Watching Our Water Ways

A humpback whale made a rare appearance in Hood Canal’s Dabob Bay at the end of last week, then mysteriously disappeared from sight.

A humpback whale was sighted Friday in Dabob Bay by researchers Connie and JD Gallant.
Photo by Connie Gallant

As far as I can tell, Connie and JD Gallant, who were doing research on the bay Friday afternoon, were among the very few to see the humpback, or possibly two of them.

It makes you wonder how often large whales, such as humpbacks, come into Hood Canal without anyone seeing them, or at least reporting them.

“I was so thrilled,” Connie told me this morning as she described the encounter.

JD was motoring their 40-foot research vessel, the Sea Turtle, near Broadspit in the northern part of the estuary when he spotted one or more whales surfacing. JD stopped the boat, pulled up the water-testing meter, and yelled, “Whales off the port bow!”

Connie, who was below deck inputting data into a computer, ran up and began shooting photos. JD told Connie he believed there were two whales, but Connie only saw one.

Personally, I can’t remember anyone reporting humpbacks in Hood Canal. I phoned several folks I know who live on the canal, and nobody seems to recall ever seeing humpbacks. It is quite a different situation when one talks about visits to Hood Canal by gray whales or killer whales, which I’ve reported through the years.

My most memorable experience was in 2005, when a group of six transient killer whales spent more than five months swimming up and down the shorelines of Hood Canal, feasting on seals and sea lions whenever they got a chance. Those orcas stayed so long I thought they might make the canal their permanent home.

John Calambokidis of Cascadia Research told me that he has a general recollection of a humpback showing up in Hood Canal years ago, but he could not locate any written reports of the sightings. If someone was able to snap a picture of the underside of the fluke (tail) of a humpback, John said he might be able to identify the whale from a photographic catalog of humpbacks on the West Coast.

John tells me that a January sighting of a humpback whale is unusual, because most of the population is now on the breeding grounds near the Hawaiian Islands or else off the coast of Mexico. A few humpbacks are always around, he said, but it is worrisome when any animal shows up in a place where it is not expected.

Historically, one population of humpbacks spent the winters in the inland waters of northern Washington and southern British Columbia, but they were largely wiped out by commercial whalers, he said.

The West Coast population of humpbacks has been growing at about 7.5 percent a year since the early 1990s, according to Calambokidis. The general population now stands at about 2,000 animals, compared to about 500 more than 20 years ago.

As for the recent humpback sighting, I would like to get a report from anyone who may have seen this whale (or two) in Hood Canal or from anyone who may have seen one in the past.

Connie said the whale or whales that she observed Friday appeared to be “frolicking” — that is leaping out of the water, twisting and turning. She said they seemed to be about the size or her boat, about 40 feet long. That would make it a fairly young humpback.

The encounter lasted about 15 minutes, then the whales seemed to disappear, she said.

“We hung around for about an hour,” she said, “but they didn’t surface again.”

Connie and JD, who operate Greenfleet Monitoring Expeditions, have been collecting water-quality data — including information on dissolved oxygen — from Quilcene and Dabob bays.

The humpback whale spotted in Dabob Bay disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived.
Photo by Connie Gallant

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Flood control is no longer a primary objective of federal restoration work on the Skokomish River — but improving the ecosystem is likely to reduce flood problems for people who live in the valley.

The Skokomish Watershed Action Team (SWAT) surveys an area where the Skokomish River has wiped out all vegetation and left a massive gravel bar.
Photo by Steve Zugschwerdt

We don’t need to be reminded that the Skokomish is the most frequently flooded river in the state. Although I’m not sure how soon another river might take over that dubious distinction, it’s easy to see that a lot of time and money is being spent to get the river back to a more natural condition.

The Army Corps of Engineers, known for massive projects such as dikes, dams and dredging, won’t be adopting those sorts of projects for the Skokomish River.

Jessie Winkler, Skokomish project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, explained it this way:

“Clearly, flooding is a problem in the basin. But because of limited residential and commercial activity, it would be very difficult to justify a flood-control project. In order to be justified as a federal project, the economic benefits must be greater than the cost.”

For further explanation, check out my story in Monday’s Kitsap Sun.

The good news is that the Corps has not turned its back on the Skokomish. In fact, the river is considered so important to the Hood Canal region that the agency is considering some large-scale projects focused on environmental restoration — including possibly relocating Skokomish Valley Road.

