Analysis:   New scientific findings likely confirm Haisla story of first arrival in the valley

Two related scientific papers published in the past two weeks, one on the First Peoples  initial settlement of coastal  North America and the second  giving a probable new timeline of the retreat of the glaciers during the last Ice Age,  taken together  are likely confirmation of the Haisla story of how that nation first settled the Kitimat Valley.

Haisla NationAs related in Gordon Robinson’s Tales of the Kitamaat, the First Peoples living on the coast of what is now British Columbia ventured up what is now called Douglas Channel perhaps from either Bella Bella in Heiltsuk traditional territory or from Prince Rupert in Tsimshian traditional territory.

The young men on the expedition up the Kitimat Arm spotted what they thought was a huge monster kilometres ahead with a large mouth that was constantly opening and closing. The sight was so terrifying that the men fled back to their homes and dubbed the Kitimat Arm as a place of a monster.

Later a man named Hunclee-qualas accidentally killed his wife and had to flee from the vengeance of his father-in-law.   Knowing he had to find a place where no one could find him,  he ventured further up the Kitimat Arm. There he discovered that the “monster” was nothing more than seabirds, probably seagulls, perhaps feasting on a spring oolichan run.

He settled along the shore of what is now the Kitimat River and found a land of plenty, with fish, seals, game as well as berries and other natural products of the land.  Eventually he invited others to join him, which began the Haisla Nation and he became their first chief.

Let’s examine the new evidence so far.

  1. Settlement along the coastal “kelp highway” between 18,000 and 16,000 years ago, followed by a warm spell 14,500 years ago

It’s now fairly certain that the First Peoples first began to settle along the coast by following the “kelp highway” perhaps as early as 18,000 years ago and certainly by 14,000 years ago.  Haida Gwaii was ice free, except for some mountain glaciation as early as 16,500 years ago.   At about 14,500 years ago there was a warming spell which forced the glaciers to retreat, brought higher sea levels and the arctic like tundra ecosystem would have been replaced, at least for a time, by forests. There is the discovery of a Heiltsuk settlement dated to 14,000 years ago.  At that time almost all of the coast would have been free of glacial ice but there were still glaciers in the fjords, including the Kitimat Arm which would mean there could be no permanent settlement in the “inland coast” and the interior.

(Science)
  1. The cooling period from 14,000 to 11,700 years ago confines settlement to the coast

The cooling periods  (with occasional warmer times) from about 14,000 years ago to about 11,700 years ago meant that settlement would largely have been confined to the coast for about two and half millennia. The culture of the coastal First Peoples would have been well established by the time the glaciers began the final retreat.

(Remember that it is just 2,000 years from our time in 2017 back to the height of the Roman Empire under Augustus Caesar).

It is likely that the cooling periods also meant that some descendants of initial settlers likely headed south for relatively warmer climates. Rising sea levels meant that the initial settlement villages would likely have been abandoned for higher ground.

  1. A second period of rapid warming 11,700 years ago which opens up the interior fjords and valleys

At the end of what geologists call the Younger Dryas period, about 11,500 years ago, the climate warmed, the glaciers retreated further, in the case of Kitimat, first to what is now called Haisla Hill, then to Onion Flats and finally to Terrace.

  1. Large glacial sediment river deltas filled with fresh melt water from retreating ice

The most important confirmation of the story of Hunclee-qualas’s exile is the account  of the monster, the birds and the oolichan run.

The new scientific evidence, combined with earlier studies, points to the fact that the glacial melt water carried with it huge amounts of glacial sediment that created vast river deltas in coastal regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

That means around 10,000 years ago,   when the Kitimat Valley was ice free and the new forest ecosystem was spreading up the valley, the Kitimat River estuary was likely to have been much larger than today.  It could have been a vast delta, which would have quickly been repopulated with fish, including salmon and oolichan. That rich delta ecosystem could have supported a much larger population of seabirds than the smaller estuary in recent recorded history.

