Watching Our Water Ways

When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced its listing of Pacific smelt as “threatened” yesterday, I posted a link to the press release under “Water, Water Everywhere: Government Actions” at the top of this page. That’s also where I posted a rapid response from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Since we don’t really have Pacific smelt on the Kitsap Peninsula, where I do my local reporting, I decided against writing any more about it.

But today I’m getting the feeling that more than a few people in the Puget Sound region are confused about the potential impacts of this listing. They want to know whether they can still catch some smelt in Hood Canal, along Port Orchard’s Ross Point and in other favorite spawning areas for our local surf smelt — not the listed Pacific smelt.

Let me direct you back to a Water Ways entry I posted one year ago today, after NOAA proposed the listing. In that blog entry, I admitted my own initial confusion between the two kinds of “smelt.”

If you would like a little more information about yesterday’s announcement, I direct you to Associated Press reporter Jeff Barnard’s story.

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UPDATE: MARCH 17, 2010
The transient killer whales that have been visiting Puget Sound for about a week may have moved up to the Whidbey Island area, where a group of about five orcas were reported yesterday and today.
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Swift and silent killer whales, known as transients, must be finding a good number of seals or sea lions to eat, because a group of a half-dozen or so of these animals appear to have been swimming around Puget Sound for about a week.

This video was recorded this afternoon in Puget Sound by KOMO News. Although KOMO’s Web site does not say specifically where the whales were sighted, they were reported between West Seattle and Vashon Island.

Orca Network’s recent reports include sightings of T87, 88, 90 and 90B south of Victoria last Tuesday. Later that night, transients were heard on the hydrophone off the West Side of San Juan Island. They stayed around the San Juans on Wednesday.

Then on Thursday, they were spotted in Tacoma’s Commencement Bay and near the ferry lanes on the Fauntleroy-Vashon Island route. From a KOMO video that day, Dave Ellifrit of the Center for Whale Research identified T87, T88, T90 & T90B, plus the T30s (which may include a mother and two adult offspring).

Since then, these same whales apparently have been spotted several times in Central Puget Sound. About halfway through the video above, it appears the orcas catch and kill a seal, evidenced by blood in the water.

Transients are orcas that eat marine mammals rather than fish — the primary food of our familiar Southern Residents of the Salish Sea. Transients usually travel in smaller groups and seem to give residents wide berth when they come within range of each other.

Transients roam widely from Alaska to California, though some stay farther north and others farther south. Because they hunt seals and sea lions, which can hear them coming, they are stealthier in their hunting than residents and appear to have a more limited vocabulary of vocalizations.

According to estimates by biologists, transients generally need to eat an average of one or two harbor seals a day to maintain their caloric needs. In that sense, transients are friends to both resident orcas and fishermen, because they eat the animals that eat the salmon.

In 2005, a group of six transients stayed in Hood Canal a remarkable 18 weeks, consuming a feast that amounted to an estimated 700 seals and sea lions. See Kitsap Sun, June 3, 2005.

With the help of Orca Network, we’ll report where these animals go over the next few days.

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Last week, I wrote about a meeting between water officials on the Kitsap Peninsula and hydrologists from the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS folks were floating the idea of studying the geology and available water supplies across the entire Kitsap Peninsula. (See story in Thursday’s Kitsap Sun.)

Surface waters of Kitsap.

I’ve covered water resources for years, and one of the big questions in the context of growth and development has always been: “Will the area have enough water to support growth.”

It’s a question I’ve asked local water managers since I arrived here in 1977. Their answer is generally something like this: “We should have enough water far into the future if we manage it carefully.” My latest story, published in the Kitsap Sun Oct. 3, described a relatively low-water year ending in October.

Most of Kitsap County’s water comes from wells. Consequently, managing water carefully means conserving what we’ve got, allowing our rains to soak into the ground and, in some contexts, being able to move water from areas of lesser supply to areas of greater supply. The map of surface waters at right can be found on the Kitsap County Web site.

Water is one of the big environmental issues of our time, and it will grow more important as long as the population continues to grow. Most people in the water business would like to know more about underground water supplies, so a study of the peninsula’s water resources would be valuable. Experts also realize that studies of this kind are only as good as the data that go in. That involves using measurements from hundreds of wells and well logs (soil layers) across the peninsula. You may want to check out similar studies conducted by USGS.

This topic also appears to be interesting to Kitsap Sun readers, because the story I wrote last week was rated the most popular on the Web site for two days running.

As with many environmental stories, the first comments to be posted seemed skeptical of the whole idea that caused me to write the story:

Crownvic (the first comment): “This is another one of these greeny try-to-scare-the-hell-out-of-you articles. First of all, almost all water wells pump from an aquifer 100 feet plus deep and have absolutely no effect on surface waters due to the impervious layers top and bottom…”
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A new cartoon character, named DJ ChloroPhil, is described as a hipster urbanite devoted to living in harmony with the planet. The trouble is, he is not quite as harmonious with nature as he thinks.

