Section 1 

 INTRODUCTION 



This interview program to determine the proximity of large marine mammals to 

 oil and gas platforms was designed to support the Bureau of Land Management 

 (BLM) Program at the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC). The larger NOSC study 

 is directed at investigating the effects of noise of offshore oil and gas 

 operations on the behavior of marine mammals. The objective of the interview 

 program was to design a method to find out from workers aboard oil platforms 

 and ships and aircraft servicing those platforms whether or not large whales 

 and other marine mammals occur in any substantial numbers in areas where oil 

 resource development is underway. The interview program was also planned to 

 obtain as much useful data as possible on the behavior of those marine mammals 

 observed by the oil platform workers. In an effort to ascertain whether the 

 marine mammal density around a platform was the same as the density without 

 the platform, a method was developed to compare the observations of the oil 

 platform workers with baseline data on marine mammal distributions in the 

 Southern California Bight. 



