Offshore oil development sparks environmental fears in Newfoundland and Labrador
Tanker traffic is increasing with Hibernia and other oil plays on the storied Grand Banks
Bald eagles soar, searching for big fish. Thousands of smaller gannets dive into the sea, snatching tiny capelin or squid to take to nests in towering cliffs overlooking Newfoundland’s Placentia Bay and St. Mary’s Bay.
“Even if you’re out in a boat by yourself, you’re never alone on these waters,” says fisherman Thomas H. Leonard. Puffins, northern murres, petrels, bull birds, dovekeys, and harlequin and eider ducks skim the waves, hunting shellfish. Kittiwakes, saddleback gulls, and terns swoop. Osprey with two-meter wing spans glide overhead. Lone loons dine out on sea urchins. The foggy, hazardous waters are bordered by a wild landscape of barrens, berry bushes, brambles, marshes, small forests and twisted swatches of wind-blasted spruce and fir.
One of the world’s largest and most diverse seabird communities resides at Cape St. Mary’s, a narrow neck of land between the bays. But the wildlife contends with growing, man-made competition. The number of tankers carrying crude oil and refined products, in single- as well as safer double-layer hulls, is much higher than in Eastern Canada. Nor do the bays have a shortage of fishing vessels.
Environmentalists, fisheries workers and tourism operators increasingly wonder if the wildlife and shipping can co-exist. “It’s something that runs through all our minds,” says Leonard, who fishes crab, lobster, cod and scallop from a 45-foot longliner.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever have a huge oil spill in the area, but you can’t rule it out considering the amount of fog and all the shoals here. Every now and then there’s a small spill.”
So far, the fisherman says, “the most you get out there is the ships pumping their bilges and they usually do that if it’s an old foggy day or if there’s no planes flying over. The most spills you see are from some really derelict-looking old ship. The up-to-date ones are probably ahead of that stuff; they’re not doing that. It’s probably cheaper to pay the fines than to have their bilges pumped when they come in. To them, it’s business.”
Tanker and freighter traffic on Placentia Bay is becoming thick enough to raise safety concerns about the hundreds of small fishing boats that rove the area. “There have been very close calls over the years, no doubt about it,” Leonard says. “We don’t know who to blame – but if the weather is foggy and the small boats are not paying attention to their radars or to where they’re at in the bay, those things can happen.
*Besides the birds, a cornucopia of mammals and fish seasonally visit or live year-long at Placentia Bay and St. Mary’s Bay. Several whale species, seals, dolphins, cod, caplin, tuna, salmon, squid and a bounty of crustaceons, as well as invertebrate species too numerous to mention.*
“That marine habitat is huge and amazingly diverse. It’s unique in its own right,” says Bob O’Brien, an environmentalist and semi-retired businessman. He created Ocean Net in the fall of 1997. The organization has grown to become one of Atlantic Canada’s largest environmental movements boasting 1,800 cleanups – some of them 14 kilometers long – of Newfoundland and Labrador shores.
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This article is facsinating! It demonstrates our continuing neglect of the environment. I realize we’re going to need these non-renewable energy resources before anything renewable, such as wind, geo-thermal, and solar kicks in at reasonable prices, but there are other costs, such as our diverse ecosystems. I must also say that Mr. Reid has quite the ability to put the reader right there. I felt I was on Placentia Bay and at the bird sanctuary. Has he published any books on these subjects and the oil industry? Is he a regular contributor. He is, by far, one of the best writers I`ve come across and I would love to continue reading his work.