DJ ChloroPhil

One night while burning some mysterious “eco-friendly” incense, Phil unwittingly summons the spirit of a polar bear who becomes his no-nonsense guide to a better way.

The series, called “Green Shaman,” was launched a month ago on Planet Green. Each 90-second clip offers a personal tip about the environment, starting with a video questioning whether Phil’s purchase of bottled water is an environmentally sound practice.

If that’s not enough, check out Phil’s blog, in which he offers his thoughts related to his experiences.

The creator of the series, Troy Hitch, is best known for his work on the humorous series “You Suck at Photoshop,” which shows fictional character Donnie Hoyle offering offbeat tutorials in the field of photo alteration.

Spirit polar bear

Following are the Green Shaman videos. (I haven’t figured out how to bypass the commercials.)

“Again from the Tap”

“Greeno Vino”

“Power Nap”

“Pedal of Honor”

“Smells like Green Spirit”

“Shirt’s So Good”

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I’m happy to share this space today with Kitsap Sun reporter Steven Gardner, who offers his personal perspective on orcas.

BY STEVEN GARDNER

Journalists received what might be deserved suspicion of being haters of George W. Bush. If it’s true, I don’t think it’s for the reason most people surmise, that we’re all socialists at heart intent on killing every American Amendment that isn’t the first one.

If we disliked Bush the younger, it had more to do with his reported statement to Joe Biden that he doesn’t “do nuance.”

Reporters dance in nuance. We eat it. For the purposes of this blog, let’s say we swim in it. When we retire, the hardest thing to unload is all the “other hands” we’ve considered. Dunagan has a file cabinet full of them. When Bush said he didn’t do nuance, it was like he was insulting all our mothers.

Dabbling in nuance gives us room to partake in things we might not otherwise do were we among those who take stands. In late 2007 I took my family to SeaWorld in San Diego. In my heart I’m really troubled by the idea of watching animals that can travel entire oceans confined to pools a little bigger than the one I had in my backyard as a kid. But it was when I was a kid that my affection for orcas began, because of a splashing I got from Shamu.

Growing up in Southern California, it was the only way I was going to see orcas in person. As the years went on, I managed to see probably a dozen dolphin shows. I don’t think I grew to have any angst about it until I was working construction during a summer off from college and was sent to a house in an exclusive neighborhood in Laguna Beach. There, on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, I could see a school of dolphins (Maybe they were porpoises. I couldn’t swear under oath that they weren’t two-liter soda bottles with fins.) swimming by beyond the waves.

It sounds cliche, but something can happen to a guy like me who suddenly sees something in a different context, particularly a natural context. Not only did it make me feel good about them, it made me feel good about myself, that I live in a world where animals can be in a place they’ve been for thousands or millions of years, that we haven’t institutionalized all of them. It’s not a thought that comes naturally when you spend most of your days winding your way through asphalt and concrete.

That elation came again when I moved here and the Orcas visited Silverdale. Then on Christmas Day in 2004 I was on a ferry to Seattle and saw an orca off in the distance. That chance sighting was better than the sure thing you get in San Diego.

Still, I thought maybe my kids would appreciate the SeaWorld show. They did.

I, on the other hand, had much the same reaction Steve Lopez from the Los Angeles Times did when he went.. I wouldn’t say I was creeped out, but I was uneasy.

I expected a fun, maybe funny presentation. What you get is a full-on, well-orchestrated production that clearly had been crafted following the pressure that must have come once Free Willy was released in theaters.

And yet months later, when another friend shared pictures of her daughter being one of those who got to go out and touch the whale, I was genuinely happy for her.

Of course the idea that she could have been yanked by her pony tail into the water — something that has apparently never happened in the wild — changes all that.

I’d rather see all those Shamus out in the wild. I would have felt so relieved if SeaWorld officials would have said, “We get it now.” On the other hand, maybe the Tacoma Pocket Gopher wouldn’t have vanished in 1970 if someone had made money by teaching a few of them to jump through hoops. On the other other hand, maybe these animals should matter to me even if I never get to see them.

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Washington state has done it again, being the first state in the country to take a legal stand against a toxic chemical.

The Legislature this week voted to phase out cooper in brake pads, provided there are reasonable alternatives and that research continues to suggest that brake pads are contributing significant amounts of toxic copper. The bill is Senate Bill 6557.

This last point about research — about the need to know more about the alternate states of copper in the environment — was raised by Silverdale resident Bob Benze. I covered his questions and success in adding an amendment to the bill in the March 1 edition of the Kitsap Sun.