Other interesting ideas include creating sediment traps to capture gravel in selective locations, relocating existing dikes to create a wider river channel, forming new side channels to relieve flow on the main river and even aeration pumps to boost oxygen levels in Hood Canal.

Many of the projects designed for ecological improvement will also reduce the flooding problems.

A report, scheduled to be released in late spring or early summer, summarizes all information collected so far in the $4.7 million study of the Skokomish River watershed. The report will cover current ecological conditions, future ecological conditions without restoration and a list of potential restoration projects — including preliminary design, estimated costs and ecological benefits, Winkler told me.

Potential projects are only conceptual at this point, though experts have begun to look at locations along the river where different types of efforts may be fruitful. Further study will narrow the list of to a plan to be submitted to Congress for funding.

The upcoming report will begin to explore which of the following actions are most likely to succeed in specific locations:

• Remove or breach levees/dikes
• Construct setback levees/dikes
• Create salmon spawning habitat
• Reconnect wetlands, side channels, backwater areas, and tributaries
• Substrate modification
• Install aeration or oxygenation system in Annas Bay
• Reconnect dendritic channels in estuary
• Large woody debris
• Engineered Log Jams
• Fish passable weir
• Channel stabilization
• Riverbed and wetland vehicle exclusion
• Enhance vegetation – riparian & estuarine
• Control invasive species
• Channel rehabilitation or new channel creation
• Selective gravel removal on gravel bars
• Spot-dredge
• Sediment trap
• Culverts: a) add; b) remove; c) replace; d) upgrade
• Road modifications
• Rehabilitate bank lines
• Cool water diversion to Annas Bay

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Capt. Jim Maya of Maya’s Westside Charters on San Juan Island sent me his favorite photos of 2011.

“Though perhaps not technically my best,” he wrote. “they are my personal favorites. I hope you enjoy them and have a great 2012.”

Jim sent the photos on Jan. 1, so the delay in getting them online is all mine. The captions below each picture are Jim’s comments about the events and circumstances of the moment. Click on each photo for a better view.

Nov. 19. Ts with Sucia Island and Mt. Baker. We first found them at Speiden Island thanks to Kim and Karl Bruder, who run Lonesome Cove. Evening light. / Capt. Jim Maya

Aug. 26. Spectacular speed swimming! We call it porpoising for some reason. Strait of Georgia headed toward the Frazer River. Wish the lighting had been better, but you get the idea. / Capt. Jim Maya

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS
(more…)

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Because of the holidays, I did not get an immediate response from several climate experts I contacted following Nels Sultan’s comments about sea level rise in a blog post regarding “king tides.”

Earth at the winter solstice, Dec. 22, 2011 / NOAA photo

If you recall, Nels was making the point that the sea level in Seattle has been rising at a steady rate of .68 feet, or about 8 inches, per century since 1898, as reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

His post included this statement:

“There is no real basis for the claims that sea levels will rise by 2.6 feet or 7 feet, or more. Globally, sea level rise has NOT accelerated. As found and reported by many researchers who specialize in this, including the eminent professor Bob Dean and other coastal experts.”

As a reporter, I’m not inclined to shoot back a response. I’d rather discuss the issue with experts in the field. That is what I did, and I think I have a better handle on the issue.

What I’m hearing is that the original estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a rise of between 7 inches and 2 feet by the end of the century — remain reasonable, but conservative given that they did not account for increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet. See this explanation by Stefan Rahmstorf soon after the release of the 2007 IPCC report. By the way, the range above accounts for the minimum and maximum across six climate-change scenarios.

Ever since, researchers have been trying to find ways to account for the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, but the uncertainties remain high. A widely cited paper by W.T. Pfeffer, J.T. Harper and S. O’Neel suggests that “most likely” starting point for further refinement is .8 meter, or 31 inches, of sea level rise by 2100.

In some ways, the authors of the Pfeffer paper were trying to limit some of the extremes being reported by others, so they concluded that sea level rise could not be more than 6 feet by 2100. Some folks have reported 6 feet as the top of the range, as unlikely as that extreme may be. Check out this explanation posed by Real Climate and this response by Pfeffer and his collaborators.

