Puget Sound Archives - Page 6 of 8

Puyallup Tribe tracking sea star wasting in South Sound

George Stearns, shellfish biologist for the Puyallup Tribe, inspects a sick sea star caught in the tribe’s crab monitoring study.

Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

As part of their regular monitoring of crab populations the Puyallup Tribe of Indians is tracking the impact of a mysterious ailment that is decimating sea stars.

An outbreak of sea star wasting syndrome was first noticed early last fall in British Columbia. The syndrome starts as small lesions and eventually the infected sea stars disintegrate. Since the syndrome was first noticed, it quickly spread throughout the Salish Sea and along the Pacific coast.

While there have been documented outbreaks before of the syndrome, nothing on this scale has ever been recorded. There is no known cause.

The tribe started regular crab surveys in April 2013. “Since then, we started seeing a lot of sea star by-catch,” said George Stearns, shellfish biologist for the tribe. “One pot near the north point of Vashon Island was literally full of sea stars.”

The tribe regularly monitors eight stations between the north end of Vashon Island and the Tacoma Narrows. Each station includes nine crab pots.

George Stearns (right) and David Winfrey, shellfish biologists for the Puyallup Tribe, count and measure crab caught in a monitoring study in southern Puget Sound.

During the tribe’s early surveys, the sea star population seemed healthy. But, Puyallup tribal scientists recorded a sharp die-off in October. “We saw one monitoring site go from four sea stars per pot in April to 12 in September to zero all together in October,” Stearns said. “We went from catching over 100 sea stars to none within a month at that site.”

“Across the entire area we’re monitoring, we’re seeing a massive decrease in sea star bycatch,” Stearns said. “Some of the sea stars we are finding are literally melting in front of us.”

When a diseased sea star does catch a ride on a tribal crab pot, it deflates quickly. Within a few minutes, a normally rigid sea star will be hanging on the pot like a wet rag.

The main focus of the crab monitoring work by the tribe is to pinpoint exactly when the crab in the tribe’s harvest area molt, or shed their shells.

“Crabbing during the middle of molting, which makes them soft and vulnerable, can increase the handling mortality,” Stearns said. “Its a common practice to shut down harvest during the molt. But, we’ve only had a general idea of when that occurs down here.”

The data collected will also help the fisheries managers put together a more complete picture of crab populations in the South Sound. “We GPS the locations so we’re at the same spots and put the pots in for the same length of time,” Stearns said. “So, we know we’re comparing apples to apples each month.”

Sea star immediately after being caught. Photo by George Stearns.

Sea star five minutes after being caught. Photo by George Stearns.

Navy Says Failed Pump Led To Oily Wastewater Spill In Puget Sound

By Ashley Ahearn, EarthFix

The Navy is blaming a failed pump for its spill of nearly 2,000 gallons of oily wastewater into Puget Sound.

Tom Danaher, spokesman for Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, said the Navy was using a pumping system on one of its piers to remove oily bilge water from a vessel late Monday.

An electrical ground prevented the pump from automatically shutting off when a 4,000 holding tank was filled –- and because the operation was not attended, it took about 20-30 minutes before naval staff realized that oil-contaminated waste-water was pouring into the sound, Danaher said in an interview Wednesday.

“So the pumps did not get the signal that the tank was full. The tank overflowed,” he said. “When the people on the pier saw the overflow, we stopped all pumping and started our cleanup.”

The cleanup expanded Wednesday to include the deployment of surveyors who are walking the beaches around Puget Sound’s Hood Canal where the spill occurred, Danaher said.

Mark Toy, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Health, said his agency is continuing to advise against shellfish harvesting in the area affected by the spill

“While at this time there’s not any evidence that shellfish have been affected, we’ve taken the precaution of advising against harvesting from the area,” he said.

Initially, the Navy had indicated the spill involved 150-200 gallons but since then, the unified spill command – including the Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Washington Department of Ecology – have agreed the spill involved nearly 2,000 gallons.

Containing the spill has involved the use of booms to absorb the oily sheen. Danaher said the cleanup has been “like chasing a ghost.”

“Because it’s oily waste, it’s about 95 percent water and that makes it very difficult to absorb and it moves very fast because it’s so light,” he said.

Initially, Navy personnel were skeptical about Washington Department of Ecology reports that the spill had traveled about 10 miles to the Hood Canal Bridge. But then they looked at the state agency’s aerial photographs of the sheen on the water surrounding the bridge.