Even at low levels, an ionic form of copper has been shown to affect the sense of smell in salmon, which can lead to confusion and reproductive failure. It has become a major concern, especially in urban areas. Here’s a fact sheet from the Washington Department of Ecology.

Ivy Sager-Rosenthal of the Washington Toxics Coalition supports the Puget Sound Partnership’s call for a full assessment of toxic chemicals flowing into Puget Sound and an increased focus on eliminating sources of such pollution.

Last week, Ted Sturdevant, director of Ecology, testified before Congress about actions taken by state governments, generally because the federal government has been slow to act. He and 12 other state environmental officials are calling for reform of the federal Toxic Substances Control Act.

Washington was the first state to draft a formal policy phasing out persistent bioaccumulative toxics, or PBTs. This led to state laws phasing out mercury and toxic flame retardants. The latest legislation, finalized this week, will ban bisphenol-A in baby bottles and sports bottles.

Sturdevant spelled out three guiding principles for addressing persistent toxic chemicals:
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All the pieces are nearly in place for Kitsap County residents and planners to begin examining the ecosystem at the edge of the waters encircling the Kitsap Peninsula.

Beyond beauty, shoreline environments contain vital ecosystems. (Click to enlarge)
Kitsap Sun photo

Oh, yes, lakes and a few streams are part of the picture.

Kitsap County commissioners last night appointed a 20-member citizen task force to take a central role in the planning effort. For the first time in county history, regulations will be based on ecosystem values. See the story I wrote for today’s Kitsap Sun listing the members.

Similar planning efforts are under way in Kitsap’s cities as well as various communities throughout the Puget Sound region. I wrote a story for the Kitsap Sun Feb. 27 regarding the effort for our cities.

In the past, shoreline regulations were based on existing land uses. Buffers — including the current 100-foot buffer for rural areas — were uniform throughout the entire county. Previous rules never took into consideration the particular types of shoreline or their ecological values. For example, an estuary with a highly productive marsh and a stream running through it was treated exactly the same as a rocky outcropping pounded by waves.
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The Washington State Senate this morning approved an amended bill banning bisphenol-A (BPA) from “sports bottles” as well as from baby bottles and sippy cups used by children. See Senate Bill 6248.

Manufacturers of various kinds of containers were ready to accept a ban on baby bottles. In fact, major producers — including Gerber and Playtex — are no longer using BPA in infant products sold in the United States.

But the amendment (added by the House and approved today by the Senate) shows that industry representatives were unsuccessful at drawing a line for BPA in adult products. The argument is that young children are more vulnerable to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, because their immune and reproductive systems are still forming.

Jan Teague, president of the Washington Retail Association, was quoted in the Puget Sound Business Journal as saying manufacturers are “ready” for the state to ban BPA in baby bottles, sippy cups, and other containers used by children, but adult products are another thing.

“The bill is about children’s safety—not adult sports bottles,” Teague told reporter Kaitlin Strohschein. “I think we’re going to be fine on the baby bottles and stuff but not on the sports bottles.”
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It’s time to revisit our old friend Flow Man, who always finds a way to “cut through” the most complex problems.

In his latest video, Flow Man comes to the rescue of a snowboarder. This particular athlete is about as far from an Olympic medalist as you can get. Flow Man’s nonsensical, but amusing, answer is to put a ragged edge on the snowboard.

When I first started posting the Adventures of Flow Man, I didn’t know that the corporate headquarters for the company responsible — Flow International Corporation — was located in Western Washington. The company was started by former Boeing engineers who saw the advantages of cutting with high-pressure water jets.

With its corporate headquarters in Kent, Flow employs more than 700 people in offices in Indiana, Michigan, Canada, Brazil, Germany, UK, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, Taiwan, Japan, and China.

As for the benefits of water-jet technology, Wikipedia is running a well-written, basic article about the history, technology and benefits of high-pressure water. What is impressive is that jets of water can make cuts as fine as a human hair. One of the strong selling points is the low temperature, since most cutting techniques generate heat that can damage the cutting material. See this video overview of the technology.

What can’t be cut? According to the Wikipedia article, water jets don’t work for tempered glass, diamonds and some ceramics.

Other recent Flow Man videos ask these questions:

Can water cut a rug?

Can water cut a cheeseburger?

Can water cut a bowling ball?

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Washington state’s salmon managers provided so much interesting information on Tuesday that I could not fit it all into my story in yesterday’s Kitsap Sun.

Pat Pattillo, salmon policy coordinator for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, deserves recognition for his patience with me and the numerous sport and commercial fishers who ask him questions. He and WDFW Director Phil Anderson are two of the most mild-mannered guys you will ever know, and yet they manage to work through tough salmon negotiations year after year.

Let me recount some of the issues expected to come up over the next few weeks, with a focus on things not covered in my story.
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