Tag: environment

Parasites greater threat to Coho, other salmon, increasing mortality: Oregon study

Environment  Fishery

A study at the University of Oregon suggests that parasites in fish, including a threatened species of Oregon coho salmon, may have a greater impact on fish health than previously believed.  Chronic parasite infection could be increasing the mortality in salmon and other fish species, leading to another factor in declining stocks.

Mike Kent, a University of Oregon microbiologist, who is the main author of the study says: “We’ve known for a long time that salmon and other fish are affected by parasites, so that isn’t new… parasites have been present for decades, they have often been dismissed as a cause of increasing salmon mortality.”

498-6033402498_57993a8b5c_m.jpgThe study,  which took place on the West Fork Smith River concluded that heavy loads of parasites can affect salmon growth, weight, size, immune function, saltwater adaptation, swimming stamina, activity level, ability to migrate and other issues. Parasites drain energy from the fish as they grow and develop.

“But we’re now getting a better appreciation that it’s the overall parasite load that is so important,”  Kent says. “The higher levels of mortality only show up with significant increases in the parasite burden.”

(Image courtesy University of Oregon)

Kent says the number of parasites affecting salmon in Oregon rivers has been increasing slowly over the years, due to warmer waters and more nutrients in the water that can be a result of logging, agriculture, inadequate bank protection and other land use changes over many years.

“Salmon can actually tolerate a fairly wide range of temperatures, it’s not just the fact a stream is warmer that’s killing them, in and of itself,” Kent says. “We now believe that some of these forces are leading to heavier parasite loads. This could be important in understanding declining salmon populations.”

Parasites that can infect salmon and other fish have complex life cycles, which could include passing through the intestinal tracts of birds that eat fish, then producing eggs that infect snails. The snails thrive in warmer water where fertilizer runoff provides them nutrients.

The salmon eat the snails, completing the cycle.

The impact of parasites on fish health was much more severe in parts of the West Fork Smith River where water moved more slowly and nearby logging and agricultural practices increased water temperature and nutrient loads. Fish in those areas had parasite infestations about 80 times higher than those higher up in the tributary.

The infections impact the salmon’s ability to survive, especially if juvenile fish are infected, that reduces their ability to survive the winter and also affects swimming ability, meaning the juvenile fish are more vulnerable to predators.

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“Understanding why certain salmon populations are heavily infected with these parasites, which likely are driven by landscape characteristics, could help in management or recovery planning,” the scientists wrote in their conclusion, “given that our data indicates that severity of these infections are associated with survival.”

The study was done by scientists from OSU and the Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. The corresponding author was Jayde Ferguson, a doctoral student in the OSU Department of Microbiology, and other collaborators included researchers from the OSU Department of Statistics, College of Veterinary Medicine, and Carl Schreck in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. The research was supported by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.The study will be published soon in the journals Aquaculture, Journal of Parasitology, and International Journal of Parasitology.

University of Oregon news release

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Niger delta oil spills clean-up will take 30 years, says UN: Guardian

Energy Environment

The Guardian

Niger delta oil spills clean-up will take 30 years, says UN

The Guardian has obtained a copy of a special United Nations report on oil spills in the Niger River delta.

Devastating oil spills in the Niger delta over the past five decades will cost $1 billion to rectify and take up to 30 years to clean up, according to a UN report.

The UN Environment Programme (Unep) has announced that Shell and other oil firms systematically contaminated a 1,000 square kilometre (386 sq mile) area of Ogoniland, in the Niger delta, with disastrous consequences for human health and wildlife.

Nigerians had “paid a high price” for the economic growth brought by the oil industry, said Unep’s executive director.

Oysters, mussels threatened by ocean acidification from climate change

Environment-Science-Fishery

A study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is warning that mollusks, especially oysters and mussels, are increasingly vulnerable to the acidification of the oceans caused by rising carbon dioxide emissions.

A news release from the institute  on Aug. 2 notes

As CO2 levels driven by fossil fuel use have increased in the atmosphere
since the Industrial Revolution, so has the amount of CO2 absorbed by
the world’s oceans, leading to changes in the chemical make-up of
seawater. Known as ocean acidification, this decrease in pH creates a
corrosive environment for some marine organisms such as corals, marine
plankton, and shellfish that build carbonate shells or skeletons

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The new study, which was published online July 7, 2011, by the journal Fish and Fisheries, assesses each country’s vulnerability to decreases in mollusk harvests caused by ocean acidification.

It appears, that the higher latitudes, which would include the northwest coast, are, for the moment, at lower risk than tropical regions.

The news release goes on to say:

In order to assess each nation’s vulnerability, researchers examined several dependence factors: current mollusk production, consumption and export; the percentage of the population that depends on mollusks for their protein; projected population growth; and current and future aquaculture capacity.

