Discovery News: Animal Deaths from Gulf Oil Spill Estimated
Restore the Gulf, the official federal government's website about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, has issued its latest report in an attempt to track the effect of the BP oil spill on animals in the region.
The group consolidates numbers from experts on the ground, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
What are the current counts from the November 1st report?
The latest numbers are: 6,104 dead birds, 609 dead sea turtles and 100 dead mammals, including dolphins. The tallies include counts for five states: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
It must be noted that the report constitutes only an initial, field-level evaluation. Not all of the deaths were necessarily caused by Deepwater Horizon. Final determination of cause of death comes later.
When found or captured, the specimens get identification numbers. After initial counts, more thorough examinations of the birds and wildlife may include a search for oil in the throat, mouth and eyes, as well as a necropsy to rule if the spill was to blame.
The report also catalogs the number of birds and wildlife that have been collected alive and how many of those were visibly oiled. Experts collected 535 living sea turtles, 456 of which were visibly oiled. Mammals fared better, with two out of nine live mammals collected visibly oiled. Worst were the birds: 2,079 have been collected alive, every single one of them visibly oiled.
The report admits their counts may include birds and wildlife felled by natural causes.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Large-Scale Fish Farm Production Offsets Environmental Gains; 'Creates Large Scale Problems'
Underwater Times: Large-Scale Fish Farm Production Offsets Environmental Gains; 'Creates Large Scale Problems'
SAANICH, British Columbia -- Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released today. This is true even when farming operations implement the best current marine fish farming practices.
Dr. John Volpe and his team at the University of Victoria developed the Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI), an unprecedented system for objectively measuring the environmental performance of fish farming.
"Scale is critical," said Dr. Volpe, a marine ecologist. "Over time, the industry has made strides in reducing the environmental impact per ton of fish, but this does not give a complete picture. Large scale farming of salmon, for example, even under even the best current practices creates large scale problems."
The fish farming industry is an increasingly important source of seafood, especially as many wild fisheries are in decline. Yet farming of many marine fish species has been criticized as causing ecological damage. For instance, the researchers' found that the relatively new marine finfish aquaculture sector in China and other Asian countries lags in environmental performance.
Dr. Volpe added, "The fastest growing sector is Asia, where we found a troubling combination of poor environmental performance and rapidly increasing production."
With support from the Lenfest Ocean Program, Dr. Volpe and his team developed GAPI, which uses 10 different criteria to assess and score environmental impacts. Incorporating information such as the application of antibiotics and discharge of water pollutants, GAPI allows researchers to gauge which farmed species and countries of production have the best or worst environmental performance. The researchers examined the environmental impact of marine fish farming per ton of fish produced and the cumulative environmental impact for each country producing a major farmed species.
"GAPI provides a valuable tool for developing environmentally responsible fish farming. Governments can use GAPI to inform policies and regulations to minimize the environmental footprint of fish farming. Farmers can use it to improve production practices. And buyers can use it to compare and select better, more environmentally friendly seafood options," said Chris Mann, senior officer and director of the Pew Environment Group's Aquaculture Standards Project, which collaborated on the work.
SAANICH, British Columbia -- Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released today. This is true even when farming operations implement the best current marine fish farming practices.
Dr. John Volpe and his team at the University of Victoria developed the Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI), an unprecedented system for objectively measuring the environmental performance of fish farming.
"Scale is critical," said Dr. Volpe, a marine ecologist. "Over time, the industry has made strides in reducing the environmental impact per ton of fish, but this does not give a complete picture. Large scale farming of salmon, for example, even under even the best current practices creates large scale problems."
The fish farming industry is an increasingly important source of seafood, especially as many wild fisheries are in decline. Yet farming of many marine fish species has been criticized as causing ecological damage. For instance, the researchers' found that the relatively new marine finfish aquaculture sector in China and other Asian countries lags in environmental performance.
Dr. Volpe added, "The fastest growing sector is Asia, where we found a troubling combination of poor environmental performance and rapidly increasing production."
