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Tag: marine life
China’s ‘Great Wall of Sand’ In South China Sea

China’s ‘Great Wall of Sand’ In South China Sea

By David Tweed, Bloomberg News (TNS)

HONG KONG — The pace at which China is building islands in the South China Sea has been shown by satellite photos lending weight to claims by U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Harry Harris that China is building a “great wall of sand.”

The photos, published by an initiative of the Washington- based Center for Strategic and International Studies, focus on China’s reclamation efforts in the Spratly Islands on Mischief Reef, a feature also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan.

Artificial islands could help China anchor its territorial claims and potentially develop bases in waters that host some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Disputes over the South China Sea, of which China claims about four-fifths under a so-called nine-dash line drawn on a 1940s map, have escalated as China expands the reach of its military.

Satellite photographs show construction efforts on Mischief Reef that appear to have begun only in recent months, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. The group’s aim is to “promote transparency in the Indo-Pacific to dissuade assertive behavior and conflict,” according its website.

“China is creating a great wall of sand, with dredges and bulldozers,” Admiral Harris said in a speech in Canberra late last month. “China is building artificial land by pumping sand on live coral reefs — some of them submerged — and paving over them with concrete.”

Philippine fishermen first reported that China was building structures on Mischief Reef in 1995, when the reef was completely submerged at high tide, according to AMTI. The structures were upgraded to a single, permanent multistory building in 1998.

By 2013, the original structures had been transformed into a “forward naval station,” permitting the basing of one People’s Liberation Army Navy frigate at a time, according to the website. Philippine fisherman last year began to report patrols by the Chinese navy and coast guard.

A photograph taken in January shows a dredger widening the entrance to the reef, the website said. While images taken “just a few months prior” didn’t indicate dredging or construction, photos taken since show sand removed from one of the reef’s entrances being used to create a land formation.

Photos on March 16 show new structures, fortified seawalls, and dredgers, in a sign that construction is progressing.

In August last year, China rebuffed efforts by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to secure a freeze on any actions in the South China Sea that might provoke tensions. All claimants to the Spratlys except Brunei occupy islands or have built structures on reefs and shoals, according to IHS Jane’s.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in March that his country has every right to carry out construction on its territory in the South China Sea and won’t accept criticism from others about its “legal and reasonable” work.

“China is carrying out necessary construction on its own islands, and that isn’t directed against and won’t affect anyone,” Wang said. “We are not comparable to some countries that like to build illegal houses on others’ territory.”

Photo: CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and DigitalGlobe via TNS

Judge Rules Navy Underestimated Threat To Marine Mammals From Sonar

Judge Rules Navy Underestimated Threat To Marine Mammals From Sonar

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

A federal judge has ruled in favor of environmentalists who assert the Navy has vastly underestimated the threat to marine mammals posed by its use of sonar and explosives during training off Southern California and Hawaii.

U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway in Hawaii ruled Tuesday that the National Marine Fisheries Service violated environmental laws when it decided that the Navy’s training would have a “negligible impact” on whales, dolphins, other mammals, and sea turtles.

The ruling appears to set the stage for an appeal or for the Navy to resubmit its application to the fisheries service for a permit. Other options would be for the Navy to relocate its training or adopt greater safeguards to protect sea creatures.

The ruling was hailed by environmental groups, which have long asserted that the Navy is needlessly harming whales and other animals and has resisted making changes to train in less “biologically sensitive areas.”

“The court’s ruling recognizes that, to defend our country, the Navy doesn’t need to train in every square inch of a swath of ocean larger than all 50 states combined,” said David Henkin, the Earthjustice attorney representing several groups that filed the lawsuit.

“The Navy shouldn’t play war games in the most sensitive waters animals use for feeding and breeding,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Navy spokesman Mark Matsunaga said the service was studying the ruling and could not comment on its details.

“It is essential that sailors have realistic training that fully prepares them to fight tonight, if necessary, and (with) equipment that has been thoroughly tested before they go into harm’s way,” Matsunaga said.

“The Navy has been training and testing in the Hawaii and Southern California ranges for more than 60 years without causing the harm alleged by the plaintiffs in this case.”

The lawsuit was aimed at curtailing Navy training from Dana Point to San Diego, off Coronado’s Silver Strand, and in the area between various Hawaiian islands.

The Navy holds a major multinational exercise off Hawaii every two years. The next is set for 2016. The Hawaii exercise, called Rim of the Pacific, and exercises off Southern California allow sailors to train in using sonar to detect submarines in shallow water, not unlike the conditions in the Persian Gulf, the Navy has said.

Much of the judge’s ruling details with the dueling interpretations about how many animals over a five-year period of training would be hurt.

