An EPA-funded team of scientists and other experts has completed draft recommendations for the future cleanup of toxic chemicals in Puget Sound. The group’s Toxics in Fish Implementation Strategy addresses pollutants such as PCBs and a slew of emerging contaminants that can affect species throughout the waterway. The strategy will be available for public review until October 16th after which it may be revised and submitted to the Puget Sound Partnership’s Leadership Council for approval.
The Washington State Department of Ecology is co-developing the strategy with the Department of Commerce and the Washington Stormwater Center. [Puget Sound Institute scientist Andy James was a member of the core team that wrote the report.] The new recommendations, if approved, will address the Puget Sound Partnership’s Toxics in Fish Vital Sign which tracks contaminants in adult and juvenile Chinook salmon, English sole and Pacific herring.
Policy discussions of toxics in fish have often centered around the occurrence of cancer-causing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in the environment, particularly as they turn up in salmon. The state has been under pressure to reduce PCB levels to meet federal water quality standards and to address healthy fish consumption rates for humans. The governor’s orca task force also identified PCBs as a serious threat to Puget Sound’s endangered southern resident orcas, which feed mostly on contaminated Chinook. While PCB reduction continues to be a high priority, the new strategy will address a much wider array of chemicals that affect wildlife across the spectrum.
Among the new concerns are contaminants known as endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs). These include pharmaceuticals, pesticides and other products that can pass through wastewater treatment plants and have biological effects on species throughout the ecosystem. The strategy recommends increased monitoring and prioritization of these contaminants to overcome what it calls “key data gaps” regarding their toxicity in Puget Sound.
EDCs may have wide-ranging effects on species. Estrogenic compounds in the water, possibly from pharmaceuticals like birth control pills, are causing male species of English sole in Puget Sound to produce egg proteins not typically seen in that sex. Scientists are looking for similar impacts on juvenile Chinook salmon and Pacific herring. Thousands of chemical compounds ranging from illicit drugs and opioids to personal care products and pesticides pass into Puget Sound waters every day. Researchers say they hope to determine which of these compounds will do the most harm to species. If the strategy is approved, this will be the first time that such contaminants will be included in the state’s Vital Sign measurements.
The strategy also addresses two additional categories of toxic chemicals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs). PAHs occur naturally in coal and crude oil and are commonly found in creosote that has been added to wood pilings or railroad ties as a wood preservative. Such chemicals can harm fish embryos in ways that mimic the effects of an oil spill. PBDEs are often used as flame retardants and can wash into Puget Sound through stormwater and wastewater or can be deposited as dust particles. Although banned from many products, PBDEs are still in circulation and can cause neurological problems in wildlife and humans. [Read more about these and other harmful “rogue chemicals” in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.]
In addition to identifying these key concerns, the strategy proposes management solutions such as “finding and fixing toxic hotspots; incentivizing redevelopment in high loading areas to reduce toxic loading; and accelerating in-water near-water cleanup of toxics.” The report was developed as part of a series of state and federal implementation strategies designed to provide a roadmap for Puget Sound recovery efforts.
The draft strategy is available for review at the Puget Sound Partnership website.
An EPA-funded team of scientists and other experts has completed draft recommendations for the future cleanup of toxic chemicals in Puget Sound. The group’s Toxics in Fish Implementation Strategy addresses pollutants such as PCBs and a slew of emerging contaminants that can affect species throughout the waterway. The strategy will be available for public review until October 16th after which it may be revised and submitted to the Puget Sound Partnership’s Leadership Council for approval.
The Washington State Department of Ecology is co-developing the strategy with the Department of Commerce and the Washington Stormwater Center. [Puget Sound Institute scientist Andy James was a member of the core team that wrote the report.] The new recommendations, if approved, will address the Puget Sound Partnership’s Toxics in Fish Vital Sign which tracks contaminants in adult and juvenile Chinook salmon, English sole and Pacific herring.
Policy discussions of toxics in fish have often centered around the occurrence of cancer-causing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in the environment, particularly as they turn up in salmon. The state has been under pressure to reduce PCB levels to meet federal water quality standards and to address healthy fish consumption rates for humans. The governor’s orca task force also identified PCBs as a serious threat to Puget Sound’s endangered southern resident orcas, which feed mostly on contaminated Chinook. While PCB reduction continues to be a high priority, the new strategy will address a much wider array of chemicals that affect wildlife across the spectrum.
Among the new concerns are contaminants known as endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs). These include pharmaceuticals, pesticides and other products that can pass through wastewater treatment plants and have biological effects on species throughout the ecosystem. The strategy recommends increased monitoring and prioritization of these contaminants to overcome what it calls “key data gaps” regarding their toxicity in Puget Sound.
