Watching Our Water Ways

When I lived in Kansas as a child, I would sometimes see flocks of starlings swarming around, each bird moving in concert with the others until they landed in trees, where they would carry on in loud raucus voices, all talking at once.

Yes, I’ve seen starlings, but I’ve never seen anything like the huge mass of swirling birds captured in this video by two young women on the River Shannon in Ireland.

The two, Sophie Windsor Clive and Liberty Smith, have established an independent film company they call Islands & Rivers. According to their website, the women “find inspiration from bike rides, being by water, making things and meeting people.”

A flock of starlings is called a murmuration, which is the title to the accompanying music by Nomad Soul.

What makes these birds fly in such a coordinator manner? The question is the subject of some scientific study — not just for an understanding of natural behavior but also for improving the efficiency of human activities.

An article by Peter Miller in National Geographic discusses “swam theory,” covering why animals act as they do and how people are learning from such behavior. Check out the photo gallery that shows other kinds of swarming behavior.

Miller describes a computer graphics expert, Craig Reynolds, who wanted to realistically simulate a flock of birds for movies and video games. He created a program in 1986 that consisted of birdlike objects he called boids. The program required them to follow three simple rules: 1) avoid crowding nearby boids, 2) fly in the average direction of nearby boids, and 3) stay close to nearby boids.

“The result, when set in motion on a computer screen, was a convincing simulation of flocking, including lifelike and unpredictable movements,” Miller wrote.

For the history of this mathematical discovery, see the online article called “Boids,” written Reynolds himself, who describes the program’s first commercial use in the 1992 film “Batman Returns.”

Thanks to Chuck Hower of South Kitsap for sending me the starling video.

I don’t know if this next video has anything to do with flocking or swarm theory, but it’s an impressive display of duck behavior.

Share on Facebook

The Union River near Belfair — the last estuary you come to when venturing into Hood Canal — slaps us in the face with an enigma.

The Union River flows into the very end of Hood Canal near Belfair. The red outline is part of the Pacific Northwest Salmon Center.

For the moment, I can’t do much more than pose some perplexing questions. But I get the feeling that if we could get the answers, we would understand more about salmon recovery in Lower Hood Canal and possibly other places as well.

The Union River also highlights the customary finger-pointing as to why certain stocks of salmon declined in the first place and what it will take to bring them back. Of the four H’s — harvest, habitat, hatcheries and hydro — the greatest finger-pointing goes on between harvest and habitat.

Let’s take Hood Canal summer chum and focus on the Union River, which was the subject of a story I wrote for Monday’s Kitsap Sun.

First, why did summer chum go extinct in the Dewatto and Tahuya rivers — the closest rivers to the Union — while maintaining a viable population in the Union?

Talking about habitat, the Dewatto and Tahuya are far more intact ecologically than the Union, which is dammed up in the Bremerton watershed and has many houses crowding its banks from Kitsap County down to Belfair.

Researchers believe that one of the main reasons for the summer chum decline was excessive fishing years ago during the early part of the coho salmon run, when summer chum were making their way toward their natal streams.

But if that’s the case, how did the summer chum bound for the Union get past the nets near the Dewatto and Tahuya? Were the nets set clear across those rivers, thus taking nearly every fish going upstream while letting fish bound for the Union to move on by?

Were poachers prowling the more remote Dewatto and Tahuya rivers killing summer chum for the “sport” of it when river flows were at their lowest?

I base these questions on comments I have heard through the years, comments that are almost conspiratorial in nature but deserve an answer. If true, perhaps the summer chum in the Union River survived only because of the larger number of people watching what was going on in and around the waterway.

And what kind of poaching goes on even now? Not so long ago, I received reports each year about small fishing boats coming into the Dewatto. Have those activities been stopped? What about current activities in the river? Has the culture changed enough to really protect the spawners?

As for habitat, it is true that the Dewatto and Tahuya have not faced the same level of development. But, through the years, I’ve heard stories of landowners and even trespassers doing things that damage the rivers, generally out of sight of anyone in authority. I’ve been told about makeshift dikes, dredging during salmon-egg incubation, changing the course of the rivers, and allowing manure and excess pesticides to get into the water. And then there are landslides, some the result of normal geological processes and some caused by landscape alterations.

While we generally believe that the Dewatto and Tahuya rivers are relatively natural, maybe they were heavily altered in a few key places by a few careless people, while those living along the Union limited their impacts, knowing that their actions could affect flooding or water quality for their nearby neighbors. That’s not to say I don’t hear horror stories about the Union River as well.

These ramblings of mine are not facts. They are in the realm of conjecture, but I have heard such stories and would like to get some answers. Perhaps the proposed study on the Union River could lead to a greater discussion about what went wrong for the Dewatto and the Tahuya. It might help to avoid the same problems somewhere else.

Share on Facebook

Numerous tests focused on a dead killer whale have so far failed to determine whether the fatal injury was caused by an underwater explosion or possibly a glancing blow, such as from a boat or even another animal.