The Navy asserts that training will kill 155 whales over five years. The environmentalists say the number of those killed or crippled would be much higher.

In her 66-page decision, the judge conceded the difficulty in parsing the claims and counter-claims.

She wrote that she feels like the sailor in Samuel Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” who, while trapped on a ship in a windless sea, laments, “Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.”

Photo: Official U.S. Navy Page via Flickr

California Lawmaker Moves To Stop Oil-Drilling Project

California Lawmaker Moves To Stop Oil-Drilling Project

Los Angeles Times

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It’s been 45 years since a spill off Santa Barbara coated the picturesque coast with oil, killed wildlife, and prompted tough new pumping restrictions. But new worries have emerged in Sacramento.

It turns out that there was an exemption in a 1994 law that still allows drilling in a single portion of state-controlled, coastal waters. And a state lawmaker wants to immediately halt any possibility of drilling.

It’s no idle worry. There is a Northern California businessman with a project to lease land in Santa Barbara County, drill under the ocean floor, and pump oil from a place called Tranquillon Ridge.

To Bob Nunn, California oilman, developer, and farmer, his plan is safe, smart, and profitable. But not to state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Democrat, who wants to stop the project before it gets started.

In June, she amended an unrelated bill to close what she called a loophole in California law that could allow drilling from an offshore oil field that’s partly in state-controlled waters off Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County.

Approval of her proposal would “end the conversation once and for all,” she said, and “make a statement from the people of California reaffirming their commitment to protect the coastline.”

It also comes as environmentalists push a local initiative, Measure P, to ban hydraulic fracturing and other controversial types of land-based oil drilling in Santa Barbara County.

Meanwhile, Nunn’s company — Sunset Exploration Inc. — and partner Exxon Mobil Corp. want to get at the Tranquillon oil by drilling horizontally under the ocean floor from land on Air Force property, not from an ocean platform.

To do that, they’ll need to obtain permission from a long list of state and federal agencies, beginning with the Air Force.

At issue is the 20-year-old law that banned new oil and gas production leases in state waters, which extend three miles out to sea from the beach. The California Coastal Sanctuary Act says “oil and gas production in certain areas of state waters poses an unacceptably high risk of damage and disruption to the marine environment.”

The act, however, contains a significant exemption: It allows the State Lands Commission, an obscure but powerful state agency, to approve a new oil-drilling lease.

To do so, a majority of the three-member panel must declare that oil under state waters is being drained by nearby platforms in adjacent federal government-controlled areas, farther offshore. Tranquillon is the only spot on the California coast that would be affected by the exemption, experts said.

The basin holds an estimated 150 million barrels of high-quality petroleum that could flow for as long as 30 years, according to a Lands Commission report.

A portion of oil in the state zone is being sucked into federal jurisdiction by pumps on nearby Platform Irene in federal waters. The siphoning is denying the state hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties, Nunn said.

That lost revenue could flow back to the state and local governments if new wells are drilled on land at Vandenberg, he said.

What’s more, Nunn contends, drilling from land is safer than platform drilling.

“We never intersect the marine environment,” he said. “We drill vertically approximately half a mile and then drill out under the seabed.”

A recently released Air Force “opportunity assessment” of Nunn’s proposal concluded that onshore drilling could be economically beneficial and less environmentally risky than offshore drilling. However, it also noted that environmental critics of both types of drilling have raised “valid concerns.”

Environmentalists want none of it.

“There are more than a dozen significant, unavoidable impacts to the environment. A lot are related to oil spills,” said Linda Krop, an activist attorney at the Environmental Defense Council in Santa Barbara. “The risks and the impacts are too great, and there are no benefits.”

These issues have been the subject of studies, environmental analysis, and political debate.

A 2008 environmental study concluded that “oil spill impacts for marine biology, marine water quality, and commercial/recreational fishing would be reduced but not eliminated” by drilling from land.

Those concerns are certain to be re-evaluated if Nunn and his partners move ahead. The Air Force, Santa Barbara County, the State Lands Commission, and the Coastal Commission all have a role in approvals before any drilling could begin.

Nunn pointed out the Lands Commission in 2009 considered — but rejected — a related plan that had widespread support from Jackson and local environmentalists.

The 2009 plan also sought to tap Tranquillon, but from the water at Platform Irene — not from the shore. In turn, the drilling company agreed to remove offshore platforms — as well as two onshore crude processing plants — by 2022. But the Lands Commission killed the deal by a 2-1 vote.

Nunn’s proposal is not worth the risk to Santa Barbara’s tourism, recreation, and fishing industry, Krop said.

That’s why Jackson says she’s in a rush to pass her bill. “We need to close that loophole,” she said, so there won’t be any question or attempt to expand drilling, whether on land or off land.”

AFP Photo/Karen Bleier

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