As for the Houston-Dean paper that Nels Sultan mentioned, those authors created “various problems” in their assumptions, according to Eric Steig, professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington. One major problem was the starting date of 1930, as explained by Stefan Rahmstorf in Real Climate:

“Other start dates either before or after this minimum show positive acceleration. Picking 1930 for this analysis is thus a classic cherry-pick, and according to the authors that is no accident. They write in the paper: ‘Since the worldwide data of Church and White (2006)…appear to have a linear rise since around 1930, we analyzed the period 1930 to 2010.’ The interval was thus hand-picked to show a linear rise rather than acceleration.

“Houston & Dean use their result to question the future acceleration of sea level rise predicted by Vermeer & Rahmstorf (2009) for the 21st Century as a consequence of global warming. They argue that the 1930s acceleration minimum calls into question the semi-empirical link between global temperature and global sea level proposed by us in that paper. However, it is clear they never bothered to check this, because quite the opposite is the case: our semi-empirical formula predicts this acceleration minimum, as the graph above shows. As it turns out, this is an expected outcome of the mid-20th-Century plateau in global temperature.”

I also discussed this issue of sea level rise with Lara Whitely Binder, outreach specialist for the UW’s Climate Impacts Group. While sea level rise means one thing on the world scale, she told me, the local impacts can be quite different.

If you live in Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula, for example, you are not likely to see any sea level rise until at least 2080. That’s because the entire land mass is uplifting as a result of movement along the tectonic plates, and the uplift is predicted to be faster than sea level rise until late in the century.

On the other hand, Central and South Puget Sound may not be uplifting at all and could be sinking, which would intensify the effects of sea level rise. Areas built on fill, including portions of Olympia, also could be sinking as the fill settles, Lara said.

In addition to global rise in sea level and local tectonic shifts, factors affecting regional sea level rise include thermal expansion of ocean waters and changes in onshore and offshore wind patterns.

During El Niño events, sea level can rise as much as 12 inches for several months at a time. The Climate Impacts Group analyzed more than 30 scenarios from global climate models and concluded that the change in wind patterns as a result of climate change could decrease sea level by as much as 1 inch or possibly increase it by as much as 6 inches. Review the white paper “Sea Level Rise in the Coastal Waters of Washington State” (PDF 2.4 mb) for more details.

How much an individual property is affected by sea level rise depends on the slope of the beach. Given the same rate of rise, water will affect a house sooner when it is built on a gradually sloping beach as opposed to a steep slope. In any case, tides and weather will always play a major role in water levels.

Lara told me that a group of West Coast researchers is working on a new report about sea level for publication later this year by the National Academy of Sciences. I’ll try to review that paper when it comes out.

I wish to thank Eric Steig, Lara Whitely Binder, Cliff Mass, David Montgomery and Nate Mantua for responding to my inquiry.

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Work is progressing rapidly around the edges of the Kitsap Forest & Bay Project — an effort to protect a 7,000-acre mosaic of lowland forest, shorelines and wetlands in North Kitsap.

Pope Resources lands for sale Click to enlarge

The ecological values of the undeveloped landscape is becoming known among government officials and the public. So far, nobody has jumped in with millions of dollars to buy the land for conservation. But, as the year comes to a close, there are plenty of reasons for optimism among supporters.

When I consider what it will take to make this project happen, I keep thinking of a jigsaw puzzle. I realize the puzzle metaphor is overworked, but let’s stay with it. A good way to begin picture puzzles is by first lining up all the edges and later filling in the middle. To me, that is what is happening with the Kitsap Forest & Bay Project.

First, Forterra — formerly Cascade Land Conservancy — has embraced the project, bringing to the table extensive experience in acquiring lands for conservation purposes. When an option to buy the land from Pope Resources was announced, Forterra president Gene Duvernoy stated, “This is probably the most important project we can accomplish to save Puget Sound.” See Kitsap Sun, Oct. 17.

Another major step came recently when the Puget Sound Partnership released a draft of its Puget Sound Action Agenda. The Action Agenda is designed to recognize the most important preservation and restoration actions that can be taken in the next two years. Although the actions have not yet been lined up in priority, the Kitsap Forest & Bay Project was called out as a high-priority action. Read the story with links in Kitsap Sun, Dec. 21.

Something similar happened in the first Action Agenda in 2008, when the Partnership called for the acquisition and restoration of lands in the Nisqually River delta. The value was so highly considered that some action areas agreed to delay their own projects to move Nisqually to fruition. Perhaps something like that will happen for the North Kitsap lands. Check out the video “The Nisqually Estuary Returns.”