L-112 in happier times. The 3-year-old orca died in February, and her death is the subject of an intense investigation.
Photo by Jeanne Hyde, Whale of a Porpoise
(Click on image to see Jeanne's tribute page)

For the first time, all the key members on a committee studying the death of L-112 got together last week. Their latest conclusions were updated in a report released yesterday.

More tests on tissues taken from the injury site are planned, even as the investigation continues into what human activities may have been occurring in or near the Columbia River at the time of L-112’s death.

The female orca was found dead at Long Beach on Feb. 11. For information, check out my previous reports in Water Ways:

Feb. 18: So far, sonar has not been linked to orca death

March 15: Balcomb wants to know if young orca was bombed

March 22: Mystery of orca’s death only deepens with new info

April 4: Orca’s death enters the realm of law enforcement

Veterinarian Joe Gaydos of the SeaDoc Society told me yesterday that the investigators have been unable to pinpoint what caused the extensive bruising and swelling on both sides of the head, especially on the right side.

The trauma was spread out fairly evenly across the head, consistent with force from an explosion or other high-pressure impact, Joe said, but a similar injury could result from a glancing blow from a boat or even a strong impact with the tail of another whale. It was not a straight-on blow, however.

“The bones in the area where the hemorrhage occurred are not tough bones,” Joe said. “It would not be hard to break that bone.”

Yet the bones in that part of the head were not broken, which shows that the “pressure was diffusely spread out,” he explained.

I haven’t had a chance to talk with Steve Raverty, a pathologist at the Animal Health Center in British Columbia, who is studying the tissue damage. But Joe tells me that some additional tests are planned to see whether signs of blast trauma can be distinguished from impact trauma.

One question is whether the injury burst blood vessels and caused blood to leak into the surrounding muscle and other tissue. That could help tip the weight of evidence. The problem is that tissue breakdown had taken place to the extent that discrete blood cells were no longer visible. With special staining techniques, it may be possible to determine whether blood had escaped into the surrounding tissue.

Another test will look for fat in the blood vessels and organs, Joe said. Some previous studies suggest that explosions can dislodge blubber, leaving fat deposits that can be found later.

One of the ongoing difficulties for the investigators is that the tissues were not fresh enough for them to make the finer judgments needed to rule out one source of trauma over another, although it seems apparent now that the animal did not die of disease.

Aside from L-112 herself, NOAA Fisheries is trying to identify human activities, such as blasting or bombing, that may have caused the fatal injury. U.S. and Canadian navies say they were not operating in the area at the time, although the Canadians set off two underwater charges in the Salish Sea far to the north on Feb. 6. Ocean currents would not have carried a dead whale from there to Long Beach, however.

Investigators are still waiting to hear whether the U.S. Coast Guard or Army Corps or Engineers were conducting any operations in the area at the time.

Fishing vessels were not likely to be off Long Beach or the Columbia River in February, according to reports.

There is some hope that acoustic-recording buoys in the area may have picked up the sound of an explosion or the sound of killer whales moving through the area to pinpoint the time of death.

Brad Hanson of the NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center tells me that NOAA operates four buoys in the general area of consideration. The buoys stay in place and sample sounds in the water for 30 seconds out of every 10 minutes. That’s one-twentieth of the time, an interval chosen to conserve hard-drive space while capturing enough information to determine if killer whales are passing by and to identify the pods if other noises do not interfere.

For most of the buoys, the data won’t be available until the end of summer, when the buoys are pulled from the water and the data processed. Another coastal buoy broke loose from Cape Flattery at the northwest corner of the state during the winter and was later recovered. Brad said that data is being processed now. While it isn’t certain yet whether the buoy was still in place in February, there’s a good chance it was, since it was recovered in April.

Brad said he will look specifically for sounds recorded before Feb. 11 to see if he can help solve the mystery of L-112’s death. Other recorders closer to the Columbia River may be more revealing when their data are processed later.

The full report of the investigation team can be downloaded: Southern Resident Killer Whale L112 Stranding Progress Report, May 15, 2012 (PDF 72 kb).

Share on Facebook

We have a plain and simple bird bath in our yard. The birds don’t seem to need a fancy place to take a bath, but I got to wondering if anyone has produced an amusing bird bath. I found a few, which I’ll share with you here.

Frogs seem to be a common theme for bird baths, but it is interesting that cats — of course enemies of birds — are sometimes willing to help them take a bath or even to feed them (bird feeder).

If you would like to take a closer look or get purchase information about these bird baths, click on any of the photos.

At the very bottom, you’ll find an animation, based on a true story of a sneaky cat trying to share a bird bath for his own advantage. That’s followed by a video of a parrot who has plenty to say while taking a spray bath on his perch.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share on Facebook

Point No Point Lighthouse — the centerpiece of a county park near the tip of the Kitsap Peninsula — has undergone $100,000 worth of improvements.

Jeff Gales of U.S. Lighthouse Society can be seen in the fresnel lens at Point No Point Lighthouse near Hansville.
Kitsap Sun photo by Meegan Reid

The $100,000 came from a grant program called Partners in Preservation. Under the program, millions of dollars have been handed out in recent years for historical restoration work by American Express in coordination with the National Trust for Historical Preservation.