With support from the Lenfest Ocean Program, Dr. Volpe and his team developed GAPI, which uses 10 different criteria to assess and score environmental impacts. Incorporating information such as the application of antibiotics and discharge of water pollutants, GAPI allows researchers to gauge which farmed species and countries of production have the best or worst environmental performance. The researchers examined the environmental impact of marine fish farming per ton of fish produced and the cumulative environmental impact for each country producing a major farmed species.
"GAPI provides a valuable tool for developing environmentally responsible fish farming. Governments can use GAPI to inform policies and regulations to minimize the environmental footprint of fish farming. Farmers can use it to improve production practices. And buyers can use it to compare and select better, more environmentally friendly seafood options," said Chris Mann, senior officer and director of the Pew Environment Group's Aquaculture Standards Project, which collaborated on the work.
Underwater robot can follow marine organisms over record distances
Nature News: Underwater robot can follow marine organisms over record distances
Versatile vehicle can spend months studying ocean ecology.
Sandeep Ravindran
The Tethys can travel much further than other underwater robots.Todd Walsh / MBARIAn underwater robot that can function in the ocean for months on end will allow scientists to study life in the open ocean, hundreds of kilometres from shore. The robot performed its first experiments this month, spending almost a week at a time tracking algal blooms in California's Monterey Bay.
"We really think this is a revolution in vehicles," says the robot's creator Jim Bellingham, chief technologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing. "It changes how we do oceanography."
Oceanographers currently use a variety of underwater vehicles in their research, none of which is ideal for studying marine life. Non-propelled vehicles called 'gliders' can stay in the ocean for several months and are great for studying its physical properties, but they are too slow and their sensors too limited for detailed studies of living organisms. Current underwater robots, meanwhile, are fast and have sophisticated sensors, but these drain their batteries within a day, leaving researchers with only brief snapshots of life in the ocean.
“I'm a big fan of Tethys. It has a combination of speed and endurance and range that other vehicles don't have.”
Eric D'Asaro
University of Washington
The new robot, called the Tethys, combines the speed of existing robots with the range of gliders. It's designed to pursue organisms while recording the physical and chemical properties of the water around them.
"The idea is to be able to develop 'life stories' of marine organisms by following them as they move through the ocean," says Bellingham. The Tethys will be only a little more expensive than gliders, which cost about $140,000 — cheap enough for individual labs to buy, he adds.
Bloom boon
The robot's first scientific expedition included studies of a bloom of the toxic algae Pseudo-nitzschia australis, says John Ryan, an oceanographer at MBARI.
The robot has the unique ability to 'park' itself in an algal patch and drift along with it]. Once the Tethys had pinpointed the centre of each patch, scientists sent in another short-range robot for more extensive analysis, and the two robots performed what Ryan calls a "robot ballet".
The robot finished its first experiments last week, tracking algal blooms in California's Monterey Bay.Todd Walsh / MBARIFrancisco Chavez, a senior scientist at MBARI, says he's excited by the thought of using the robot for other projects. One of his ideas is to study how whirlpool-like eddies hundreds of kilometres from shore affect the ocean environment. Because of the time taken to travel to them by ship, by the time a typical 20–30-day expedition reaches an eddy they have just five days or so to study it before they need to return to shore. The Tethys "will allow us to follow these eddies for essentially an unlimited time," Chavez says.
Eric D'Asaro, a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle, says that he could use the Tethys to track algal blooms in the North Atlantic. He currently uses a combination of gliders, floating sensors and ships. The Tethys would be better at sampling the complexity and diversity of life in the ocean over long distances and timescales, D'Asaro says.
"I'm a big fan of Tethys," he says. "It has a combination of speed and endurance and range that other vehicles don't have."
Magic moment
MBARI scientists designed and built the Tethys over the past three and a half years. Bellingham says that they wanted to overcome some of the unique difficulties of tracking life in the ocean. A terrestrial biologist studying a forest can keep going back to it, but in the ocean, the current moves everything around, and if scientists try to go back to the same place after a two-day hiatus, he says, "instead of a forest, they're now looking at the Sahara Desert".
The Tethys will help oceanographers to conduct more experiments from shore, reducing expensive and time-consuming ship voyages, because scientists can modify the robot's missions and receive data from it via satellite. "To be at home at 2 a.m. and seeing the data coming in was pretty magical," Bellingham says.
