Conservation & Environment

VILLAS — Countless tiny fish, likely menhaden, are washing up along the Delaware Bay beaches here and north to Middle Township on Wed., Aug. 11 .

In this community, the fish kill runs the entire length of the beachfront, Miami to Shadeland avenues.

A reader, Linda Crane, in Pierce’s Point (Middle Township), reported and sent photographs of a similar occurrence in that bay front community.

“The Delaware (Bay) shoreline is covered with dead peanut bunker as far north and south as we can see! I have never seen this in the five years we've been here what's going on?” Crane asked.

The water temperature was in the high 70s, and the sir temperature on Tue., Aug. 10 was in the 90s, which may be contributing factors into the fish kill.

Read the complete story from the Cape May County Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of the BP cover-up, there are two very important pieces of news today about the extent to which the real impacts of the disaster have been hidden. In the St. Petersburg Times, Craig Pittman has this scathing report on how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration attempted to silence scientists who discovered the vast undersea plumes of dispersed oil in the Gulf:

A month after the Deepwater Horizon disaster began, scientists from the University of South Florida made a startling announcement. They had found signs that the oil spewing from the well had formed a 6-mile-wide plume snaking along in the deepest recesses of the gulf.  

The reaction that USF announcement received from the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agencies that sponsored their research: Shut up.  

"I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil," USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF's public announcement, he said, comparing it to being "beat up" by federal officials.  

Read the complete story from Mother Jones.                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After months of gloom, last week's report on the fate of the oil from BP's Deepwater Horizon spill offered a rare piece of good news. "At least 50% of the oil that was released is now completely gone from the system," said Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), at a White House press conference on 5 August. That welcome figure came from an effort to tally what has happened to the three-quarters of a billion litres of oil that have poured into the Gulf of Mexico since April.

But although researchers have embraced some of the report's messages, many contacted by Nature point out that it fails to convey the substantial uncertainties in some of its estimates. "In my mind it's scientifically indefensible," says James Cowan, an oceanographer at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Some question whether the timing of the report, released as BP announced that it had succeeded in plugging the damaged well, was driven more by politics than science.

The report estimates that about a quarter of the spilled oil was captured, burned or skimmed off the ocean; that another quarter was dispersed into tiny droplets, either naturally or with chemical dispersants; and that a quarter evaporated or completely dissolved. The remaining quarter, determined by subtraction, is assumed to be floating on the ocean's surface or already washed ashore (see graphic). Most of this remainder "is degrading rapidly or is being removed from the beaches", said Lubchenco, adding that there was a "high degree of confidence" in the numbers. She cautioned, however, that dissolved or dispersed oil could still pose threats to marine life.

Read the complete story from Nature News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PANAMA CITY BEACH — State Rep. Jimmy Patronis said Tuesday’s reopening to fishing of more than 5,000 square miles of federal waters off Florida’s Panhandle could help save the month of August for local fishermen.

In addition, lifting the ban will help alleviate fears among fish lovers around the country that Gulf of Mexico seafood from near Florida’s coastline was safe to consume, said Patronis, R-Panama City.

With President Barack Obama scheduled to spend a couple of vacation days this weekend in Panama City Beach, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administrator Jane Lubchenco called the area “the fishing capital of the world” in making the announcement from Capt. Anderson’s Marina.

“I say to fishermen, let’s go fishing,” Lubchenco said, noting that the reopened area includes 5,144 square miles from just east of Pensacola to Cape San Blas. About 22 percent of federal Gulf waters remain closed because of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, down from near 37 percent in early June.

Read the complete story from News Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

Fairhaven fishermen and residents woke up early yesterday to the sight — and smell — of thousands of dead menhaden floating in the water.

Robert Hobson said he has never seen anything like it during his 40 years as a fisherman. “I ran into piles and piles and piles of them,’’ he said, describing the scene he saw as he set out across the water. “On the surface, I saw them for about 3 miles, all the way across to Buzzards Bay.’’

Hobson, a 69-year-old Fairhaven resident, spotted the dead fish before 6 and called the harbormaster, David Darmofal, who had been alerted by other fishermen and residents. The fish were washing up, mostly on the western edges of Sconticut Neck and West Island, east of Fairhaven.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

FAIRHAVEN — The big tides associated with the new moon delivered an unwelcome surprise to beachgoers on Fairhaven’s West Island Monday.

Families deploying lawn chairs and blankets near the high water mark on the town beach found the shore littered with dead fish.

Dozens of dead pogeys, also known as menhaden, had washed up on the morning high tide, although state and local officials put the total number involved in the die-off in the thousands.

“The Division of Marine Fisheries came down and tested the water and it appears to be okay so the beach is open,” Fairhaven harbormaster David S. Darmofal said.

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today [subscription site]

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOAA’s Fisheries Service says changes are needed to the areas where commercial fishermen may fish for groundfish off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to further promote the recovery of the western population of Steller sea lions, and to be in compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

That’s the conclusion of the draft 2010 Groundfish Biological Opinion, released this week by the agency’s Alaska region. The document addresses possible effects of current management practices for groundfish fisheries in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska on endangered species, including North Pacific humpback and sperm whales and the western Aleutian Island sub-population of Steller sea lions. Fishers harvest more than 4 billion pounds of fish from the area each year.

Although scientists found that current fishing practices are unlikely to impact the endangered whale populations, such is not the case with Steller sea lions. The greatest concern is in fishery management area 543 in the western Aleutians. From 2000-2008, adult numbers declined 45 percent in this sub-region. Pup production declined 43 percent, making the ratio of pups to adult females on rookeries in this sub-region the lowest in the entire western Steller sea lion population. This continued low birth rate is an indicator of lack of food to sustain the population.

Read the complete story from Scientific Computing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Division of Marine Fisheries has determined that this fish kill (several thousand fish) was caused by a lack of dissolved oxygen in the estuary where they washed in from. 

The fish kill involved only one species, Menhaden, which commonly expire in hot weather and enclosed embayments.

-From the Mass. Department of Environmental Management

A fish kill occurred Monday morning in the area of West Island/Sconticut Neck in Fairhaven.

Read the complete story from ABC 6.

 

 

 

 

 

 

AUGUSTA, Maine — With the estimated cost of the BP oil spill in the billions of dollars, members of Maine’s congressional delegation support increasing the reserves in the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund that would pay cleanup and remediation of a spill by a company that does not have BP’s financial resources.

“Ultimately the responsibility should rest with the private sector,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe. “They should be the ones paying into this fund.”

She said the fund was set up so there are funds available immediately to contain a spill and start remediation efforts. The president can authorize up to $100 million from the fund for any single spill in a year.

“We need to structure this so the companies are paying, not the taxpayers,” she said.

Read the complete story from the Bangor Daily News.

 

 

 

 

 

New York-based writer, essayist and humorist Paul Greenberg, who grew up Greenwich and fished in the Long Island Sound, explores the journey of fish from sea to plate in his latest book "Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food" (Penguin, $25.95).

The book combines in-depth investigations with field research and personal experience to question whether humans have the ability to resist the desire to control the sea and change the natural habitat of four fish: cod, salmon, bass and tuna.

"Four Fish" explores our past and present relationship with the oceanwhat the future holds and what we can do to change any negative impacts caused by people's desire to eat fish.

Read the complete story from The Hartford Courant.