KUOW reporter Ashley Ahearn visited the North Kitsap property and produced a radio piece that outlines the value of the 7,000 acres and discusses the potential acquisition. She did a nice job, as you can see on Earthfix.

Michelle Connor, executive vice president of Forterra, said Ashley’s story will help spread the word about the project throughout the state and beyond.

“This is something that the Kitsap community has known for a long time,” Michelle told me. “Now other people are catching up with us. There is nothing comparable in the Puget Sound region.”

Further bolstering the project is an upcoming study that will examine the ecological values of the 7,000 acres, including nearly two miles of undeveloped shoreline.

A grant of $270,000 will be used to characterize ecosystem values across the landscape and determine which areas are best suited for preservation, forestry and possibly development. A portion of the grant will be used to decide whether revenues can be generated from timber harvest without upsetting the ecological integrity of the region.

The $270,000 study was part of some $6.3 million provided by the EPA’s National Estuary Program for 23 grants earmarked for protecting and restoring Puget Sound watersheds. See Kitsap Sun, Dec. 23.

Acquisition funding for the Kitsap Forest & Bay Project will depend on a variety of public grants and private donations, each with their own requirements. At the same time, the 7,000 acres under discussion contains a variety of small ecosystems that could qualify for one or more restoration and preservation grants.

The 7,000-acre jigsaw puzzle is rather formidable and almost overwhelming, but Michelle Connor is undaunted. Her optimism is infectious. Few people know as much about public conservation grants and philanthropic efforts, and Michelle has an army of people behind her.

The clear strategy moving forward is to assemble this massive puzzle — with all its shapes and colors — one piece at a time.

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The Washington King Tide Initiative is entering its third year, and state officials would like people to shoot photographs of flooded roads, yards and buildings — if such events occur.

In 2010, the high tide at the mouth of Gorst Creek comes close to reaching Toys Topless at the head of Sinclair Inlet in Gorst.
Photo by Meegan M. Reid, Kitsap Sun

High tides are expected to continue for the next few days and return to high levels again in mid-January. Whether flooding occurs at any one place depends on rainfall, winds and atmospheric pressure, as well as tidal levels dictated by the position of the moon and sun. (See NOAA Ocean Service Education.)

Not much flooding occurred during king tides last year, but plenty of photographs were collected in early 2010. That’s when the picture on this page was taken in Gorst between Bremerton and Port Orchard. For additional photos, check out the Flickr page or the video slide show put together by the Washington Department of Ecology.

Taking note of these high tides is one way to gauge how climate change may affect shoreline areas. Over the next 100 years, sea level is expected to rise by at least 2.6 feet, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, although previous estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were in the range of 7 inches to 2 feet.

The King Tide Initiative started in Australia in 2009, according to Ecology’s website on King Tides, but it soon became a project for the West Coast of North America, with Washington and British Columbia joining in 2010 and Oregon and California joining in 2011.

Visit Flickr pages for British Columbia, Oregon and California, which includes regional pages for San Francisco Bay, Santa Monica and San Diego.

For a list of high tides, go to Ecology’s King Tide Schedule page and click on the map. More precise information can be found on NOAA’s page of tide predictions, where you can zoom in to your area of interest.

For past King Tide events, check out my Water Ways entries for Jan. 21, 2011 and Feb. 1, 2010.

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It is interesting to contemplate how the new National Shellfish Initiative, announced in June, and the Washington Shellfish Initiative, announced last week, could change things in Puget Sound.

Newton Morgan of the Kitsap County Health District collects a dye packet from Lofall Creek in December of 2010. This kind of legwork may be the key to tracking down pollution in Puget Sound.
Kitsap Sun photo by Meegan Reid

As I described in a story I wrote for last Saturday’s Kitsap Sun, the principal goals are these:

• Rebuild native Olympia oyster and pinto abalone populations.
• Increase access to public tidelands for recreational shellfish harvesting.
• Research ways to increase commercial shellfish production without harming the environment.
• Improve permitting at county, state and federal levels.
• Evaluate how well filter-feeding clams and oysters can reduce nitrogen pollution, with possible incentives for private shellfish cultivation.

To read more about the initiatives, check out:

• Washington Shellfish Initiative,
  
• A White paper on the state’s initiative (PDF 176 kb),
  
• National Marine Aquaculture Initiative
  
• National Aquaculture Policy (PDF 64 kb)
  
• National Shellfish Initiative
  

One of the most encouraging things is an attempt to expand Kitsap County’s Pollution Identification and Correction (PIC) Program to other counties, with increased funding for cleaning up the waters. Check out the story I wrote for last Friday’s Kitsap Sun, in which I describe the search-and-destroy mission against bacterial pollution.