ADVERTISEMENT
MBARI researchers are working on a way for the Tethys to bring back water samples, and plan to outfit it with a small DNA analyser that can identify microorganisms. They could add more sensors later, including ones that track ocean carbon and acidification to monitor the effects of climate change.
The scientists are currently building a second version of the Tethys, and hope eventually to deploy a team of robots to simultaneously track different organisms in the food web, from algae to marine mammals. The Tethys will undergo longer tests next spring in preparation for major offshore experiments in July and August. Bellingham says he hopes to license the vehicle for commercial manufacture within six months. He is currently setting up collaborations with other researchers, and has already received funding from the National Science Foundation for a joint project to study mixing of ocean waters.
And if researchers really want to stretch the robot's abilities, "we should be able to drive it from Monterey to Hawaii on a single charge", says Bellingham.
Versatile vehicle can spend months studying ocean ecology.
Sandeep Ravindran
The Tethys can travel much further than other underwater robots.Todd Walsh / MBARIAn underwater robot that can function in the ocean for months on end will allow scientists to study life in the open ocean, hundreds of kilometres from shore. The robot performed its first experiments this month, spending almost a week at a time tracking algal blooms in California's Monterey Bay.
"We really think this is a revolution in vehicles," says the robot's creator Jim Bellingham, chief technologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing. "It changes how we do oceanography."
Oceanographers currently use a variety of underwater vehicles in their research, none of which is ideal for studying marine life. Non-propelled vehicles called 'gliders' can stay in the ocean for several months and are great for studying its physical properties, but they are too slow and their sensors too limited for detailed studies of living organisms. Current underwater robots, meanwhile, are fast and have sophisticated sensors, but these drain their batteries within a day, leaving researchers with only brief snapshots of life in the ocean.
“I'm a big fan of Tethys. It has a combination of speed and endurance and range that other vehicles don't have.”
Eric D'Asaro
University of Washington
The new robot, called the Tethys, combines the speed of existing robots with the range of gliders. It's designed to pursue organisms while recording the physical and chemical properties of the water around them.
"The idea is to be able to develop 'life stories' of marine organisms by following them as they move through the ocean," says Bellingham. The Tethys will be only a little more expensive than gliders, which cost about $140,000 — cheap enough for individual labs to buy, he adds.
Bloom boon
The robot's first scientific expedition included studies of a bloom of the toxic algae Pseudo-nitzschia australis, says John Ryan, an oceanographer at MBARI.
The robot has the unique ability to 'park' itself in an algal patch and drift along with it]. Once the Tethys had pinpointed the centre of each patch, scientists sent in another short-range robot for more extensive analysis, and the two robots performed what Ryan calls a "robot ballet".
The robot finished its first experiments last week, tracking algal blooms in California's Monterey Bay.Todd Walsh / MBARIFrancisco Chavez, a senior scientist at MBARI, says he's excited by the thought of using the robot for other projects. One of his ideas is to study how whirlpool-like eddies hundreds of kilometres from shore affect the ocean environment. Because of the time taken to travel to them by ship, by the time a typical 20–30-day expedition reaches an eddy they have just five days or so to study it before they need to return to shore. The Tethys "will allow us to follow these eddies for essentially an unlimited time," Chavez says.
Eric D'Asaro, a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle, says that he could use the Tethys to track algal blooms in the North Atlantic. He currently uses a combination of gliders, floating sensors and ships. The Tethys would be better at sampling the complexity and diversity of life in the ocean over long distances and timescales, D'Asaro says.
"I'm a big fan of Tethys," he says. "It has a combination of speed and endurance and range that other vehicles don't have."
Magic moment
MBARI scientists designed and built the Tethys over the past three and a half years. Bellingham says that they wanted to overcome some of the unique difficulties of tracking life in the ocean. A terrestrial biologist studying a forest can keep going back to it, but in the ocean, the current moves everything around, and if scientists try to go back to the same place after a two-day hiatus, he says, "instead of a forest, they're now looking at the Sahara Desert".
