Construction of oil site ‘frightening whales away’

Unusually high noise levels at an oil and gas construction site off the east coast of Russia is frightening endangered whales out of their feeding grounds, environment groups are claiming.

“I feel that a huge construction bulldozer is working near my tent,” says Natalia Illarionova, who monitors the western grey whales for the campaign group WWF from a camp on the island of Sakhalin. “I feel the vibration and hear the low, hollow rumble.”
Sakhalin Energy, a company partly owned by oil giant Shell, is in the final stages of installing two platforms 12 kilometres offshore to extract oil and gas from the seabed. The project, combined with its planned 800 kilometres of pipeline, is the world’s largest oil and gas extraction project. The company denies exceeding noise limits.

The waters around Sakhalin island are also the only known feeding ground for the western grey whales, which live in the Pacific. The whales – of which there are only about 100 remaining – come to Sakhalin to feed with their young after the ice has retreated in the summer. Where they feed in the winter remains a mystery.

WWF and Sakhalin Environment Watch, a Russian NGO, say noise levels over the weekend of 30 June and 1 July were unusually high. They say they did not see any whales over the weekend and are concerned the noise has frightened them away. Both groups have been monitoring the whales since construction in Sakhalin began three years ago.

“Our observers on Sakhalin normally see the whales every day unless the weather is foggy,” says James Leaton, WWF’s Oil and Gas Policy Advisor. “The visibility was good this weekend, but they did not see any whales.” Leaton says this is “highly unusual”.

According to WWF, Sakhalin Energy has agreed to not carry out work at 120 decibels for more than four hours at a time, in accordance with recommendations from its independent scientific advisors. But the environmental groups claim work at 120 decibels continued uninterrupted for 48 hours over the weekend.

New Scientist