As most Water Ways readers know, I’ve been following the ongoing monitoring and cleanup effort by the Kitsap County Health District for years with the help of Keith Grellner, Stuart Whitford, Shawn Ultican and many others in the district’s water quality program. In fact, just two weeks ago, I discussed what could be a turnaround for a chronic pollution problem in Lofall Creek, a problem that has taken much perseverance to resolve. (See Kitsap Sun, Dec. 2.) Unfortunately, the story is far from over.

I’ve talked about the importance of old-fashioned legwork in tracking down pollution, and I’ve suggested that other local governments use some of their stormwater fees or implement such fees for monitoring of their local waters. See Water Ways, June 30, for example.

Water free of fecal pollution has benefits for humans and other aquatic creatures. Thankfully, Washington State Department of Health’s shellfish program is careful about checking areas for signs of sewage before certifying them as safe for shellfish harvesting. Maybe the new shellfish initiative will allow the state to open beds that have been closed for years. That’s what happened in Yukon Harbor, where more than 900 acres of shellfish beds were reopened in 2008. (See Kitsap Sun, Sept. 25, 2008).

Certifying areas as safe for shellfish harvesting means that waterfront property owners are safe to enjoy the bounty of their own beaches. It also offers an opportunity for commercial growers to make money and contribute to the state’s economy.

Of course, this does not mean that intensive shellfish-growing operations ought to be expanded to every clean corner of Puget Sound, any more than large-scale crop farming or timber harvesting should be allowed to take over the entire landscape.

Some environmentalists have expressed concern that the Washington Shellfish Initiative could become a boondoggle for commercial shellfish growers. Laura Hendricks of the Sierra Club’s Marine Ecosystem Campaign sent me an e-mail noting these concerns about the expansion of aquaculture:

“Washington State has more native species listed as endangered than any other state in the USA. We see no mention of the adverse impacts in this initiative on nearshore habitat, birds and juvenile salmon.

“Governor Gregoire and the various speakers failed to mention that ALL of the pending shoreline aquaculture applications they want to ‘streamline’ are for industrial geoduck aquaculture, not oysters. Red tape is not what is delaying these applications…

“Shellfish industry lobbyists who pushed for this expansion are silent on the following three serious threats to our fisheries resources, forage fish, birds and salmon:

“1. Shellfish consume fisheries resources (zooplankton — fish/crab eggs and larvae) according to peer reviewed studies. A DNR study documented that forage fish eggs did not just stay buried high on the beach, but were found in the nearshore water column. Continuing to allow expansion of unnatural high densities of filtering shellfish in the intertidal “nursery,” puts our fisheries resources at risk.

“2. The shellfish growers place tons of plastics into Puget Sound in order to expand aquaculture where it does not naturally grow…

3. Mussel rafts are documented to reduce dissolved oxygen essential for fish and are known in Totten Inlet to be covered in invasive tunicates with beggiatoa bacteria found underneath…”

Ashley Ahearn of KUOW interviewed Laura Hendricks, and you can hear her report on EarthFix.

In her e-mail, Laura recommended the video at right. She also pointed to a blog entry by Alf Hanna of Olympic Peninsula Environmental News. Hanna suggests that environmental advocates who go along with commercial aquaculture may become the oysters that get eaten in Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”

Have intensive shellfish farms in Puget Sound gone too far in their efforts to exploit the natural resources of our beaches? Can shellfish farmers make money without undue damage to the environment? Which practices are acceptable, which ones should be banned, and which areas are appropriate for different types of aquaculture?

It would have been nice if these answers were known long ago, and in some cases they are. But at least this new shellfish initiative recognizes that more research is needed to answer many remaining questions. Research is under way in Washington state on geoduck farming, which involves planting oyster seed in plastic tubes embedded into the beach. Review “Effects of Geoduck Aquaculture on the Environment: A Synthesis of Current Knowledge” (PDF 712 kb) or visit Washington Sea Grant.

Other research in our region is needed as well, although it is clear that environmental trade-offs will be part of the deal whenever commercial interests cross paths with natural systems. For a discussion about this issue, check out the executive summary of the NOAA-funded publication Shellfish Aquaculture and the Environment (PDF 4.2 mb), edited by Sandra E. Shumway.