Snow geese by the thousands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta/ CrunchySkies/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons License

The story of the monster those first travelers saw far off is highly plausible. Even today in huge, rich deltas elsewhere in the world, seeing hundreds of thousands of birds in flight over a wetland is fairly common. (For a description of what a Kitimat River delta may have been like thousands of years ago, see KCET’s story on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta and what that delta was like 6,000 years ago)

The First Peoples had had well established communities for up to four thousand years before the Kitimat Valley’s metres of thick ice had melted away.  For the first period, while the ecosystem regenerated, for the people of the coast coming up Douglas Channel to the valley would not have been worth it, there would be little to find in terms of fish, game or forest resources.

A Snow Goose flock near the Skagit River Delta, WA./ Walter Siegmund/Wikimedia Commons
  1. The change from tundra to a rich forest environment

Eventually as the forest regenerated, the streams filled with salmon and oolichan; the bird population including gulls, geese and eagles, found a new feeding ground;  bears, deer and other animals arrived. The Kitimat region would have been an attractive place to explore and hunt. It may be the monster story did keep people away until Hunclee-qualas had to find a place to hide and discovered a new home just at a time that might be called an ecological optimum with new forests stretching back along the valley to what is now Terrace.

  1. The river delta shrinks back to the current estuary

If a vast Kitimat River delta did stretch further down the Channel than it does in 2017, it likely shrank back in the subsequent millennia.   Eventually the mass of glacial sediment that came downstream after the retreat of the ice would diminish, but not stop entirely. The estuary is still rebuilt from sediments washed downstream but that sediment doesn’t match other  rich deltas elsewhere such as the Nile in Egypt.   With that regeneration of the delta slower and smaller than in the first centuries of Haisla settlement, at the same time the land surface rebounded from the weight of the ice, perhaps creating the Kildala neighborhood.  The ocean level rose, drowning and eroding part of the old delta, creating the estuary we know today.

 

 

As the authors of the paper on the First Peoples’ settlement note, most of the archaeological evidence of early coastal settlement is now likely many metres below the surface of the ocean but deep ocean exploration may uncover  that evidence.  As the scientific team on the second paper say, they are now working on detailed studies of the glacial retreat from the coastal mountain region which may, when the studies are complete, change the timeline

While waiting for further evidence from archaeology and geology it is safe to say that the stories of the monster and later Hunclee-qualas’s discovery of the Haisla homeland are even more compelling than when Gordon Robinson wrote Tales of the Kitamaat.  We can now speculate that there was once, stretching from Haisla Hill far down the Channel, a vast, varied rich, river estuarine delta that supported hundreds of thousands of seabirds, which if they took the wing in unison, would have made those unwary travelers millennia ago, really think that there was a giant monster waiting to devour them at the head of the Kitimat Arm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water, not oil, is the hot issue this summer in Kitimat

Kitimat's "Hospital Beach" on March 17, 2012, with the construction at the Rio Tinto Alcan plant in the background, before the area was closed to the public. (Robin Rowland) (Robin Rowland)
Kitimat’s “Hospital Beach” on March 17, 2012, with the construction at the Rio Tinto Alcan plant in the background, before the area was closed to the public. (Robin Rowland)

 

The hottest issue in Kitimat this summer is water, not oil. For us, this summer can be summed up by saying: “Water, water everywhere, but you can’t get there from here.”

Even with David Black’s proposal for an oil refinery on a hill 25 kilometres north of Kitimat, residents here know that the Enbridge Northern Gateway debate has gone on for years and will go on for many years to come.

As environmentalists worldwide celebrate the beauty of Douglas Channel, and decry the dangers that tanker traffic could pose to the channel, many people in Kitimat are cut off from the waterfront.

At the District of Kitimat Council meeting on August 7, Coun. Mario Feldhoff introduced a motion calling for a study in an effort to find ways to launch kayaks into the ocean. Yes that’s right, according to members of council, you can’t even drop a kayak into the waters of Douglas Channel unless you pay the kind marina a launch fee usually charged for larger fishing boats. Kitimat is down to only one expensive boat launch.

In 2010, there were three marinas in Kitimat: one privately operated at a place called Moon Bay, a large marina owned by the Kitimat Stikine Regional District at MK Bay and a small marina at Minette Bay, also the site of a log export operation. There was also a boat launch on land known as “Alcan beach” or “Hospital Beach” on property owned by Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA) near the aluminum smelter. Hospital Beach is the only beach in Kitimat (named because it is on the site of the town’s original hospital in the 1950s). Moon Bay was located on land owned by RTA, and in April 2010, it ordered the marina shut down.