Danaher described his own reaction to seeing the photos this way:

“Well, there’s good chance it’s probably related to this spill. I wouldn’t know what else to say. I wouldn’t say well, no, that wasn’t it. Some guy dumped his motor boat oil.”

Up To 2,000 Gallons Of Oily Water Spilled In Hood Canal

Ashley Ahearn, EarthFix

Officials are responding to a spill of oily bilge water in Washington’s Puget Sound. The spill occurred at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and has spread 10 miles north to Hood Canal.

State agencies estimate that up to 2,000 gallons spilled Monday when a ship was pumping out oily discharge at the naval facility. The pier-side transfer system failed and overflowed.

Initially the Navy estimated that 150 gallons spilled, but by Tuesday other agencies were disputing that amount.

The Washington Department of Ecology has conducted fly-overs and said that the sheen has spread as far as the Hood Canal Bridge, 10 miles north of the base.

The Navy did not immediately respond to requests for an interview.

There were no documented impacts to wildlife as of Tuesday afternoon, but the Department of Health advised against harvesting shellfish from the affected area.

Stalking Puget Sound Steelhead With Science

The crew of the research vessel Chasina gets ready to drop an acoustic telemetry receiver 300 feet down into Puget Sound. The device will record tagged steelhead as they swim out of their spawning rivers. | credit: Ashley Ahearn

By Ashley Ahearn, Earthfix; OPB

TACOMA, Wash. — You might call Barry Berejikian a steelhead stalker.

The government scientist’s pursuit of these anodramous trout has brought him to the deck of the Chasina, a research vessel that’s motoring through choppy gray waters of southern Puget Sound near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

He’s here to lay the groundwork for an experiment that could explain why so few steelhead are completing their journey through Puget Sound and on to the Pacific Ocean.

Since 2007, Puget Sound steelhead have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Millions of dollars have been spent improving their habitat but the fish are not recovering.

And scientists can’t pinpoint why.

Berejikian aboard the research vessel Chasina. Credit: Ashley Ahearn

Berejikian is surrounded by keg-sized yellow buoys as he stands on the ship’s deck. These buoys are equipped with acoustic telemetry receivers and roped up to 500-pound concrete weights. The crew uses a crane to lift the devices over the side of the boat and drop eight of them 300 feet beneath the waves in a staggered line across Puget Sound.

Once they’re in place, the receiver buoys will float 20-30 feet above the bottom “listening” for fish. Later this spring, Berejikian plans to tag 300 juvenile steelhead in the Nisqually and Green rivers.

The floating receivers will record the tags when the fish pass by, enabling scientists to track individual fish as they make their way north through Puget Sound en route to the Pacific.

These arrays will be set up at four other points in Puget Sound, to chart how far the fish make it once they leave their spawning rivers.

“We want to detect every fish that comes through,” said Berejikian, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s kind of an aggressive approach but if you’re going to go to the trouble of doing the study you might as well go for it, so we’re going for it.”

The rivers in this part of the Puget Sound region are producing tens of thousands of juvenile steelhead every year. But scientists believe that only 20 percent of those fish complete their migratory route to the ocean. That has scientists curious about the locations of steelhead death “hot spots” as Berejikian calls them.

“We need to figure out why they’re dying and where they’re dying in order for us to work on management approaches to improving the situation,” Berejikian said.

If you’re a steelhead on your way out of Puget Sound this might be what comes to mind when Berejikian says “death hot spot”:

Harbor seal populations have boomed since the 1970s, prompting scientists to explore whether seal predation is contributing to steelhead mortality. Credit: Ashley Ahearn.

“They eat all salmon species, which would include chinook, coho, steelhead, chum and pink salmon,” said Steve Jeffries, who has studied harbor seals with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife since the 1970s. Jeffries added that there could be other animals preying on the steelhead, like sea lions, cormorants or harbor porpoise, whose populations are also on the rise in Puget Sound.

And of course there are other factors at play: Human population has increased in Puget Sound since the 1970s, as has development along rivers and coastlines.

But seals are still on the list of suspects and one thing’s for certain: there are more seals than there used to be.

Since the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, harbor seal populations in Puget Sound have risen from roughly 2,000 in the early 1970s, to 13,000 today.

In conjunction with Berejikian’s steelhead tagging, Jeffries plans to tag 12 harbor seals this year. The tags on the seals will track their movements. They’ll also act as receivers, like the floating buoys on the bottom of Puget Sound, recording if there are any tagged steelhead that come within range.

