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Legendary surfer Robert Conneely has recalled that, back in the day, there were so few crew in Margaret River that you had to invite the whole town over if you wanted to throw a party.

But even if progress may be slow, things do, inevitably, catch up over in the west. And what has arrived, beating on the door, is coastal industrialisation on a mass scale.

From Cairns to Cactus, saltwater communities in Australia’s east have spent the past few years facing down difficult questions: seismic blasting, offshore fossil fuel extraction, fish farming, seawalls. By comparison, it seems to have been relatively quiet in WA. Roaring Journals even reported on the recent proposal for a new marine park, stretching from just outside of Bremer Bay to the South Australian border.

But size works in mysterious ways. The vastness of the state’s coastline has meant that much of the industrialisation in WA has been out of sight and, therefore, out of mind. Now, with projects gearing up and regional communities growing, the people of WA’s coast will be forced, whether they like it or not, to confront many of the same challenges as the east over the coming years.

Over three parts, Roaring Journals is going to explore proposals planned for the coastline north of Perth. These include a mega saltworks on the edge of a World Heritage area, industrial ports in the Kimberley and the North West Cape and gas exploration off the remote and pristine Scott Reef.

And while the following articles will introduce you to people questioning the wisdom of these projects, the most pressing issue that needs to be addressed is gas.

Gas is big business in WA. Up until recently, Australia has recently been the world’s largest exporter of LNG – gas that has been cooled and liquified for transport.

Over the past 50 years, the fossil fuel industry has expanded and now there are scores of offshore rigs dotting the north west coast – you can even see them at night, from on the beach, just off the back of Ningaloo/Nyinggulu Reef.

So, if they have been there for this long, why are extra questions being raised about the industry now?

And the answer to this is due to one project in particular: the Burrup Hub.

This mega gas precinct is going to be located at the Burrup Peninsula, which is just down the road from Karratha, the largest town in the Pilbara and the iron ore capital of the world. The Burrup, on the other hand, has a radically different claim to fame – for many millennia, it has housed the largest rock art gallery on earth.

Stage one of the project will pipe in offshore gas from the North West Shelf and will ramp up gas production until 2070.

Gas company Woodside, which is spearheading the project, says that it sees gas as a “transition” fuel to renewables, something that has also been backed in by the federal government.

Environmental organisations, however – including Greenpeace – have warned this will blow Australia’s carbon budget and open the door for more offshore gas projects, arguing that it will severely affect Australia’s commitment to phase out fossil fuels by 2050.

That’s the climate argument – but before it all gets going, Woodside and its partners will need to use seismic blasting to search for the gas, a process which is being looked at closely in Surfrider Foundation's film, Southern Blast.

Scientists from the Minderoo Foundation – founded, funded and chaired by Australia’s richest man, iron ore baron Andrew Forrest – have argued that before extraction begins, the seismic process will search for gas by pumping soundwaves to the bottom of the ocean. These will sound at a minimum of four times a minute for almost three months.

“Our scientists, alongside many experts in marine science, are concerned about the short-term, long-term and cumulative effects on marine life of seismic blasting,” Minderoo says, singling out the endangered pygmy blue whale as a cause for concern. The Northwest Shelf occurs in an important migratory habitat for the species.

For its part, Woodside says seismic surveys “do not result in impacts to marine fauna populations”. However, in the same sentence, it concedes that seismic sound source “has the potential to temporarily affect an individual whale's hearing, behaviours and communication.”

So, the Burrup Hub is a big deal – for whales, for humans and for the world more broadly.

WA may be big, but it’s not so big that developments like these can be ignored. The time to address them has arrived.