The Tethys will help oceanographers to conduct more experiments from shore, reducing expensive and time-consuming ship voyages, because scientists can modify the robot's missions and receive data from it via satellite. "To be at home at 2 a.m. and seeing the data coming in was pretty magical," Bellingham says.
ADVERTISEMENT
MBARI researchers are working on a way for the Tethys to bring back water samples, and plan to outfit it with a small DNA analyser that can identify microorganisms. They could add more sensors later, including ones that track ocean carbon and acidification to monitor the effects of climate change.
The scientists are currently building a second version of the Tethys, and hope eventually to deploy a team of robots to simultaneously track different organisms in the food web, from algae to marine mammals. The Tethys will undergo longer tests next spring in preparation for major offshore experiments in July and August. Bellingham says he hopes to license the vehicle for commercial manufacture within six months. He is currently setting up collaborations with other researchers, and has already received funding from the National Science Foundation for a joint project to study mixing of ocean waters.
And if researchers really want to stretch the robot's abilities, "we should be able to drive it from Monterey to Hawaii on a single charge", says Bellingham.
President Obama is respected all over the world. Junior and the Chiseler are not respected anywhere in the world. Obama has done much to restore Ameri
Wall Street Journal: Standards for Gulf's Catch Put to Sniff Test After Spill
Gulf seafood is being held to less stringent safety standards than those used after some earlier oil spills, but officials say the overall risk to people remains low.
Among the measures in the Gulf of Mexico seafood-testing program that are less rigorous than those used after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska: how much cancer risk from eating seafood is acceptable, and how much of the region's seafood a person is likely to eat.
Government safety tests of Gulf seafood after the BP spill include evaluations by inspectors, above, and chemical tests for oil contamination.
There's no sign any oil-contamination level is high enough to make a person sick from eating a few meals of Gulf fish, shrimp, oysters or crab. At issue is whether the program is strict enough to protect frequent Gulf-seafood eaters from the buildup of toxins years down the road.
The tweaked guidelines were brokered after a debate among regulators who devised the massive testing program in the early days after the BP PLC well began spewing oil in April. Government officials say that even if they used test standards as strict as those in the Valdez spill, all the seafood they have collected from areas now open to fishing still would have passed. According to government tests, many samples have had levels of contamination they are essentially undetectable.
Louisiana, the Gulf's biggest seafood producer, has seen its production plummet since BP's well exploded, largely because many fishing waters were closed as a precaution, the state said.
Even now, with many fishing waters back open, grocery stores and restaurants around the U.S. have canceled orders for Gulf seafood because of concerns about the oil, said Harlon Pearce, chairman of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. "We still have a major perception problem," though it's unfounded, he said.
Officials have subjected thousands of samples of Gulf seafood to chemical tests for oil contamination since the spill started. All, they said, have shown levels of contamination far below those set as "levels of concern." Based on those results, federal and state officials have reopened for fishing thousands of square miles of the Gulf. The chemical test looks for compounds that are in crude oil, some of which have been found to be potentially cancer-causing. Shellfish ingest contaminants that are in water, and fish can ingest them or take them in through their gills. Shellfish typically are the bigger human-health concern, because they take longer to process and purge the contaminants than fish do, scientists say.
When the scientific assumptions underlying the test standards were set in May, "there was a vigorous discussion about what was the appropriate [balance] between precaution and practicality," said Steve Murawski, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official who helped lead the discussions.
The testing program divides the northern Gulf into dozens of seafood-monitoring zones. Any zone where oil is visible or expected to show up will stay closed to fishing, the rules say. In a zone where no oil is visible or expected, seafood is sampled and subjected to two rounds of tests.
If a seafood sample passes a sniff test—in which trained officials smell it both raw and cooked—it is sent for chemical testing. Only after all samples in a zone pass the chemical test can the area be reopened to fishing.
Regulators made judgment calls in setting the seafood-safety standards. One important decision was what level of lifetime cancer risk is acceptable for Gulf seafood eaters.
"There was a conflict there. So we had to work back and forth with the states" in coming up with a compromise, said Robert Dickey, a Food and Drug Administration official who works at the agency's seafood lab in Dauphin Island, Ala., and helped create the testing program.