The Point No Point Lighthouse received the cash in 2010, when numerous other projects in the Puget Sound region also received money. See Partners in Preservation – Puget Sound for a description of all the projects.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share on Facebook

This week is National Drinking Water Week, a chance to recognize the high quality of water we drink in the United States and how we built and maintain the amazing storage and piping networks.

The video at right shows some interesting pictures of water systems in Kitsap County. It takes a bit of reading to get through it, but the video reminds us that the area — and most areas — started out with many surface-water systems and now relies mostly on groundwater.

The history of Bremerton’s water system, which still includes a highly protected surface-water supply on the Union River, is described briefly on the city’s website.

Drinking Water Week is a chance to review the water quality of our own drinking water, at least for those of us on public water systems. The EPA requires most systems to provide information to their customers once a year. Accessing this information at other times is not always easy, although most of the larger systems post the required water-quality data on their websites.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share on Facebook

The connection seems obvious until you look into the complexities:

1. Puget Sound chinook salmon are listed as a “threatened” species.
2. Southern Resident killer whales, which frequent Puget Sound, are listed as “endangered.”
3. Southern Resident killer whales eat primarily chinook salmon.

Therefore … isn’t it obvious that the shortage of Puget Sound chinook has had a major impact on the whales?

Once you begin to challenge the assumptions — as a seven-member scientific panel has done — a more complex picture emerges. It is not easy to sort out predator-prey interactions, especially considering that the prey may include hundreds of individual salmon stocks, some of which are doing quite well.

The independent panel (PDF 144 kb), made up of U.S. and Canadian scientists, tackled the question of whether cutbacks or elimination of salmon fishing could help rebuild the killer whale population at a faster rate. The panel’s preliminary conclusion is that reducing fisheries could have a slight benefit, but only if certain assumptions hold true.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share on Facebook

Seth Casteel is a pet photographer who does not believe in sitting your pet down in a studio for a formal portrait. Instead, he always looks for an element of surprise.

During one photo shoot, Casteel was shooting pictures of a dog jumping into a swimming pool. Looking for a better vantage point, he purchased an underwater point-and-shoot camera and gained a surprising new underwater angle on the dog — a Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Buster.

That was the beginning of a series of underwater dog shoots, according to a report by Eve Becker in “Tails,” magazine, a publication focused on pets.

In February, Seth’s collection of photographs went viral on the Internet, where it was picked up on all kinds of blogs and email lists. Overnight, his website, LittleFriendsPhoto.com, jumped from 200 to 30,000 hits, causing the server to crash.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share on Facebook

Poulsbo is the first local jurisdiction in Kitsap County to update its Shoreline Master Program, as required by state law, and send it on to the Washington Department of Ecology for ratification.

The Poulsbo City Council approved the document Wednesday, as reported by Kitsap Sun reporter Amy Phan.

As required by formal state policies, the shorelines plan adopts numerous new regulations to accomplish these basic goals:

• Protect the quality of water and the natural environment to achieve “no net loss” of ecological function as time goes on,
• Encourage water-dependent uses along the shoreline while discouraging uses that are not connected to the water,
• Preserve and enhance public access and recreational uses along the shoreline.

Poulsbo shoreline designations (Click to download full size (PDF 976 kb).)

Keri Weaver, Poulsbo’s associate planner, does a good job outlining the content of the Poulsbo Shoreline Master Program in her staff report (PDF 224 kb) submitted to the City Council. The full SMP (PDF 552 kb) is more revealing and not difficult to read.

The document lists five “shoreline environments,” defined by ecological characteristics and current uses, each with its own development rules:

• Shoreline residential
• High intensity
• Urban conservancy
• Natural
• Aquatic

Check out the shoreline maps to locate each of the environments.

The always-controversial issue of buffers was settled during the previous update of Poulsbo’s Critical Areas Ordinance. The City Council saw no reason to revisit its justification for 100-foot buffers along the city’s saltwater shoreline on Liberty Bay and 150-foot buffers along Dogfish Creek, the largest stream draining into bay. In addition, 25-foot setbacks expand the no-building zone, but water-dependent uses and public access may be exempt from those setbacks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share on Facebook

I wonder if anyone has noticed that I’ve been away from this Water Ways blog for a time. Aside from visiting my youngest daughter in Yakima, where she had her first baby, I’ve been occupied with breaking news for the Kitsap Sun.

There is no shortage of things to talk about, however, and I’d like to start with the recently approved two-year Science Work Plan for the Puget Sound Partnership.

Joe Gaydos

In developing a plan to investigate science-related questions, the Partnership’s Science Panel set out to identify weaknesses in our overall understanding of the Puget Sound ecosystem. The panel chose to be strategic about filling the gaps in our knowledge.

“We want to know everything, of course,” chairman Joe Gaydos told me. “But just because there’s a gap in our knowledge does not mean we should go out and do a study.

“The real question is, where does the lack of science hinder our ability to make decisions? We’re not just doing science for science’s sake but to help us make better decisions.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Share on Facebook