According to RTA spokesperson Colleen Nyce, that was largely due to concerns about how the marina was being operated.

Some people who moored their boats at Moon Bay moved to MK Bay (if there was room). Others hauled their boats out of the water and parked them in their driveways. In the ensuing two years, there have been increasing stories about mismanagement at MK Bay and complaints about moorageand launching fees that are much higher than elsewhere in the province.

This spring, citing construction at the smelter, RTA closed public access to Hospital Beach for picnics, kids’ play and just looking at the water. That meant the boat launch was also off-limits. RTA spokesperson Nyce said:

The Rio Tinto Alcan site is now a full fledged construction zone with constant vehicular and heavy duty construction traffic. To that end, and as Rio Tinto Alcan representatives have always said, during construction we will take necessary steps to eliminate potential hazards to the general public on our road including access to Hospital Beach. Therefore, Hospital Beach will be closed to the public until construction is complete or until we believe it is more safe for public access.

Before access was closed, if a Kitimat resident was driving to Hospital Beach, they pass what was once a rough logging road that snaked its way along the shores of Douglas Channel toward Bish Cove. Now Bish Cove is the site of the Kitimat LNG project terminal. As part of the construction process, KM LNG upgraded the road. However, as the pace of construction increases KM LNG is now limiting access to the road and its views of the channel.

Why is there no access to the waterfront, or for that matter to the magnificent Kitimat River estuary?

It goes back to 1950 when the province of B.C., in a loosely worded agreement with what was then Alcan and in an equally non-specific Industrial Development Act, handed over the land where Kitimat is now to the company.

That included almost all the waterfront and the estuary. On the estuary, there is one small area of land that is a reserve for the Haisla Nation and one small area not in RTA domain owned by the District of Kitimat — but there is no right of way through a potential private development. Over the years, and especially since Rio Tinto took over Alcan, there have been more and more restrictions placed on access to Kitimat’s waterfront.

Restricted access has become such an important issue that it came up during the National Energy Board hearings on the Kitimat LNG project and was part of the NEB ruling granting KM LNG its export licence. Access to Kitimat’s waterfront is also a factor in the Enbridge Northern Gateway project, although that part is lost in all the bigger issues.

The fact that you can’t get to the waterfront and the estuary are a problem not only for community recreation; the inability for a resident or visitor to launch a kayak or small boat into the channel, much less larger fishing or recreational vessels, has put the brake on expansion of Kitimat’s already lucrative fishing, guiding and boating services.

There is already a lot of skepticism in Kitimat — due to the boom and bust of the industrial cycle — about all those promises of jobs and prosperity from industrial development. Restricted access to the ocean means that despite the growing number of jobs in Kitimat, corporate policy makes it hard to enjoy the benefits of living on the Douglas Channel.

It is the kind of externality that is always ignored by economists and is totally irrelevant to those business writers who claim to be experts in Kitimat but who have never been within 1,000 kilometres of the town.

You look out your window at the mountains and ocean of Douglas Channel and ask why can’t the residents and tourists go to the beach? That could be a key issue in the Enbridge Northern Gateway debate.

Oil spill caused “unexpected lethal impact” on herring, study shows

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Scientists from the University of California at Davis and NOAA studying herring spawning beds in San Francisco Bay after the Costco Busan oil spill. (UC Davis)

A 53,569 gallon  (202,780 litre) spill of bunker oil in San Francisco Bay in 2007 had an “unexpected lethal impact on embryonic fish,” according to scientists from the University of California  at Davis  and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who spent two years on follow-up research after the spill, looking at the effects of the spill on Pacific herring.

One significant finding from the study is that different oil compounds, for example crude or bunker oil, likely have different effects on vulnerable environments.

On November 7, 2007,  the container ship Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge, breaching two fuel tanks and sending the bunker oil into the bay.  Television images of the accident were seen around the world.

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Damage to the Cosco Busan.  ( PO 3 Melissa Hauck/US Coast Guard)

The oil spill polluted  the nearby North Central Bay shoreline spawning and rearing habitat for  herring, described  by the study as “the largest coastal population of  Pacific herring along the Continental United States.”   The spill happened a month before the herring spawning season.

