> a well understood and effective marine mammal mitigation process that’s followed. Basically, slowly stepping up in power.

Uhh... I don't consider myself an eco-hippie, but that "mitigation" sounds like a euphemism or sinister "mitigation of negative PR", rather than actually literally doing less damage.

Like: "Gradually make things worse so that animals flee on their own, and if they die of starvation at least it's somewhere else so it won't make the local news with kids finding corpses on the beach."