Fuelling the fires of science
Should a government research organisation worried sick about climate change take money from petroleum companies to fund research into whales? It’s complicated.
Niwa accepted money from oil and gas companies, including Chevron NZ and OMV NZ, to fund whale research.
The petroleum company funding allowed the National Institute of Atmospheric and Water Research to deploy ‘‘passive acoustic monitoring buoys’’ that record vast quantities of noise in NZ waters. This includes whale song and clicks, wind, waves and rain, as well as human activity from vessels and the oil and gas industry.
The funding also allowed Niwa to attach satellite trackers to blue whales.
Niwa twice declined to reveal the sum contributed by the petroleum companies, citing an exception in the Official Information Act. Disclosure ‘‘could disadvantage Niwa’s ability to conduct its commercial operations in the future’’, it said.
But Niwa’s general manager research, Rob Murdoch, said in an interview it was ‘‘tens of thousands, not hundreds’’ of thousands of dollars, from memory.
While Niwa paid for the buoys, petroleum company assistance was needed to deploy and retrieve them, as well as staff time and resources to interpret the data. The petroleum companies were not the only contributors. Others included the Department of Conservation, Marlborough District Council and some New Zealand universities.
Woodside Energy paid a scholarship for a University of Auckland PhD student to participate in this and other research. It was ‘‘quite a big collaborative project’’, Murdoch said.
‘‘This funding provided by the petroleum companies resulted in excellent science which would not have been conducted otherwise,’’ Niwa said in its written answers.
But Greenpeace Aotearoa is unimpressed. ‘‘We need our government science agencies to be independent – not funded by corporations with vested interests,’’ said Amanda Larsson, a senior campaigner.
‘‘It’s sadly all too common that polluting companies try to buy good favour by throwing loose change at worthy causes.’’
Geoff Baird, Niwa’s general manager of communications and marketing, said: ‘‘We don’t make a moral judgment about the genesis of the funding.’’
Prospecting for oil and gas was legal and encouraged at the time, the managers said in the interview. Niwa doesn’t make policy decisions about allowing oil and gas activity, the government does. Niwa provides the ‘‘best information possible for the government to manage the activities that it allows’’.
Whale research is expensive, and many species are hard to find, even cryptic.
‘‘The ultimate outcome was that we got some extremely good and innovative science done,’’ Murdoch said.
But the scientists did not have sufficient money to carry out the whale research, and approached the petroleum companies and others for funding.
‘‘Niwa hasn’t co-funded any new research with oil and gas companies since 2018, and I have been given assurances that Niwa is unlikely to receive any future funding from the oil and gas sector for research,’’ Megan Woods said in an email. She is the minister of research, science and innovation, as well as the minister of energy and resources.
The scientific results of the funding are still being published. Two papers were published this year and a third is pending.
The buoys were deployed in 2016-17 on two occasions in and near Cook Strait. They were anchored close to the sea floor and recorded audio signals across a wide range of the acoustic spectrum.
Once retrieved, the data were analysed using algorithms that separated out the known songs, calls, clicks and other sounds emitted by marine mammals.
For example, in an October 2020 academic paper, scientists from Niwa and elsewhere concluded: ‘‘The results presented here greatly enhance our knowledge of humpback whale movements through central New Zealand, and provide information about song transmission and migration routes of western South Pacific humpback whales.’’
In a November 2019 paper, the researchers measured the length of sperm whales using passive acoustic monitoring. Yes, length.
An August 2019 paper reported on the foraging activities of sperm whales by season and time of day. Sperm whales in Cook Strait and Kaiko¯ ura waters are well studied, and some of that knowledge came from the records of commercial whalers.
But even these hunters probably didn’t know that a blue whale could circumnavigate the South Island in about a week.
That insight came from a blue whale research voyage that Niwa and others undertook in early 2018. It was funded in part by OMV, the integrated oil and gas company based in Vienna and a dominant company in the Taranaki basin.
The voyage demonstrated the difficulties and cost of whale research. Over eight days at sea in a chartered vessel, interrupted by cyclone Fehi, the researchers sighted 14 blue whales, plus a handful of other species. They got six skin or blubber samples for later study in the lab.
And they attached satellite tags to two whales, probably pygmy blue whales. One moved north, but the tracker stopped working after a few days, off Northland. The second did a circumnavigation of the South Island over about a week.
OMV’s involvement was disclosed by Niwa. Indeed, petro company funding of the whale research was disclosed in the six peer-reviewed science articles that have been published so far. This how Stuff learned about it. A seventh paper (on the satellite-tracked pygmy blues) will be published soon.
Meanwhile, terabytes of data collected by the buoys remain to be analysed, but Niwa and others do not have the resources. Some researchers have dispersed around the world and others are on to new projects, according to Niwa’s Rob Murdoch.
Petroleum company funding has dried up too. Chevron and others have left New Zealand and OMV had other interests, Murdoch said.
‘‘No amount of money would be an acceptable tradeoff for turning a blind eye to activities that are driving nature and the climate towards collapse,’’ said Greenpeace’s Amanda Larsson.
‘‘That sort of thinking is at odds with the fact that our own survival is directly linked to the health of the ocean and the natural world.’’
One of the buoys was deployed in the Ross Sea earlier this year, and it will probably be a couple of years before its data can be collected.
Indirectly using oil and gas data
Seismic ships don’t only collect data on petroleum. They also collect data on whales and dolphins.
Under NZ law, seismic ships must carry ‘‘marine mammal observers’’, who visually scan the seas looking for cetaceans. Seismic ships also carry various
acoustic monitoring devices, with operators listening for whales and dolphins.
If cetaceans are detected, the seismic survey is supposed to cease until the animals are a certain distance away.
These trained observers keep records, including the likely species, location, weather, and water depth.
Katharina Peters, now a postdoctoral researcher in the
Cetacean Ecology Research Group at Massey University, got the cetacean records from a seismic survey done in 2015-16 northwest of the North lsand.
There were 60 cetacean reports, but only 36 were considered robust enough for a peer-reviewed journal. Most of the records concerned commonly seen sperm and blues whales, but one concerned a visual sighting of five Risso’s dolphins. These are incredibly rare in NZ waters, with just five confirmed sightings between 1970 and 2017.
In her paper, Peters described the seismic ship as a ‘‘platform of opportunity’’.
‘‘If collected under rigorous protocols and by experienced observers, such data can extend our knowledge of species occurrence and can provide valuable information, particularly on offshore species which we know little about,’’ she concluded.
In another example, Andrew Gorman and colleagues, mostly in the geology department at the University of Otago, made a novel use of existing seismic data in this part of the world.
Petroleum companies are mostly interested in what exists in the rock under the sea, but it turns out that the sound used in seismic operations also bounces off ocean currents and can tell scientists subtle things about water temperature, salinity and so forth.
It’s an emerging field called seismic oceanography, and Gorman and colleagues got access to seismic data collected southeast of the South Island by the NZ government in 2006 and a consortium of petro companies led by OMV in 2007-08.
This is where warm, nutrientrich sub-tropical waters mix with colder, less rich water from the Southern Ocean, and what’s happening interests scientists in a number of fields. They found lenses and eddies and other phenomena in ‘‘never-beforeseen detail’’.
Oil and gas explorers must submit their seismic data to a government library a number of years after it is collected.
‘‘We don’t make a moral judgment about the genesis of the funding.’’
Niwa communications manager Geoff Baird