Using surface ocean chemistry forecasts from a coupled climate-ocean model, researchers also identified each nation’s “transition decade,” or when future ocean chemistry will distinctly differ from that of 2010, and current mollusk harvest levels cannot be guaranteed. These changes are expected to occur during the next 10 to 50 years, with lower latitude countries seeing impacts sooner. Higher latitude regions have more variability, and organisms there may be more tolerant to changing conditions.

The author of the study, Sarah Cooley, says, “”Mollusks are the clearest link we have at this point,” Cooley said. “As ocean acidification responses of fin fish become more apparent, and as we learn more about the biological relationships between mollusks and other animals, then we can start zeroing in on how non-mollusk fisheries can also be affected.”

Stephen Harper apparently likes to fish

Environment – Fishery

It certainly hasn’t made news or the political profiles up to now, but apparently Prime Minister Stephen Harper likes to go bass fishing.  This YouTube video from a barbecue by Toronto Mayor Rob Ford begins with Ford’s account of how the Prime Minister took him fishing last week.  (The video goes on with Harper congratulating Ford on cleaning up the “NDP mess” in Toronto).

The salmon study controversy. How to write a news release without answering the question

Environment

Fisheries minister Keith Ashfield and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans today issued a news release concerning the controversy over the muzzling of DFO scientist Kristi Miller and her genetic study of Fraser River salmon which suggests a virus may be responsible for the decline of the stock.  Although Miller published her study in the journal Science, she was not permitted to speak the media about it.

The DFO news release from this afternoon is a classic example of not answering the actual question while seeming to assure the public that the minister and department are doing their job. DFO also says it supports the department’s scientists, without mentioning that the DFO was originally willing to make Miller available to the media, it was Stephen Harper’s Privy Council Office that said she couldn’t.

You can read the full  news release. Response to Media Reports about Science at Fisheries and Oceans Canada

On Miller’s study the news release says:

 In fact, the research and report by Dr. Kristi Miller on Pacific salmon was not withheld from anyone; Dr. Miller’s report was published in a broadly circulated science magazine and remains widely available to the media and public through the Fisheries and Oceans Canada website, and as an exhibit through the Commission’s website.

(The Commission refers to the Cohen Commission on the decline of salmon stocks)

The publication of a scientific article in the journal Science is not at question.

What the Privy Council Office did was forbade a prominent scientist the opportunity to explain to the public in layman’s terms the significance of her findings.

Science journalism works like this. The major journals advise the media well ahead of time, under embargo, about the pending publication of major papers. The reason for this simple and supported by both the media and the scientific community. It takes time and effort to craft an accurate report of a scientific paper, whether reporting for a newspaper or the web. Creating an accurate and accessible television item on a scientific paper, a television item that also needs pictures and voice clips is both an art and science. Even in these days of cutbacks, the networks hunger for reporters and producers who can do it in under two minutes. If instead the media has to rush out a story on a scientific article on the day of publication, it is bound to be superficial and inaccurate. This was the process that was short circuited by the Privy Council Office when it, not DFO, muzzled Kristi Miller.

This is the question that the DFO news release ignores.

The news release then raises a smokescreen by saying:

Our scientists have also published hundreds of reports subscribed to by tens of thousands of people throughout Canada and the world. For example, this week, Fisheries scientist Dr. Kenneth Frank released a report about positive signs in the recovery of groundfish stocks off the coast of Nova Scotia. Dr. Frank’s research was published in Nature, the world’s most highly cited science journal, and he spoke to nearly a dozen interested members of the press on his report this week alone.

. While it is true, that the report on the rebound of groundfish stocks is receiving wide attention and as DFO says, Kenneth Frank was made available to the media, a cynical observer would be quick to point out that the Kenneth Frank story is good news for Canada and for the Harper government, while the Kristi Miller salmon virus could be bad news for both the country and the government.

So now it looks that the Privy Council Office is adopting a “good news” agenda. If it’s good, a government scientist can talk to the media, if it’s bad news, bury it.

 Finally the government relies in this case, on the “before the courts” excuse it used when the story of the salmon study first broke in Post Media News, referring to Justice Bruce Cohen’s commission of inquiry into the decline of the Pacific salmon stocks.

 Moreover, at Justice Cohen’s request, the government has provided almost 500,000 documents and many hours of testimony deemed relevant by Justice Cohen to his inquiry. Dr. Miller will also present her research findings at the Commission in the coming weeks along with several other scientists and officials.

Our government has been very clear that judicial inquiries are not conducted through the media. Evidence that may be relevant to Justice Cohen’s findings should be managed through the commission process.

What this means is that government may use the “before the courts” excuse in the future to muzzle any scientific debate on a controversial issue. In reality, of course, that simply means excluding the public and media from a debate on any subject that would likely be discussed openly at any scientific gathering or congress.