“If we find out that the seals are feeding over here and the steelhead smolts are swimming through the same area then you’ve got this special overlap and it’s more likely that there is a predation going on,” Jeffries explained.

And if the seals are eating the out-migrating juvenile steelhead?

“I don’t know the answer to that question,” Jeffries said. “Harbor seals, all marine mammals, are protected so any action that would come out of this would have to be vetted in a resource management arena.”

Jeffries said right now it’s too early to say if seals are a major contributor to steelhead mortality in Puget Sound. “It’s a long time in the future ‘til we would actually do anything proactive to reduce predation.”

Fishermen test their own salmon for Fukushima radiation

File photo of Pete Knutson of Loki Fish by Greg Gilbert/The Seattle Times

Posted by Rebekah Denn, The Seattle Times

Is it safe to eat fish from the Pacific Ocean in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster? The consensus since the 2011 power plant failure has been a yes, but Seattle’s Loki Fish Co. found customers remained concerned.

The fishing company, a local institution, went on to do its own testing for radiation levels in its fish, and shared the laboratory reports online. (The short version: The fish were fine.)

“We were getting so much blowback from customers that have just been reading incredibly paranoid stuff on the Internet,” said Pete Knutson, co-founder of the family-owned business. Beyond some of the “off the charts” fears, though, he understands why people would be concerned, and he’s always interested in knowing how pure his own products are. The decision: “Let’s just do the testing and let the chips fall where they may.”

It helped his decision that he could find no specifics from public agencies like the FDA, which simply says on its website that “to date, FDA has no evidence that radionuclides from the Fukushima incident are present in the U.S. food supply at levels that would pose a public health concern.”

After the $1,200 endeavor, Loki’s web page reported that “All seven stocks of salmon were tested for the radionuclides associated with the nuclear plant failures in Japan: Cesium 134, Cesium 137, and Iodine 131. Of the seven samples, five did not register detectable levels of radionuclides. Two of the samples registered at trace levels – Alaskan Keta at 1.4Bq/kg for Cesium 137, and Alaskan Pink at 1.2Bq/kg for Cesium 134. There were no detectable levels of iodine-131 in any samples.

“To put those numbers in perspective, the critical limit set by the FDA for either Cesium-134 or Cesium-137 is 370 Bq/kg, far above the amount found in Loki’s Alaskan Keta and Pink salmon.”

The full lab testing reports can also be downloaded from the page. (There was also a certain amount of both natural and man-made radioactivity in the ocean pre-Fukushima.)

Is that enough to ease the minds of diners? One customer on the Loki Facebook page wrote “A. it’s only January. B. keep testing.” Another warned that “it would be unrealistic to tell people afraid of the radiation on the basis of one test that the fish is safe forever.”

Knutson said that “I tell people, this isn’t conclusive, it’s only 7 samples, but it’s a random sampling,” not one that could have been gamed in any way. At the least, “it makes me feel better.”

Bellingham-based Vital Choice Wild Seafood & Organics, which sells fish online, has had fish tested several times with similar results. Knutson wasn’t aware of anyone else doing so, but thinks such moves might be more common in the future. His son, Dylan, faced regular queries about the radiation issue at Loki’s farmers market tables, though those customers are “a pretty motivated group that’s interested in chain of custody,” and perhaps more likely to raise the issue.

People are “not fully confident the government’s telling the truth,” or that corporations are telling the truth, he said. Sharing such direct data from producer to customer, he said, might just be “where the future of food is.”

Updated Jan. 20 to reflect additional Vital Choice tests.

New Legislation Calls For Transparency On Oil Moving Through Washington

With more oil moving through Washington by train and other transportation modes, state lawmakers want oil companies to keep environmental regulators better informed. | credit: Katie Campbell | rollover image for more

Ashley Ahearn, OPB

SEATTLE — Washington lawmakers took up a proposal Wednesday to require more transparency from companies that transport oil through the state.

The hearing on House Bill 2347 played out before a packed committee room in Olympia. The new bill would require oil companies to file weekly reports with the state Department of Ecology detailing how much oil is being transported, what kind of oil it is, how it’s being moved and what route it’s traveling through the state.

Right now oil companies aren’t required to share any specific information with state agencies about how much oil is traveling the railways.

Johan Hellman of BNSF Railway says it should stay that way. BNSF is the company currently delivering oil from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to Washington refineries. That traffic could increase as rail-to-ship transfer terminals are being proposed for ports on the Columbia River and Puget Sound.

Hellman said increased transparency brings greater security risks.

