Watching Our Water Ways

An Associated Press story came out even before the Navy officially published its environmental impact statement in the Federal Register.

The EIS predicted that 200 deaths and 1,600 instances of hearing loss would be suffered by marine mammals in the Navy’s testing and training ranges in Hawaii and California, reported AP writer Audrey McAvoy.

The old Navy analysis, she said, listed injuries or deaths to about 100 marine mammals.

So what caused these increased estimates of injury and death, and what are the implications for the Northwest Training and Testing Range Complex in Washington state?

It turns out that the causes are multiple and the implications many, as I reported in a story in Sunday’s Kitsap Sun.

In both California-Hawaii and the Northwest, the greatest effects come from the use of sonar and explosives, which the Navy considers essential to proper training and testing. By far, the greatest number of injuries and deaths are to dolphins. But the higher numbers do not mean that the Navy will be changing its operations to a great degree. If one doesn’t read this carefully, the higher numbers are easy to get confused.

To better understand the increased numbers, I asked for help from Sheila Murray, public information officer for Navy Region Northwest. She arranged a conference call with Navy officials Alex Stone, project manager; John Van Name, senior environmental planner; and Roy Sokolowski, an acoustic modeling expert.

“I would like to point out,” Alex told me at the outset, “that there is quite a bit of difference between this study and the previous studies.”

We had a good discussion, but here’s the bottom line: Without running more computer simulations, it is hard to identify the precise source of the increased injuries predicted in the new EIS for California-Hawaii. They can, however, be divided into three categories:

1. New activities that the Navy wishes to conduct or an increased tempo of existing activities,
2. Ongoing activities not included in previous analyses, or
3. New studies that adjust the model, such as greater effects on marine mammals than understood before (threshold changes) or a greater number of marine mammals in areas where activities are taking place (density changes).

I’m told that the greatest increase in numbers comes from additional studies and more accurate modeling. The Navy has spent millions of dollars studying the effects of its operations on the environment, with particular emphasis on marine mammals.

Navy officials emphasize that they are striving to protect the environment. They say that can be accomplished while adequately training and testing Navy personnel to protect the United States from enemy threats. But it’s a balancing act.

I’m hoping that the Navy can produce a fact sheet clarifying the numbers for readers of the California-Hawaii EIS, even if it takes more analysis. It could be a chart showing the number of “takes” for each species under the old and new analysis, with a breakdown describing how much of the increase fits into each of the above categories.

I’m told that similar increases are likely to be seen when the Navy unveils its EIS for the Northwest Training and Testing Range Complex, scheduled for release toward the end of next year. To avoid confusion, it would help if a fact sheet explaining the numbers would be released at the same time.

In my story on Sunday, I talked a little about what environmental groups may do with the new analysis being used in California and Hawaii. Some organizations last year filed a lawsuit over testing and training in the Northwest. More will be coming out in the future.

As for other parts of the country, Navy training and testing continue to make the news. A report last week by David Fleshler of the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., revealed:

“The South Florida Ocean Measurement Facility, located off Port Everglades, will see an increase in ship traffic, mine countermeasure training and the testing of unmanned underwater vehicles, according to the environmental review (released by the Navy).

“The facility encompasses a network of undersea cables and detection devices used to determine the acoustical and electromagnetic characteristics of different ships.

“Under the new testing plan, ‘you will definitely be seeing new classes of ships,’ said Roxie Merritt, spokeswoman for Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, which includes South Florida.”

While the story did not include estimates of harm to marine mammals, it did include a quote from Michael Jasny of the Natural Resources Defense Council:

“When the Navy intrudes such intense disruption into the environment, it tears at the very fabric of their surroundings. Sonar can have a range of effects causing animals to break off foraging, abandon habitat or die on the beach.”

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

(more…)

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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.

(more…)

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Work on the Washington State Shellfish Initiative is shifting into high gear, as I learned yesterday during a meeting of the Shellfish Initiative Advisory Group.

The initiative is being directed by a “core group,” made up of representatives from seven state and federal agencies. Advice is coming from a much larger advisory group in quarterly meeings like the first one yesterday. See “Purpose Statement” (PDF 44 kb) for details.

Manchester Research Station
NOAA photo

During the meeting, the group reviewed progress on a work plan that includes more than 30 different tasks, each assigned to a small working group. I made notes on many of the projects, which I’ll share with you in future news stories or blog entries.

I did focus on one Kitsap County project with relevance for the entire Puget Sound region: a new oyster hatchery at Manchester Research Station to produce baby Olympia oysters. It will be part of an ongoing effort to restore the native Olympias. See the story I wrote for today’s Kitsap Sun.

One anonymous person commented at the bottom of the story: “Hey, an organization that actually accomplishes something! Keep up the good work and don’t get bogged down in doing studies and producing reports that no one will read or respond to.”

I understand why people are sometimes frustrated by the planning that seems to go on and on. But without planning, I’m not sure who would grap the limited money. Without planning, the projects would have no focus and the work would be done haphazardly.

The Washington Shellfish Initiative, while going beyond Puget Sound, is integrated within the Puget Sound Action Agenda by the Puget Sound Partnership, which has been assigned by the governor to coordinate the shellfish initiative. The Action Agenda is designed as a blueprint for the full restoration of the Puget Sound ecosystem.

If you’d like to catch a glimpse of other shellfish projects in the works, you can download the work plan (PDF 120 kb).