Of course, if the Harper government is in favour of something, then a “commission process” appears to be irrelevant. As has been widely reported, the Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, is ignoring the quasi-juidicial nature of the National Energy Board hearings into the Enbridge Northern Gateway project and the various LNG projects, all potentially using the port of Kitimat, by telling any reporter and any audience that the projects are in the “national interest” when finding the public interest is the mandate of the NEB.

Harper government muzzles scientist who studied salmon collapse, noted possible virus as cause

Environment
Post Media News

Feds silence scientist over West Coast salmon study

Post Media News reports that the Privy Council Office, part of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office, is refusing to allow a prominent scientist speak to the media and the public about her study on the collapse of salmon stocks on the west coast, suggesting a virus may be involved in salmon deaths, despite the fact her scientific findings have already been published in the journal Science.

Top bureaucrats in Ottawa have muzzled a leading fisheries scientist whose discovery could help explain why salmon stocks have been crashing off Canada’s West Coast, according to documents obtained by Postmedia News.

The documents show the Privy Council Office, which supports the Prime Minister’s Office, stopped Kristi Miller from talking about one of the most significant discoveries to come out of a federal fisheries lab in years….

Science, one of the world’s top research journals, published Miller’s findings in January. The journal considered the work so significant it notified “over 7,400” journalists worldwide about Miller’s “Suffering Salmon” study…

Miller heads a $6-million salmon-genetics project at the federal Pacific Biological Station on Vancouver Island.

Abstract of Miller’s paper in Science. (Subscription required for full text), Jan 14, 2011.

Long-term population viability of Fraser River sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) is threatened by unusually high levels of mortality as they swim to their spawning areas before they spawn. Functional genomic studies on biopsied gill tissue from tagged wild adults that were tracked through ocean and river environments revealed physiological profiles predictive of successful migration and spawning. We identified a common genomic profile that was correlated with survival in each study. In ocean-tagged fish, a mortality-related genomic signature was associated with a 13.5-fold greater chance of dying en route. In river-tagged fish, the same genomic signature was associated with a 50% increase in mortality before reaching the spawning grounds in one of three stocks tested. At the spawning grounds, the same signature was associated with 3.7-fold greater odds of dying without spawning. Functional analysis raises the possibility that the mortality-related signature reflects a viral infection.

NEB gets ready for BC LNG hearings, first step for second Kitimat project

Energy

The National Energy Board has announced it will hold hearings on the second proposed liquified natural gas project, saying, the hearings will “consider an application submitted by BC LNG Export Co-operative LLC (BC LNG) for a 20-year licence to export liquefied natural gas (LNG)
from Canada to Pacific Rim markets.”

Once again under the NEB’s rules of procedure, the hearings will be limited to granting the export licence, with or without conditions and will follow the so-called “market-based procedure” set up for the NEB after deregulation of the oil and gas industry in the late 1980s.

This application is based on projections that the demand for natural gas in Pacific Rim markets will continue to increase substantially over the next 20 years. In its application, BC LNG is requesting authorization to export up to 1.8 million tonnes of LNG annually.

The Board will consider, among other issues, the export markets and natural gas supply, the transportation arrangements, and the status of regulatory authorizations.

However in an apparent departure from the KM LNG hearings where energy lawyers challenged environmental and social issues as not included in the mandate for those hearings, these ground rules say they are now”

The Board will also consider the potential environmental effects of the proposed exportation, and any social effects directly related to those environmental effects.

The public has until Sept. 11, 2011 to register with the board for full intervenor status, request to make an oral statement or to submit a letter of comment.

Letter from NEB to BC LNG (pdf)

KM LNG hearings wrap with concerns over conditions

Energy

The National Energy Board hearings into the application from KM LNG for an export licence to ship liquified natural gas to Asia through Kitimat wrapped up in Calgary Thursday, with the main participants expressing concerns over conditions on the licence proposed by the NEB.

The board panel reserved its decision. No date was given for a possible decision. Unlike the earlier hearings  in June which were held in Kitimat, the Phase 2 hearings were held in Calgary and only available to residents of Kitimat by audio webcast

On July 6 and July 8, the board panel issued a list of 12 proposed conditions on the export licence.  (The concerns of the Kitimat Rod and Gun were not among the 12. See story here)

Among the conditions the NEB wants to impose are a detailed reporting requirement that would include the name of  the LNG tankers loading the natural gas, the quantity of gas and the revenue in Canadian dollars as well as the sales contracts KM LNG may sign with its Asian customers.

Those proposed conditions brought strenuous objections from the proponents of the project, voiced by lead counsel Gordon Nettleton and echoed by other lawyers, saying that the conditions could actually scuttle the entire project. That is because Asian buyers, whether private companies or sovereign (government) agencies, place much stricter emphasis on confidentiality of the agreements than in North America. The lawyers warned that the potential Asian customers could walk away from any deals in favour of less regulated vendors in other countries if the NEB insists on full disclosure, especially if the details could be made public either through the Access to Information Act or by NEB procedures and policies.

