Woodside, whales and the imminent danger of new fossil fuel projects

14 Jan 2024 – When most Australians were taking a well-earned break over Christmas and New Year, a delegation of our scientists led by Dr Andrew Forrest AO were keeping close watch on Woodside’s seismic blasting for its Scarborough gas project off Australia’s Northwest coast.

Before Woodside can extract gas from Scarborough, the company uses seismic blasting to detect gas deposits, releasing soundwaves to the bottom of the ocean every 8-15 seconds for up to 80 days.

Monitoring marine life – our ocean work

Seismic blasting operations use sound pulses directed at the sea floor, which are some of the loudest man-made noises in the oceans ¹. Sound is vital for whales and dolphins: this is their primary sense when living in a vast and dark ocean. They use it to navigate, search for prey and communicate with each other ².

Woodside’s seismic blasting activity on the West Australian Northwest Shelf occurs in an important migratory habitat for pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) – an endangered species that needs our protection.

Pygmy blue whales communicate at low frequencies, so the noise from offshore gas operations has the potential to mask the sounds they need to communicate with each other. It can also mask other natural sounds in the ocean that these whales rely on for navigation ³.

Our scientists, alongside many experts in marine science, are concerned about the short-term, long-term and cumulative effects on marine life of seismic blasting ^{4 5}.

So, while Woodside blasted, our team carried out its own passive acoustic monitoring, an inexpensive and effective way of observing the presence and distribution of marine mammals.

Minderoo’s scientists also carried out sampling of environmental DNA to detect what, if any, rare or threatened species were present around the area where Woodside was blasting. These samples are currently being analysed.

The human impact – lethal humidity

The seismic blasting kicked off just as global leaders at COP28 agreed we must move away from fossil fuels ⁶.

Woodside’s activities are emblematic of the broader fossil fuel industry’s impact on climate change. This connects not only to the immediate concerns about marine life but also to the far-reaching effects, such as lethal humidity, caused by rising global temperatures.

Over its total lifetime, the cumulative emissions of the Burrup Hub (of which the Scarborough project is part) could soar to 13 times Australia’s annual carbon output ⁷.

The 2023 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) revealed one of the greatest dangers posed by 1.5C warming was rising humidity and heat ⁸.

Data from NASA shows a concerning trend: for every degree the planet heats up, humidity rises by about 7 per cent, as water evaporates from our oceans and waterways ^{9 10}.

In dry heat, the upper limit of human survival is around 54C, however, with high humidity, our bodies can go into heatstroke from as low as 31-35C. That’s because, with high humidity and heat, our sweat can no longer effectively cool our bodies, causing our core temperature to rise ^{11 12}.

Soaring humidity paired with high temperatures is not something we’re built to handle for long stretches.

Lethal humidity isn’t a small problem, either. Regions such as India, China, the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, parts of Australia, and various parts of South America, Africa, Asia and Europe are all facing increased vulnerability ⁸.

The takeaway? The threat of humidity and rising temperatures isn’t some distant future scenario. It’s here, demanding our attention and swift action right now ⁸.

That’s why Dr Forrest is spearheading immediate action by convening a global council focused on addressing lethal humidity and heat. His resolve includes taking the fight to his global business peers at the World Economic Forum meeting later this month.

Minderoo’s commitment to oceans

These research activities align with one of our three core focus areas – Natural Ecosystems. We work to ensure human activities in the ocean are ethical, sustainable and do not compromise the health of marine environments. We want to preserve biodiversity for future generations to enjoy – and ensure we understand and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Footnotes

1. Gordon, Jonathan, Douglas Gillespie, John Potter, Alexandros Frantzis, Mark P. Simmonds, René Swift and David Thompson. “A review of the effects of seismic surveys on marine mammals.” Marine Technology Society Journal 37, no. 4 (2003): 16-34. Cummings, Jim and Natalie Brandon. “Sonic impact: a precautionary assessment of noise pollution from ocean seismic surveys.” Accessed online April 24 (2004): 2009. Gisiner, Robert C. “Sound and marine seismic surveys.” Acoust. Today 12, no. 4 (2016): 10-18. Richardson, W. John, Charles R. Greene Jr, Charles I. Malme, and Denis H. Thomson. Marine mammals and noise. Academic press, 2013. ↩

2. Richardson, W. John, Charles R. Greene Jr, Charles I. Malme, and Denis H. Thomson. Marine mammals and noise. Academic press, 2013. Tyack, Peter L., and Edward H. Miller. “Vocal anatomy, acoustic communication and echolocation.” Marine mammal biology: An evolutionary approach 59 (2002): 142-84. Brownell Jr, Robert L., Douglas P. Nowacek, and Katherine Ralls. “Hunting cetaceans with sounds: a worldwide review.” Journal of Cetacean Research and Management (2008). Fenton, Brock, Frants H. Jensen, Elisabeth KV Kalko, and Peter L. Tyack. “Sonar signals of bats and toothed whales.” Biosonar (2014): 11-59. ↩

3. “Conservation Management Plan for the Blue Whale—A Recovery Plan under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, Commonwealth of Australia 2015”. Hildebrand JA (2009) Anthropogenic and natural sources of ambient noise in the ocean. Marine Ecology Progress Series 395:5–20. Nowacek DP, Thorne LH, Johnston DW, Tyack PL (2007) Responses of cetaceans to anthropogenic noise. Mammal Review 37:81–115. Southall B, Bowles A, Ellison W, Finneran J, Gentry R, Greene C, Kastak D, Ketten D, Miller J, Nachtigall P, Richardson J, Thomas J, Tyack P (2007) Marine mammal noise exposure criteria: initial scientific recommendations. Aquatic Mammals 33:437–445. ↩

4. Australian Parliamentary Report (June 2021) https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/SeismicTesting/Report ↩

5. Conversation by University of Tasmania (Sep 2023) https://theconversation.com/whales-stop-singing-and-rock-lobsters-lose-their-balance-how-seismic-surveys-can-harm-marine-life-211207 ↩

6. United Nations Climate Change (Dec 2023) https://unfccc.int/news/cop28-agreement-signals-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-fossil-fuel-era ↩

7. The Guardian (Nov 2023) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/27/burrup-hub-gas-project-woodside-energy-research ↩

8. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2023) Synthesis Report IPCC Synthesis Report 2023 ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. Humidity refers to “absolute humidity”, the actual amount of water vapour in the air. ↩

10. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2022) Steamy Relationships: How Atmospheric Water Vapor Amplifies Earth’s Greenhouse Effect https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3143/steamy-relationships-how-atmospheric-water-vapor-amplifies-earths-greenhouse-effect/ ↩

11. Pennsylvania State University (2022) Humans can’t endure temperatures and humidities as high as previously thought https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/humans-cant-endure-temperatures-and-humidities-high-previously-thought/ ↩

12. Vanos et al (2023) A physiological approach for assessing human survivability and liveability to heat in changing climate. Nature Communications. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43121-5) ↩