
from what distance?  The problem is if we had studies that produce hard 
evidence  nay Sayers would claim the studies were funded by an oil 
company (or is it the Koch Brothers). As you know dead whales wash up on 
a regular basis and the causes are never clearly determined. You can bet 
a navy or seismic vessel will be blamed if there has been one in the 
vicinity. I was once involved in saving 30 false Killer whales at Dry 
Tortugas (the large male leader was the only one that died). The pod had 
followed him in to the beach.  The survivors finally left the beach with 
a lot of help from all of us swimmers. All had been tagged and blood 
samples taken while they were beached. They were later found to have 
beached and died in the 10,000 islands. The cause was never determined. 
Autopsy of the dead one showed nothing other than the usual presence of 
trimatodes in the ear canals. After retirement I served 3 years on the 
MMS science committee. It appeared that most anti offshore drilling came 
from people who basically did not want to see any oil drilling. They 
have deep feelings, especially whale folks. Expect anti offshore 
drilling off the East coast to grow. Especially if scientists join in on 
Social Media. Gene



No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
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E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
University of South Florida
College of Marine Science Room 221A
140 Seventh Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
<eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
Tel 727 553-1158
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