“You can imagine if you’re publicizing information about specific routes, specific volumes, locations where those are being shipped it does provide a tremendous security concern,” he said in his testimony, adding that the oil companies don’t want to share that information for competitive purposes.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has classified Bakken oil as a hazardous material because it catches fire and explodes at much lower temperatures than previously thought.

Several city and county officials voiced support for the bill and concerns over the uptick in oil-by-rail traffic.

“I think we’re taking bombs through our cities when you look at Spokane,” said Ben Stuckart, president of the Spokane city council. “We’re in a situation where our town would be split in half if we look at a derailment.”

Oil trains currently run through Spokane before following the Columbia River. Once in Western Washington, they head north through the Interstate 5 corridor, passing through other towns and cities along their route.

More oil was spilled from trains in 2013 than in the last four decades combined. That’s according to an analysis of federal data by McClatchyDC.

The bill could be amended before passing out of committee. No Republicans have signed on to support the bill.

Group Calls For Expanding Killer Whale Habitat Protection

Cassandra Profita, OPB

An environmental group is calling for a major expansion in habitat protection for Puget Sound’s killer whales.

Research shows the endangered orcas that live in Puget Sound in the summer are venturing up and down the West Coast in the winter to forage for food. Scientists tracking these southern resident orcas have followed the whales as far north as Alaska and as far south as Monterey, Calif.

Given these findings, the Center for Biological Diversity says the whales need a lot more habitat protection than they have now. The group filed a petition Thursday with the National Marine Fisheries Service to expand protected habitat for the whales from Puget Sound to a large swath of ocean area off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and Northern California.

“They need to protect all of their habitat — not just where the whales hang out in the summer,” says Sarah Uhlemann of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Existing vs. proposed critical habitat.

Protected habitat for species listed under the Endangered Species Act, known as “critical habitat,” comes with restrictions on actions taken by the federal government that might threaten the species’ survival.

Uhlemann says those restrictions would apply to federal decisions on salmon fishing, port expansions and other coastal developments. That would mean any time the federal government decides to do anything -– say the Navy decides to practice some sonar or an agency is deciding whether to permit a port expansion — the government would have to fully consider environmental impacts.

“Not only on the whale but also on its habitat –- and if the impacts are too large they have to stop and mitigate, or lessen what those impacts are,” Uhlemann said.

Lynne Barre is a marine biologist and manager in Seattle with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She said the federal government was already considering an expansion in habitat protections for southern resident orcas as its tagging research program has revealed more about where the whales are feeding.

“Our knowledge of their habitat in the ocean is increasing,” Barre said. “Gathering additional information about their coastal habitat was one of the priorities we identified when we listed the orcas for protection under the Endangered Species Act in 2005.”

The orcas face threats from a lack of available food because they primarily survive on salmon, Barre said. They also accumulate high levels of contaminants such as flame retardants, legacy pesticides and industrial pollutants that can impact their immune systems. Orcas are acoustic animals that use sound to communicate with each other and find prey, she said, so underwater noises from vessels and other activities pose another threat to the whales.

The existing critical habitat protections in Puget Sound require evaluations of the impacts to whales from pollution discharges, ship passage and construction activities such as pile-driving, Barre said. Federal regulators will have 90 days to decide whether to review the Center for Biological Diversity’s petition to expand the area where those kinds of protections apply.

Senate Panel Questions Ecology On Review Of Coal Terminal

Ashley Ahearn, OPB

Washington’s top environmental regulator found herself in the hot seat Thursday during a state Senate hearing called by Republican lawmakers who disapprove her agency’s scrutiny of a coal export terminal proposed for the northern shore of Puget Sound.

At issue: greenhouse gas emissions.

The Department of Ecology caused a stir last year when it announced that it would consider the greenhouse gas emissions produced when 48 million tons of exported coal is burned in Asia – that’s how much coal would move through the Gateway Pacific Terminal every year.

Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, convened a work session to question Ecology officials, including director Maia Bellon, about its move.

Ericksen emphasized fears among business and trade leaders that Ecology’s move sets a precedent.

Some worry that in the future the state could consider the greenhouse gas emissions of say, exporting Boeing airplanes or apples, and that could prevent projects from going forward.

Here’s an exchange between Bellon and Ericksen:

Maia Bellon

Bellon: Because there is no question about the end use of the commodity for the coal transportation projects, it makes that different in terms of the pollution that’s created.

Ericksen: I know we’re over time but I essentially heard you say that the Department of Ecology can pick and choose and no business can have a guarantee of what will be studied and what will not be studied.

