KASM News
Kia ora koutou
I’ve spent much of the last two weeks sitting in the seabed mining hearings with our legal team, dealing with the huge range of issues around the environmental impact of digging up 50 million tonnes of the seabed a year for 35 years.
One of the highlights was when our expert witness, Dr Leigh Torres, of Oregon State University, came straight off her research vessel surveying blue whales in the South Taranaki Bight and told the hearing they’d found 68 blue whales this year – double the number of animals they observed last year.
This is a significant number, and sparked a very interesting conversation about the economics of eco-tourism in the Bight and, of course, the impact of both the noise from seabed mining and the sediment plume on the krill the blue whales feed on.
We’ve also discovered the company has at least two more mining sites lined up if it gets permission for this one – including a site just off the coast of Kawhia.
There are more issues that need further examination, such as the modelling of the sediment “plume.” This is a crucial part of the hearing: how far will the sediment from the mining spread throughout the waters of the Bight?
The hearing chairman has commended the continued presence of KASM (also on behalf of Greenpeace) – there have been several days when it was just KASM, the company, and the EPA’s panel in the room.
Your financial help is needed now more than ever. We’ve had to fly experts in and out, pay them, and of course pay our lawyers, who have been constantly asking detailed and difficult questions of the company’s witnesses.
Please click here to make a donation to help us pay these experts and our legal team.
We’ve beaten the seabed miners twice before – help us do it again!
There’s two more days of hearings in Wellington this week, and then the EPA heads to New Plymouth on Monday, where Ngati Ruanui will kick off the hearings there. I know many of you will be giving evidence in New Plymouth (as will I).
We’re posting updates on facebook, on twitter and, when I get time, I’ve been posting blogs about the hearings.
So if you want to help us out, please make a donation – and please forward this to anyone you think might be able to help us out in this fight for the future of our oceans.
Nga mihi
Phil McCabe
Chairperson