Fishing waters along parts of the Gulf Coast have shown background levels of the contaminants for years, in part because of industrial pollution. Some Gulf states expressed the concern that, if the cancer-risk limits were made too strict, some seafood from their states might fail the test as a result of that background contamination, which hasn't caused public-health problems in the past, Mr. Dickey said.
The regulators opted for a one-in-100,000 cancer risk. That was the standard used in smaller spills in Maine and Alaska, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study from 2002. A cancer risk of one in 100,000 is within the range that federal agencies consider acceptable when they set standards for food and drinking water, the FDA says.
But the "typical" level used in most cancer-risk assessments is stricter: one in one million, the NOAA study said. Officials used that stricter standard in the Valdez spill and in smaller spills in California, Oregon and Rhode Island, the study said. Standards are set on a case-by-case basis.
A Centers for Disease Control spokeswoman said officials weren't aware of any study showing people got cancer from eating seafood exposed to oil from a spill.
The FDA's Mr. Dickey said the Gulf standard was "more than adequate protection." He noted some Gulf states use a looser threshold—one in 10,000—for some seafood rules in near-shore waters they control.
An even bigger debate, regulators said, was how much Gulf seafood to assume people eat and how often. Assuming a bigger portion would mean tightening the contamination level each sample could have.
The Gulf tests presume, for example, that a person eats about one shrimp meal a week, each with about a fifth of a pound of shrimp. That's about four or five large shrimp a meal. That estimate is based on the consumption rate of the top 10% of U.S. seafood eaters—a standard that regulators say is plenty cautious.
Others say those levels are low, where seafood is central to the culture for the Gulf. The government standard "isn't representative of Gulf consumption," said Gina Solomon, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
Mr. Pearce, the seafood board chairman, figures a typical shrimp meal in Louisiana has eight or 10 large shrimp. That's basically double the amount regulators are assuming.
The FDA's Mr. Dickey said regulators couldn't find any peer-reviewed studies of local seafood consumption in the Gulf, so they stuck with the federal numbers.
Most seafood samples tested by the government showed contamination far below the thresholds set by the government as levels of concern; many samples showed levels so low that test machinery couldn't detect them.
Some question whether the government is taking enough samples. Scott Milroy, a marine scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi, said seafood samples he gathered in September along the Mississippi coast showed levels of one non-cancer-causing contaminant that were as high as one-third the government's level of concern. That's still too low to present an immediate threat to human health, he said, but it's hundreds of times higher than the levels the government tests found.
Joe Jewell, a Mississippi official helping oversee the seafood program, said he couldn't comment on Mr. Milroy's test results until he saw them. Mr. Jewell said he would be quick to recommend closing any fishing waters that reliable tests showed were unsafe.
Many Gulf seafood lovers are cautiously optimistic. Al Sunseri, president of P&J Oyster Co., an oyster processor and distributor, said he eats Louisiana oysters every day. In a decade or so, he said, "I'll be a perfect example to find out if they've caused any long-term problems."
Gulf seafood is being held to less stringent safety standards than those used after some earlier oil spills, but officials say the overall risk to people remains low.
Among the measures in the Gulf of Mexico seafood-testing program that are less rigorous than those used after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska: how much cancer risk from eating seafood is acceptable, and how much of the region's seafood a person is likely to eat.
Government safety tests of Gulf seafood after the BP spill include evaluations by inspectors, above, and chemical tests for oil contamination.
There's no sign any oil-contamination level is high enough to make a person sick from eating a few meals of Gulf fish, shrimp, oysters or crab. At issue is whether the program is strict enough to protect frequent Gulf-seafood eaters from the buildup of toxins years down the road.
The tweaked guidelines were brokered after a debate among regulators who devised the massive testing program in the early days after the BP PLC well began spewing oil in April. Government officials say that even if they used test standards as strict as those in the Valdez spill, all the seafood they have collected from areas now open to fishing still would have passed. According to government tests, many samples have had levels of contamination they are essentially undetectable.
Louisiana, the Gulf's biggest seafood producer, has seen its production plummet since BP's well exploded, largely because many fishing waters were closed as a precaution, the state said.