The herring from the estuaries of San Francisco Bay  migrate in large schools up the Pacific Coast to the Bering sea, and are food for  whales, other mammals, salmon and birds.  After two years at sea they return to the spawning grounds.

The study also notes: “Herring are a keystone species in the pelagic food web and this population supports the last commercial finfish fishery in San Francisco Bay.” It adds: “Although visibly oiled shorelines were cleaned, some extensively, only 52% of the oil was recovered from surface waters and land  or lost to evaporation.  The amount of hidden or subsurface oil that may have remained near herring spawning areas  is unknown.”

The study, Unexpectedly high mortality in Pacific herring embryos exposed to the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay, was published Monday, Dec. 26,  in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study suggests that even small oil spills can have a large impact on marine life.  Gary Cherr, director  of the UC Davis Bodega Marine  Laboratory and lead author of the study says, “Our research  represents a change in the paradigm  for oil spill research  and detecting oil spill effects in an urbanized estuary.”

That’s because the study builds on research following the 1989 Exxon Valdez  disaster in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which released  32 million gallons (121 million litres) of crude. The Exxon Valdez spill also happened close to the herring spawning season and studies since then have shown mortality and   abnormalities in the fish in Prince William Sound.

The San Francisco study  shows that the bunker oil accumulated in naturally spawned herring embryos. At low tide, the oil then interacted with sunlight in the shallower regions of the estuary, killing the embryos.  A control group of herring, fertilized in a laboratory and place in cages in deeper water, were protected from the combination of oil and sunlight but still showed  “less severe” abnormalities.

“Based on our previous understanding  of the effects of oil on embryonic fish, we didn’t  think there was enough oil from the Cosco Busan spill  to cause this much damage,”  Cherr said. “We didn’t expect  that the ultraviolet light  would dramatically increase toxicity in the actual environment, as might observe in controlled laboratory experiments.”

One reason may be that crude oil, the kind spilled by the Exxon Valdez, is naturally occurring liquid petroleum. Bunker  oil is a thick fuel oil distilled  from crude oil and used as a fuel on ships. Bunker oil can be contaminated by other, unknown substances.  In the case of the Cosco Busan,  the bunker oil was relatively low in sulfur compared to some other bunker fuels but the embryos showed higher than expected levels of sulfur compounds.

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Scientists from the University of California at Davis and NOAA studying herring spawning beds in San Francisco Bay after the Costco Busan oil spill. (UC Davis)

The scientists  analyzed the levels of oil-based compounds in the caged herring embryos at four oiled and two-non oiled sub tidal sites, all at least one metre below  the surface.  Naturally spawned embryos from shallower areas were also studied.

In November, 2007, the spilled oil was visible in the areas chosen for the study.  By the time the herring eggs were incubating, oil was not visible in the contaminated areas, except for some tar balls found on shore.

The researchers began the study in February 2008 .  At the time, three months after the spill,  the caged embryos showed non lethal heart defects, typical of exposure to oil spills.  The embryos in the shallower sub tidal zones showed the same heart defects but also had “surprisingly high rates of dead tissue  and mortality  unrelated to the heart defects.”

“The embryos were literally falling apart with high rates of mortality,” Cherr said.

Normal herring embryos are translucent and colourless when they hatch, except for the pigment around the eye  and melanophores (pigment cells) along the gut.  The  the brain, spinal cord and  axial muscle from embryos from the oiled sites were not as clear. Those embryos had no heart beat and the skin tissue was disintegrating.

No  toxicity was found in embryos in unoiled sites, even those close to major highways. The researchers concluded that the high death rates  did not seem to be caused by natural or man made causes unrelated to the spill.

In 2009, when the scientists concentrated on the role of sunlight, the study showed that the embryos had death rates characterized by  loss of tissue similar to the embryos from the year before,  but possibly caused by undetected compounds from the oil spill.

In 2010, the scientists again looked at embryos from the oiled and unoiled sites. By that time, the hatching rates from the oiled sites were similar  to the “relatively high hatching rates” for the unoiled areas.  However, there was a “significant incidence” of heart problems  among embryos from the oiled sites.