Nettleton and the other lawyers recommended a compromise where  KM LNG would disclose to the board the total exports each quarter, the aggregate value in Canadian dollars for each quarter,  the “heating value” of the aggregate and export totals by destination country.

The lawyers also objected strenuously to conditions proposed to cover environmental and social effects of building the Kitimat LNG terminal  and the associated Pacific Trails pipeline.

These include filing a Marine Mammal Protection Plan and answer how KM LNG  would react to any potential effects on marine mammals of the ships passing up and down Douglas Channel and the BC Coast. 

One of the lawyers for the energy companies wondered why the board panel was interested in the shipping issues.”That’s what shps do, they use
existing shipping lanes,” he said. “Ships do not need permisson [now] to go up
Douglas Channel.  [This issue] has been examined bythe appropraite
authorites arnd should be accepted by the board without conditions.”

Other conditions wanted reports on potential effects and probable mitigation efforts for marine mammals, birds, fish and fish habitat, “listed fish and wildlife species,” vessel wake, ballast and bilge water management, fisheries and “First Nations traditional use activities.”

The lawyers mainly objected on legal grounds, since under the hearings for an export licence, (unlike a facility hearing like the Enbridge Joint Review panel)  the board is not supposed to be concerned about environmental issues.  There were also long, legal arguments whether the pipelines from the shale gas fields to Kitimat where “directly connected” under the legal definition used in the Canadian energy industry. The lawyers also argued that the environmental and social issues addressed in the NEB’s proposed conditions would be covered in parallel investigations by other government agencies, such as a Transport Canada review of the shipping plans for Douglas Channel,

At the same time, all parties pledged that they would be “good corporate citizens” in their undertakings to work with the Haisla First Nation and other residents of the Kitimat region and to respect the local environment.

NEB proposed conditions 1 – 9

A33_-_Letter_to_All_Parties_Phase_II_Update_and_Possible_Licence_Conditions_-_A2A2V5.pdf

NEB proposed conditions 10 – 12

A34_-_Letter_-_Possible_Export_Licence_Conditions-Environment_and_Socio-Economic_Matters_-_A2A3T7_.pdf

Kitimat Rod and Gun concerns forgotten at KM LNG NEB hearings

At final arguments Thursday on the application for the KM LNG export licence, it soon became clear that the concerns of Kitimat’s non-aboriginal  residents for their own traditional hiking, fishing and hunting access to the area around the Bish Cove terminal have been forgotten.

At the June 7 hearings, Mike Langegger, representing the Rod and Gun asked the board help to preserve “the fish and wildlife values of the northwest,” from the “cumulative effects” of industry encroaching on the wilderness… Langegger asked that the NEB require the KM LNG partners, energy giants Apache, Encana and EOG, establish a joint committee with Kitimat residents, both First Nations and non-First Nations, to preserve the values of the wilderness around the liquified natural gas terminal.”

Langegger`s specific  request is not included the list of 12 proposed conditions that the National Energy Board has proposed to KM LNG.

As well, during  during the Thursday morning hearings, the lead lawyer for KM LNG, Gordon Nettleton, representing both the partnership and a major investor, Apache Corp., while reviewing the list told the board panel: “No further conditions were proposed
during the hearings,” despite Langegger`s testimony to the board while Nettleton and his staff were in the hearing room at Kitimat`s Riverlodge Recreation Centre.
 
The board has proposed that KM LNG file reports on the effect of the project and mitigation of problems on marine mammals, marine birds, fish, fish habitat and fisheries and “First Nations traditional use activities.”  The request for the condition from the Rod and Gun does over lap with the possible  parts of the report requested by the NEB and the traditional use of the region by the Haisla and other First Nations.

Throughout the morning Nettleton argued that the fact that the KM LNG proceedings are an export licence application only and so many of the environmental oversight concerns would not be covered by the decision.

The final arguments, including over environmental issues and law and regulations that may be applied, continued until late Thursday afternoon. The board panel then reserved its decision on the export licence.

NEB proposed conditions 1 – 9

A33_-_Letter_to_All_Parties_Phase_II_Update_and_Possible_Licence_Conditions_-_A2A2V5.pdf

NEB proposed conditions 10 – 12

A34_-_Letter_-_Possible_Export_Licence_Conditions-Environment_and_Socio-Economic_Matters_-_A2A3T7_.pdf

Douglas Channel Watch wins best float in Kitimat Canada Day parade

454-Rowland_Canada Day parade 019.jpg

(Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)
The environmental group Douglas Channel Watch won the award for the best overall float in the Kitimat Canada Day parade on July 1, 2011.
None of the energy companies involved in the region had a float in the parade.