Even now, with many fishing waters back open, grocery stores and restaurants around the U.S. have canceled orders for Gulf seafood because of concerns about the oil, said Harlon Pearce, chairman of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. "We still have a major perception problem," though it's unfounded, he said.
Officials have subjected thousands of samples of Gulf seafood to chemical tests for oil contamination since the spill started. All, they said, have shown levels of contamination far below those set as "levels of concern." Based on those results, federal and state officials have reopened for fishing thousands of square miles of the Gulf. The chemical test looks for compounds that are in crude oil, some of which have been found to be potentially cancer-causing. Shellfish ingest contaminants that are in water, and fish can ingest them or take them in through their gills. Shellfish typically are the bigger human-health concern, because they take longer to process and purge the contaminants than fish do, scientists say.
When the scientific assumptions underlying the test standards were set in May, "there was a vigorous discussion about what was the appropriate [balance] between precaution and practicality," said Steve Murawski, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official who helped lead the discussions.
The testing program divides the northern Gulf into dozens of seafood-monitoring zones. Any zone where oil is visible or expected to show up will stay closed to fishing, the rules say. In a zone where no oil is visible or expected, seafood is sampled and subjected to two rounds of tests.
If a seafood sample passes a sniff test—in which trained officials smell it both raw and cooked—it is sent for chemical testing. Only after all samples in a zone pass the chemical test can the area be reopened to fishing.
Regulators made judgment calls in setting the seafood-safety standards. One important decision was what level of lifetime cancer risk is acceptable for Gulf seafood eaters.
"There was a conflict there. So we had to work back and forth with the states" in coming up with a compromise, said Robert Dickey, a Food and Drug Administration official who works at the agency's seafood lab in Dauphin Island, Ala., and helped create the testing program.
Fishing waters along parts of the Gulf Coast have shown background levels of the contaminants for years, in part because of industrial pollution. Some Gulf states expressed the concern that, if the cancer-risk limits were made too strict, some seafood from their states might fail the test as a result of that background contamination, which hasn't caused public-health problems in the past, Mr. Dickey said.
The regulators opted for a one-in-100,000 cancer risk. That was the standard used in smaller spills in Maine and Alaska, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study from 2002. A cancer risk of one in 100,000 is within the range that federal agencies consider acceptable when they set standards for food and drinking water, the FDA says.
But the "typical" level used in most cancer-risk assessments is stricter: one in one million, the NOAA study said. Officials used that stricter standard in the Valdez spill and in smaller spills in California, Oregon and Rhode Island, the study said. Standards are set on a case-by-case basis.
A Centers for Disease Control spokeswoman said officials weren't aware of any study showing people got cancer from eating seafood exposed to oil from a spill.
The FDA's Mr. Dickey said the Gulf standard was "more than adequate protection." He noted some Gulf states use a looser threshold—one in 10,000—for some seafood rules in near-shore waters they control.
An even bigger debate, regulators said, was how much Gulf seafood to assume people eat and how often. Assuming a bigger portion would mean tightening the contamination level each sample could have.
The Gulf tests presume, for example, that a person eats about one shrimp meal a week, each with about a fifth of a pound of shrimp. That's about four or five large shrimp a meal. That estimate is based on the consumption rate of the top 10% of U.S. seafood eaters—a standard that regulators say is plenty cautious.
Others say those levels are low, where seafood is central to the culture for the Gulf. The government standard "isn't representative of Gulf consumption," said Gina Solomon, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
Mr. Pearce, the seafood board chairman, figures a typical shrimp meal in Louisiana has eight or 10 large shrimp. That's basically double the amount regulators are assuming.
The FDA's Mr. Dickey said regulators couldn't find any peer-reviewed studies of local seafood consumption in the Gulf, so they stuck with the federal numbers.
Most seafood samples tested by the government showed contamination far below the thresholds set by the government as levels of concern; many samples showed levels so low that test machinery couldn't detect them.
Some question whether the government is taking enough samples. Scott Milroy, a marine scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi, said seafood samples he gathered in September along the Mississippi coast showed levels of one non-cancer-causing contaminant that were as high as one-third the government's level of concern. That's still too low to present an immediate threat to human health, he said, but it's hundreds of times higher than the levels the government tests found.