The scientists conclude that while the Exxon Valdez spill did show oil poisoning fish in the early stages of life,  they say  case wider research is needed beyond that done for in the case of the Exxon Valdez because the  Cosco Busan

1. Highlights the difference in effects on fish from exposure to oil of differing composition (i.e. Crude vs bunker)
2. Shows  the role of sunlight, interacting with local conditions (such as shallow water)  can have significant affects on toxicity.
3. Shows the need for more study of the toxic effects of different oil compounds
4. The study has shown the “exceptional vulnerability of fish early stages to spilled oil.”

The conclusion adds  “Although bunker oil typically accounts for only a small fraction of oil in ships,  so spills may be small relative to those of crude oil, it may carry a potential  for disproportionate impacts of in ecologically sensitive areas.”

Both Ellis Ross, Chief Counsellor of the Haisla Nation and April McLeod, president of the Kitimat Valley Naturalists expressed concern abut the findings of the study, especially with the Joint Review Hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline scheduled to begin a few days.

The numerous environmental critics of the Northern Gateway pipeline have pointed out that there is no way of knowing what would happen to an area like the Kitimat River, estuary and Douglas Channel is there was a bitumen spill.  Enbridge has filed documents with the Joint Review Panel that include simulations of a spill.  The new San Francisco study shows that any oil spill could have unforeseen effects.

Plans call for at least three new terminals to be built close to the Kitimat River estuary, not just the controversial Enbridge terminal for bitumen, but at least two for the liquified natural gas projects,  KM LNG and BC LNG and in all three cases ships would normally be fueled by bunker oil.

The Kitimat estuary has been industrialized for 60 years since the building of the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter, but still has large areas teeming with fish and wildlife, so the estuary is somewhat in the middle between the heavily urbanized estuaries of San Francisco Bay and the more pristine Prince William Sound.

Ross pointed to the collapse of the oolichan  in the Kitimat River as a strong indicator of potential problems.  He recalls that in the early stages of the Eurocan paper mill the Haisla Nation was told there would be no effect on the oolichan, but soon after the mill began operations, the oolichan population collapsed.  That is why, Ross said, the Haisla  are wary of the plans and want to see more and stronger studies done on the effects of bitumen and other oil compounds in the region.

Other comments were unavailable due to the holiday. They will added as received.

686-kitimatestuary.jpg Kitimat River estuary on Dec. 17, 2011, showing a Rio Tinto Alcan transmission tower. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)

California Fish and Wildlife Cosco Busan spill web page.

According to Wikipedia, the US National Transportation Board found that the Cosco Busan accident was caused by
    1. the pilot’s degraded cognitive performance from his use of prescription medications, despite his completely clean post accident drug test,
    2. the absence of a comprehensive pre-departure master/pilot exchange and a lack of effective communication between Pilot John Cota and Master Mao Cai Sun during the accident voyage, and
    3. (COSCO Busan Master) Sun’s ineffective oversight of Cota’s piloting performance and the vessel’s progress.

Other contributing factors included:

  1. the failure of Fleet Management Ltd. to train the COSCO Busan crewmembers (which led to such acts of gross negligence as the bow lookout eating breakfast in the galley instead of being on watch) and Fleet Management’s failure to ensure that the crew understood and complied with the company’s safety management system;
  2. the failure of Caltrans to maintain foghorns on the bridge which were silent despite the heavy fog;
  3. the failure of Vessel Traffic Safety (VTS) to alert Cota and Sun that they were headed for the tower. VTS is legally required to alert a vessel if an accident appears imminent, yet they remained silent;
  4. the malfunctioning radar on the COSCO Busan, which led Captains Cota and Sun to use an electronic chart for the rest of the voyage. Although Coast Guard investigators found the radar to be in working order, they did not examine it until days after the accident (allowing time for faulty equipment to be fixed, which is not uncommon after a marine accident)
  5. Captain Sun’s incorrect identification of symbols on the electronic chart;
  6. the U.S. Coast Guard’s failure to provide adequate medical oversight of Cota, in view of the medical and medication information he had reported to the Coast Guard.

NTSB report on the Cosco Busan accident  (pdf)