Needless to say, we’ll be keeping an eye on this process for years to come.

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“Mythbusters,” the television show that takes on urban legends and other strange science-based questions, put together a compilation of more than a dozen featured experiments in a program titled “Wet and Wild.”

This show could have been made with “Amusing Monday” in mind. Unfortunately, the Discovery Channel chose not to offer the entire program to online viewers.

The good news is that I was able to find some of the segments separately and will provide them for you here, beginning with the wild waterslide ride, which is in the video player on this page.

Other segments:

Swimming in syrup

Water torture

Running on water (This was not in the “Wet and Wild” program, but it should have been.)

If you haven’t heard, one of the Mythbusters cannon balls got away last week, skipping away from a bomb range in California and damaging a house near the site of the experiment. Check out the Associated Press video or read the AP story.

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It’s the water, or maybe it’s just the nasty stuff that’s in the water.

A new series of studies by federal researchers is delving into the question of which pollutants in urban streams are killing coho salmon.

David Baldwin of Northwest Fisheries Science Center mixes a chemical soup of pollutants found in urban stormwater. Coho salmon will be kept in the brown bath for 24 hours to measure the effects.
Photo by Tiffany Royal, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

As I describe in a story in today’s Kitsap Sun, the new studies involve coho returning to the Suquamish Tribe’s Grovers Creek Hatchery in North Kitsap.

Of course, pollutants in streams are just one factor affecting salmon in the Puget Sound region, where development continues to alter streamflows and reduce vegetation, despite efforts to protect and restore habitat. But pollution may play a role that has gone largely unnoticed in some streams.

The new studies continue an investigation that began more than a decade ago with the involvement of numerous agencies. By now, most of us have heard about the effects of copper on salmon, but the latest round of studies will look at the collection of pollutants found in stormwater to see how they work together. It may be possible to pinpoint the chemical concentrations that result in critical physiological changes in salmon.

The latest work involves a team led by David Baldwin of NOAA Fisheries and Steve Damm of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Suquamish Tribe is providing the fish, along with facilities and support.

For information on the ongoing effort to understand how toxic chemicals affect salmon, review these pages on the website of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center:

Acute die-offs of adult coho salmon 
returning to spawn in restored urban streams

The impacts of dissolved copper on olfactory 
function in juvenile coho salmon

Mechanosensory impacts of non-point source pollutants in fish

Cardiovascular defects in fish embryos exposed 
to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

A page called “Coho Pre-spawn Mortality in Urban Streams” presents a series of videos that show the advance of an apparent neurological disease that first causes disorientation in coho salmon and then death. The video is taken in Seattle’s Longfellow Creek, an urban stream.

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The headline on BBC Nature News calls an underwater ice formation the “Brinicle Ice Finger of Death.”

“Brinicle” is short for “briny icicle,” while “Ice Finger of Death” is a dramatic title for a fascinating natural phenomenon found in Antarctica and captured in stunning time-lapse photography for the BBC One series “Frozen Planet.” Click here for the video.

The video shows a finger of heavy water reaching down from the surface and then advancing across the sea floor, encasing starfish and sea urchins in unexpected ice.

The water coming off Little Razorback Island near Ross Archipelago contained a high salt content, the result of separation as ice freezes at the surface. Because of its high concentration of salt, the runoff water was denser and colder than the surrounding ocean (well below the freezing point of fresh water). As the brine drained off the island, it caused the seawater to freeze around it as the brinicle advanced.

The phenomenon had been noted before, but finding a place where a brinicle was forming and setting up the film equipment was a feat in itself, as photographer Hugh Miller explained to reporter Ella Davies of BBC Nature:

“That particular patch was difficult to get to. It was a long way from the hole and it was quite narrow at times between the sea bed and the ice. I do remember it being a struggle… The kit is very heavy because it has to sit on the sea bed and not move for long periods of time.”

Frisky seals in the area barged into the scene, breaking off pieces of the brinicle and messing with the film gear, but eventually the crew got the dramatic video they were seeking.

The series “Frozen Planet” apparently is not yet available in the United States. The clip shown in the video player above can be viewed on the BBC Nature page if the YouTube version does not work.

Since the clip above was posted on YouTube last Wednesday, it has gone viral, with more than 4.9 million viewings. (The clip, which was copied from the BBC website, has since been taken down.)

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