A Word From the Board
By Dave Monk, President of the SEG
May, 2013

Guest contributors are occasionally asked to author this column. We are fortunate to have one of our own members serving as President of the SEG. He graciously has agreed to contribute his thoughts to this month’s Column.

Much change has happened in the last year at the SEG. The adoption of the new Bylaws has expanded the Board of Directors of the SEG from seven to double that (and perhaps even more in the future). That we all agree on everything would be a pipe dream, but it’s certainly true that more people at the table leads to more and different opinions, followed (in most cases) by agreement. The change does give the members of the board a longer tenure at the table, which means that there are always a number of seasoned veterans in the discussion. I see that the GSH has also wisely changed their Bylaws to include ‘elect’ positions for the principal officers.

The staff of the SEG handles most of the administrative work and a lot of the follow-up efforts required to implement Board decisions, and the scope of the work is vast. Many members only touch a small part of what the society now offers. Perhaps you read Geophysics and go to the Annual Meeting, but many of our members don’t do either of these, but engage in online education or specialized topic forums and workshops. While the SEG Staff plays a major role in execution of these plans, the SEG is a membership driven Society and will remain one. Much of the work is done by volunteers in committees.

As President of the SEG I have found that I sometimes have to walk a narrow path of political correctness and opinion, rather than the ‘enlightened’ path of scientific knowledge. The SEG and GSH are societies, which at their core are established to enable the exchange of knowledge and technology related to Geophysics. But exploration geophysics has increasingly been seen in a negative light by those that either don’t understand what we do or those that seek to suggest that our activities are part of some political agenda and should be viewed as something negative. Growing political sentiment against the oil industry over environmental issues seems to drag exploration geophysicists into the spotlight as the “bad boys” of science.

Notwithstanding the arrest of geophysicists in Italy who did not predict a fatal earthquake, we face similar problems domestically in the USA. Continued environmental pressure against frack operations, seems to be leading us down a path where the microseismic events associated with frack operations will soon be compared to the seismic events that are generated by the source during seismic exploration, and we will see increasing pressure not to acquire seismic data at all. Offshore these forces are already at work trying to limit or ban seismic activity. Despite the scientific evidence, there is a belief that our seismic sources are harmful to fish and mammals.

So what is the role of SEG and GSH in this debate? It is not to be an advocate on one side of the argument or the other but to educate people about the science of Geophysics. It is to give both professional and interested laymen access to the real science and data behind what we do in the hope that this will lead to a better understanding of our science and its limits. We need to become better communicators of the benefits of geophysics. This was brought home to me recently at the annual meeting of the International Association of Geophysical Contractors (IAGC). A lunch time talk was given by Tommy Beaudreau, Director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). His views on our industry were varied but he made a key point. He stated that geophysics contributed greatly to scientific work and that few people understood or knew about it and that we should be much better at the promotion of our science to the public. He’s right!

The Geophysical Society of Houston has a unique opportunity to be much closer to the public eye than the SEG, as Houston is the center of the Oil industry in the USA. I challenge you to heed the words of Beaudreau and widen your scope to include efforts at the local level to enlighten the public. Find ways to get the word out and available to the public that geophysics really does solve some of the fundamental problems faced by this country. Even though this is serious, it can be a lot of fun. Try it. You will like it. Plus it will strengthen our profession and increase GSH’s standing in Houston.