Joe Jewell, a Mississippi official helping oversee the seafood program, said he couldn't comment on Mr. Milroy's test results until he saw them. Mr. Jewell said he would be quick to recommend closing any fishing waters that reliable tests showed were unsafe.
Many Gulf seafood lovers are cautiously optimistic. Al Sunseri, president of P&J Oyster Co., an oyster processor and distributor, said he eats Louisiana oysters every day. In a decade or so, he said, "I'll be a perfect example to find out if they've caused any long-term problems."
Monday, November 1, 2010
Scientists Find New Oil Plume In Gulf
CBS4Online: Scientists Find New Oil Plume In Gulf
MEDLEY (CBS4) ― Click to enlarge1 of 1
John Moore/Getty Images
Close
numSlides of totalImages Slideshows Think You Know About Halloween - Think Again Halloween, Hollywood-Style Stumped For A Costume? Scientists speaking at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show say they continue to see effects of the BP oil spill surfacing in the Gulf of Mexico.
At a conference Thursday, scientists with a group called the International SeaKeepers Society, unveiled a map showing a new plume of oil -- about 6 miles long -- that's been discovered in the Gulf by fishermen.
"They described it as having millions of specks of reddish-brown oil in it," Dr. Mark Luther from the University of South Florida told CBS 4's Carey Codd.
Scientists cannot say for certain that the plume is from the BP spill, but they said it's a possibility.
Luther said the oil appears not to be toxic. "It's not in any concentration that is going to foul the beaches or make seafood inedible."
However Luther said that since so much oil spilled -- millions of barrels-- a lot of it sank to deep waters. He said the oil down below will not decay as quickly as oil on the surface and it will eventually rise to the top.
"There's likely to be effects for years or even decades because there's so much oil that's still out there," Luther said. "We just don't know where it is."
Luther is especially worried about how the oil will affect generations of fish.
Ocean explorer Fabian Cousteau is also warning that even though the BP well was capped and the surface oil cleaned there is still a threat out down below that people are no longer talking about.
"It's poisoning our future, it's poising our oceans and the fact that we're seeing plumes is of no surprise to me whatsoever," Cousteau said.
Scientists with the SeaKeepers Society are advocating equipping large boats with sensors that will scan for oil in the gulf and will reveal specific details about the oil in the water.
MEDLEY (CBS4) ― Click to enlarge1 of 1
John Moore/Getty Images
Close
numSlides of totalImages Slideshows Think You Know About Halloween - Think Again Halloween, Hollywood-Style Stumped For A Costume? Scientists speaking at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show say they continue to see effects of the BP oil spill surfacing in the Gulf of Mexico.
At a conference Thursday, scientists with a group called the International SeaKeepers Society, unveiled a map showing a new plume of oil -- about 6 miles long -- that's been discovered in the Gulf by fishermen.
"They described it as having millions of specks of reddish-brown oil in it," Dr. Mark Luther from the University of South Florida told CBS 4's Carey Codd.
Scientists cannot say for certain that the plume is from the BP spill, but they said it's a possibility.
Luther said the oil appears not to be toxic. "It's not in any concentration that is going to foul the beaches or make seafood inedible."
However Luther said that since so much oil spilled -- millions of barrels-- a lot of it sank to deep waters. He said the oil down below will not decay as quickly as oil on the surface and it will eventually rise to the top.
"There's likely to be effects for years or even decades because there's so much oil that's still out there," Luther said. "We just don't know where it is."
Luther is especially worried about how the oil will affect generations of fish.
Ocean explorer Fabian Cousteau is also warning that even though the BP well was capped and the surface oil cleaned there is still a threat out down below that people are no longer talking about.
"It's poisoning our future, it's poising our oceans and the fact that we're seeing plumes is of no surprise to me whatsoever," Cousteau said.
Scientists with the SeaKeepers Society are advocating equipping large boats with sensors that will scan for oil in the gulf and will reveal specific details about the oil in the water.
