Maggie's Farm

Whenever we move to drill an offshore gas well, we first have to survey the area where we want to park the rig - it's called a Site Survey. The region would already have been subject to the deep geophysical survey work that is used to identify drilling prospects - now comes the actual business of moving in the equipment. To do this for moored or bottom-supported rigs - or to prepare an area for an offshore platform - the Site Survey will run a grid pattern with a survey ship to get detailed bathymetry, to run side-scan sonar to identify seabed hazards (shipwreck, cables, other wells, etc), and also sub-seabed work to identify hazards like unstable sediments, potential gas hydrates, or shallow, near-surface gas deposits that can't be controlled. Usually it's at least a square mile or more for a single well or platform.

The survey ship will be trailing streamer cables with geophones and other sensitive equipment, sometimes out a mile or so, often multiple cables. For identifying shallow gas, they'll deploy some kind of energy source, usually an air cannon - booming out charges underwater so that the geophones can pick up the reflected sound waves for computer processing and image-building. This can affect the wildlife for obvious reasons.

Offshore wind farms are just like platforms - they need extensive site assessment before they're constructed. I'm sure in these wind farm areas there would have been extensive Site Survey work undertaken. The question is 'When?' in relation to the what problems. In our work, we have to hire on additional personnel and boats to serve as wildlife lookouts, for turtles, whales, dolphins.

Anybody could find this out if they bought a survey worker a hamburger and a beer. But I haven't come across any of this being reported so that people can understand what might be happening to the whales. Isn't that interesting?

How about ignoring it altogether? That's what 95% of people would consider a normal response for such erratic behavior, so as not to embarrass the person who indulges in a momentary loss of self-control. Or is accepting that 'nobody has a right to the attention of others' another microaggression? Too bad, so sad.

Once again, the race-hustling, race-baiting bigot: A person is automatically compared to, and classified as, a white southern redneck racist from the 1950s because they disagree in a rational argument and propose that ignoring arguably-imagined slights is a viable form of response in the context of modern-day grievance culture. How stunning and brave; how original.