For background on the Washington Shellfish Initiative, check out the story I wrote for the Kitsap Sun Dec. 9, when the project was announced jointly by Gov. Chris Gregoire and Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Other information and important links related to the initiative can found on a Water Ways entry I wrote a few days later on Dec. 16.

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“No matter how you spell it or how you pronounce it, H2O is a wonder: a beautifully simple, simply beautiful element that, when all is said and done, means nothing less than life.”

Eleanor Chittenden with a prized steelhead on the Elwha River in 1907 during an expedition with The Mountaineers.
Photo by Asahel Curtis, courtesy of Washington State Historical Society

Thus begins the introduction to a collection of historical photographs titled “In Praise of Water,” which includes mostly amusing pictures from 1936 to 1968. The collection was put together by Life magazine in recognition of World Water Day last month, but I just stumbled on it last week. Please click on the link to take a look. (For the chemists among us, we’ll have to forgive the term “element,” because water is actually a compound.)

To bring the wonder of historical photos back home to Washington state, I pulled this fabulous photo of Eleanor Chittenden fishing on the Elwha River in 1907. It’s from a collection managed by the Washington State Historical Society.

Eleanor, 15 in this picture, was the daughter of famed engineer Hiram Chittenden, who worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in connection with the Port of Seattle. The photo, by Asahel Curtis, was taken during an expedition to the Olympic Peninsula with The Mountaineers. Eleanor was no doubt proud of her catch, a very nice steelhead. Of course, this was many years before a dam was built on the Elwha.

Bob Royer wrote a nice piece about “The Girl and the Fish” in the Cascadia Courier, a blog that relates history to present-day events.

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Parahawking is a relatively new sport combining falconry with paragliding.

Birds of prey tend to understand updrafts like no human ever could. It’s part of their instinctual nature to conserve energy while flying.

Paraglider pilots have always paid attention to where these birds are soaring. But now some of the rehabilitated birds are being trained as majestic aerial companions, coming and going from the glider to take a bite of food and then lead the way to more adventure.

The stunning two-minute video provides a glimpse of a training session with a Harris’s Hawk. (Be sure to click to full screen.) Lite Touch Films, which produced the piece, plans to introduce the sport to the U.S. I’m attempting to get more particulars about this video, which includes music by Asche & Spencer. Thanks to Chuck Hower of South Kitsap for bringing this video to my attention.

Parahawking reportedly got its start in 2001, when Scott Mason, a British bird trainer and conservationist, traveled to Nepal to go paragliding with a wide variety of raptors in the Himalayan Mountains. He hooked up with a paragliding company to create a commercial enterprise, which donates a portion of its income to bird conservation groups. Check out his story in the newspaper Gulf Times.

The 20-minute video below was produced by Mason to show some of the trips taken in Nepal during the 2010-2011 season of parahawking. For details, check out Parahawking and Himalayan Raptor Rescue.

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UPDATE: May 7, 2012

Orca Network is reporting that researchers at the Center for Whale Research have determined that L-112s family is alive and well. The identification used photos taken by Greg Schorr and Erin Falcone of Cascadia Research when the two spotted members of K and L pods off Westport on April 29.

Because of the trauma sustained by L-112, there had been speculation that other members of her family may have been killed or injured.
—–

Federal law-enforcement officers have launched an investigation into the death of the orca L-112, with an emphasis on looking for those who may have been involved in her fatal injuries.

“We received a complaint that the death was not due to natural causes, so we are looking into that to see if we can make a determination,” said Vicki Nomura, special agent in charge at NOAA’s Northwest Office of Law Enforcement.

The decision follows a suggestion by Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research. Ken believes that law enforcement officers will be more successful in getting information from the U.S. and Canadian navies, who, he says, may know more than they’re letting on.

I posted the above earlier today as a comment on a previous Water Ways entry called “Mystery of orca’s death only deepens with new info.”

Since then, I have received a brief progress report on the overall investigation from the Northwest Region Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Dyanna Lambourn of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife told me that the document was prepared jointly by the necropsy team to clear up some misunderstandings that people had.

Most of the information has been available for awhile, but I found a couple paragraphs worth noting:

Environmental Conditions
“Based on the approximate date of death, NOAA Fisheries and the NOAA Hazardous Materials Response Division reviewed environmental data from early February and found that prevailing wind and currents, between February 1 and February 11 were predominantly from the south. In addition, local current conditions are largely influenced by eddies flowing northward from the mouth of the Columbia River. This indicates that the animal likely died near the Columbia River or to the south and could have drifted a substantial distance before being cast ashore on Long Beach. Other environmental factors that are being researched include; earthquakes and if they could cause trauma or disorientation and sea surface temperature. Diet studies are underway to further investigate winter feeding habits.”

Human Activities
“We are seeking information from a variety of sources in an attempt to identify whether human activities may have contributed to the injuries we observed. Communication with the United States Navy, Canadian Navy, United States Coast Guard, United States Air Force, and fisheries managers is on-going or being initiated. NOAA Fisheries has reviewed reports received by the Marine Mammal Authorization Program from commercial fishing vessels between January and February 2012 and found that no incidental mortality or injuries involving killer whale(s) was reported anywhere on the west coast during this timeframe.”

Read the full update: “Southern Resident Killer Whale L112 Stranding Progress Report”

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