£1.6 billion tidal farm project off coast of Scotland is the world's first
Daily Mail Online: £1.6 billion tidal farm project off coast of Scotland is the world's first
The world’s first major tidal energy project – a £1.6 billion underwater farm of 400 turbines off northern Scotland – has been given the go-ahead by the Crown Estate.
When complete in 2020, the Pentland Firth project will generate enough electricity for
400,000 homes. It will also provide employment for hundreds of former nuclear workers at nearby Dounreay who will make the 100ft high double-bladed turbines.
There are further plans to exploit the Pentland Firth over the next two decades, installing 1,000 turbines that will generate 1.6 gigawatts of energy, enough for more than a million homes.
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The decision by the Crown Estate to offer the lease to the MeyGen consortium is
regarded as the most significant investment in tidal energy so far. MeyGen is a joint venture between International Power (45 per cent), US investment bank Morgan Stanley (45 per cent) and Singapore tidal company Atlantis Resources (ten per cent).
Experts have dubbed the Pentland Firth the Crown Jewel of marine energy sites because the tidal waters there are among the fiercest in the world. Water flows at
just over four knots, allowing each of the huge structures to generate one megawatt of energy without significant interruption.
The turbines will be lined up 175 yards apart, weighted down by scrap metal. As the water depth in the Pentland Firth is about 130ft, small craft will be able to sail over
the area of about four square miles.
Vessels with a draught of morethan 32ft are automatically routed round the north of the Orkneys.
Because the waters are so rough, little fishing takes place and there is no danger to fish life as the blades revolve so slowly, say experts.
The turbine farm, which will be clearly marked on charts, is well away from sensitive military areas where Royal Navy submarines operate.
The turbines will be built at new factories near Dounreay. A prototype designed in Britain by Atlantis and built in Newcastle upon Tyne has been operating off the Orkneys for the past two years.
MeyGen chief Dan Pearson said: ‘We believe this will be a flagship marine power project.’
As the Crown Estate owns the seabed around Britain, it will be paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in rent for the turbine scheme.
The Royal family, which will soon benefit by taking 15 per cent of the Crown Estate profit, may also be able to enjoy renewable energy from the Pentland Firth project.
The royal Castle of Mey, which Prince Charles visits every year, is a few miles from the tidal farm site, which lies between the Caithness coast and the island of Stroma.
Icelandic firm restarts whale meat exports
The Japan Times: Icelandic firm restarts whale meat exports
LONDON (Kyodo) An Icelandic whaling firm has shipped 500 to 600 tons of finback whale meat to Japan this year, after resuming full-fledged whale meat exportation, sources said Saturday.
Japan annually catches around 4,000 tons of mainly minke whale meat under its so-called research whaling program, and markets the meat domestically. However, stocks currently exceed the sluggish demand for whale meat. The shipment of finback meat, which has a high market value, is certain to affect overall prices.
Kristjan Loftsson, managing director of Hvalur, the largest whaling firm in Iceland, said in Reykjavik the finback whale meat exports to Japan are not intended to crowd minke whales out of the Japanese market. "We are confident this should be, could be good for both parties," he said.
With an eye on the Japanese market, the firm has caught 148 finback whales this year, whereas Japan has hunted only two during the past two years.
Hvalur exported 66.6 tons of finback whale meat to Japan on a trial basis in 2008.
LONDON (Kyodo) An Icelandic whaling firm has shipped 500 to 600 tons of finback whale meat to Japan this year, after resuming full-fledged whale meat exportation, sources said Saturday.
Japan annually catches around 4,000 tons of mainly minke whale meat under its so-called research whaling program, and markets the meat domestically. However, stocks currently exceed the sluggish demand for whale meat. The shipment of finback meat, which has a high market value, is certain to affect overall prices.
Kristjan Loftsson, managing director of Hvalur, the largest whaling firm in Iceland, said in Reykjavik the finback whale meat exports to Japan are not intended to crowd minke whales out of the Japanese market. "We are confident this should be, could be good for both parties," he said.
With an eye on the Japanese market, the firm has caught 148 finback whales this year, whereas Japan has hunted only two during the past two years.
Hvalur exported 66.6 tons of finback whale meat to Japan on a trial basis in 2008.
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