Bellon said that greenhouse gases are a pollutant and therefore should be considered in the environmental review of projects.

But she stressed that her agency considers projects on a case-by-case basis and the environmental review is meant to present information. It’s not a final decision on whether a project is built or not.

The committee did not take any action during Thursday’s hearing.

Wash. Officials Say Shellfish Is Safe For China To Import

Ashley Ahearn, Earth Fix

SEATTLE — Washington state officials said Tuesday they found lower contamination levels when they tested geoduck clams than those alleged by China when it said geoduck imported from Puget Sound had high levels of arsenic.

China cited its findings in December when it imposed the largest ban on shellfish imports from Northwest waters — as well as from California and Alaska — in the region’s history.

Chinese officials said they found inorganic arsenic levels of .5 parts per million in the shellfish they tested in October.

But Washington officials’ tests produced different results.

“Only one of the whole samples was above China’s standard of .5 (parts per million) and everything else was below that, so that was good news,” said Dave McBride, who oversaw the testing at the Washington Department of Health.

The Department of Health tested more than 50 geoduck clams from the allegedly contaminated area, analyzing the different body parts of the clams to compare arsenic concentration levels.

The details of the test results are perhaps revealing than the overall “whole sample” figures. The skin of the clams tested by Washington exceeded China’s safe levels of inorganic arsenic by as much as three times, although McBride said that should not be worrisome to China, given how the Chinese consume geoduck clams.

“People generally do not eat the skin and we would advise people, when you eat geoduck, to remove the skin,” he said. “What we think is that, for the vast majority of the public, this is not a health issue at all. Obviously, when we’re talking about a carcinogen there is always the risk for high consumers.”

McBride added that the whole, or averaged samples, for several other clams came close to the .5ppm limit set by the Chinese.

The World Health Organization is said to be considering setting safe levels for inorganic arsenic in food in the .2-.3ppm range in 2014.

The shellfish that tested high for inorganic arsenic in China were harvested from a tract of land managed by the Department of Natural Resources that has since been closed. The tract is within the shadow of a copper smelter that was operated near Tacoma for 100 years.

“Well we know that arsenic levels are elevated in the surface soils in that area,” said Marian Abbett, manager of the Tacoma smelter clean up for the Washington Department of Ecology. Soil samples from the surrounding land show levels of arsenic between 40 and 200ppm, though that number does not directly equate to levels of arsenic that will end up in the water, or in shellfish.

Soil arsenic levels resulting from the historic deposition by the Tacoma smelter
in the vicinity of the geoduck tracts of interest. (Courtesy: ATSDR/DOH)

Inorganic arsenic levels are higher in soils in the area immediately surrounding the smelter, though wind patterns also lead to higher concentrations ending up in soil samples to the northeast of the smelter, where the shellfish were harvested.

“I’d be nervous after a big rainfall event,” said Kathy Cottingham, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College who studies arsenic exposure and human health. “With soils that contaminated you need to worry about the episodic events of a big rainstorm or snowmelt causing pulses into the water.”

The area was closed to all shellfish harvest until 2007, when the Puyallup Tribe petitioned state agencies to reopen the tract for geoduck harvest. At that time the Department of Health conducted tests on geoduck in the area and found levels of .05ppm. That’s an order of magnitude below the amount found by the Chinese in October of 2013 and well within the safety parameters set by the Chinese.

However, state agencies have not tested for inorganic arsenic or other metals in shellfish from the area since it was reopened in 2007.

Arsenic is a carcinogen that has also been associated with long-term respiratory effects, disruption of immune system function, cardiovascular effects, diabetes and neurodevelopmental problems in kids.

“There’s no safe level, but at some point you’ve crossed the threshold to being really dangerous and we don’t quite know where that threshold is at this point,” Cottingham said.

The Food and Drug Administration has delayed setting a safe level for arsenic in food. Washington state does not regularly test for arsenic in shellfish.

McBride said he did not see a need to test the Tacoma site further after his agency’s extensive sampling.

“I think we have a pretty good handle that this area is pretty clean and wouldn’t require further testing,” he said. “The lab results have been sent to (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and NOAA has sent them on to the state department to the Chinese (as of yesterday). We’re waiting to hear if and when the ban might be lifted.”

Gale warning for Western Washington

Source: Shawn R. Edge, Tulalip Police Department

Washington Weather Service issued a Gail warning for today and tomorrow from 1pm 11/15/2013 to 8am 11/16/2013. It is predicted that there will be high winds at this time.