EDCs may have wide-ranging effects on species. Estrogenic compounds in the water, possibly from pharmaceuticals like birth control pills, are causing male species of English sole in Puget Sound to produce egg proteins not typically seen in that sex. Scientists are looking for similar impacts on juvenile Chinook salmon and Pacific herring. Thousands of chemical compounds ranging from illicit drugs and opioids to personal care products and pesticides pass into Puget Sound waters every day. Researchers say they hope to determine which of these compounds will do the most harm to species. If the strategy is approved, this will be the first time that such contaminants will be included in the state’s Vital Sign measurements.
The strategy also addresses two additional categories of toxic chemicals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs). PAHs occur naturally in coal and crude oil and are commonly found in creosote that has been added to wood pilings or railroad ties as a wood preservative. Such chemicals can harm fish embryos in ways that mimic the effects of an oil spill. PBDEs are often used as flame retardants and can wash into Puget Sound through stormwater and wastewater or can be deposited as dust particles. Although banned from many products, PBDEs are still in circulation and can cause neurological problems in wildlife and humans. [Read more about these and other harmful “rogue chemicals” in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.]
In addition to identifying these key concerns, the strategy proposes management solutions such as “finding and fixing toxic hotspots; incentivizing redevelopment in high loading areas to reduce toxic loading; and accelerating in-water near-water cleanup of toxics.” The report was developed as part of a series of state and federal implementation strategies designed to provide a roadmap for Puget Sound recovery efforts.
The draft strategy is available for review at the Puget Sound Partnership website.
By Christopher Dunagan, Puget Sound Institute Recent studies have shown that Chinook salmon that spawn in the spring are genetically distinct from varieties that spawn during fall months. Experts are confronting the resulting ecological, social and legal implications of that finding.
Each year, as the dark days of winter surrendered to the rebirth of spring, the Twana people earnestly waited for a unique type of salmon to return to the rushing rivers of Tuwa’duxq Si’dak, known today as Hood Canal.
Throughout the Northwest, bands of native people followed their own ancient traditions, greeting the mysterious spring Chinook that would show up after the mountain snowpack began to melt.
Now, such arrivals are rare. More than half the spring Chinook runs in Puget Sound streams — including those in Hood Canal — have gone extinct since settlers first appeared in the 1800s. Essential habitat in the higher elevations, where the spring Chinook like to spawn, was cut off or damaged by logging, farming, dams and development. Although fall Chinook generally fared better, they too have experienced severe declines.
In 1999, federal authorities placed Puget Sound Chinook — spring and fall runs together — on the Endangered Species List.
Over the past few years, thanks to extraordinary advances in genetics, scientists are beginning to understand the unique nature of these fish as well as the genetic losses that occurred when spring runs disappeared. Experts are now confronting the resulting ecological, social and legal implications of these losses while trying to save the remaining spring populations and possibly restore historic runs to some streams. Read the full story in Salish Sea Currents on the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.
The reported deaths this week of three more southern resident orcas have brought renewed urgency to efforts to save the critically endangered population of whales. Many scientists and policymakers are focusing on the orcas’ access to their main source of food, the Chinook salmon. Members of the orca population are appearing dangerously thin and malnourished. But is the drop in their numbers the result of a lack of Chinook? It is an increasing matter of debate among scientists. By Jeff Rice, Puget Sound Institute
As the population of southern resident killer whales continues to decline, media outlets around the world have reported that Puget Sound’s orcas are dying of starvation.
“A pod of orcas is starving to death,” read The Guardian newspaper in London, as word went out last summer that a mother orca had carried her dead calf for a thousand miles. A headline in The New York Times reported, “Orcas of the Pacific Northwest Are Starving and Disappearing.”
These headlines echo a commonly held belief about orcas and their food supply, but are they accurate?
Studies have shown that the fish-eating southern residents prefer Chinook salmon over any other type of fish, and Chinook numbers have fallen far below historical levels. In Puget Sound, Chinook salmon are so depleted that they are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Food is critical to any population, so it’s not a huge leap to tie the Chinook decline to the decline of the southern residents.
In Washington state, the governor’s Orca Recovery Task Force established a primary goal of increasing the number of Chinook available to the orcas by boosting hatchery releases, improving habitat for wild salmon and considering ways to reduce the number of harbor seals — another species known to eat Chinook.
While many scientists agree that improving prey availability is important to southern resident orca recovery, some argue that there is no clear evidence that the whales are starving to death. They point to other possible factors, such as disease and genetic conditions related to inbreeding within the small population. Others would go even further, saying that there is little to no evidence that a current lack of salmon is affecting orca populations at all.
If this is news to many in the public, it’s been a hot topic of discussion happening outside the glare of the headlines, at symposiums, in scientific papers and in government hallways. We asked several prominent orca and fisheries scientists the same question: “Are Puget Sound’s southern resident orcas dying because of a lack of Chinook?” Their answers might surprise you. Are the orcas starving?
“It is not a settled question,” says NOAA wildlife biologist Brad Hanson of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
Hanson, for his part, cautions against the use of the word starvation. He is audibly frustrated when he hears the word used in connection to orca declines.
“That’s part of the problem,” he says. “I think there has been an effort to simplify the problem and so the default answer is the animals are starving. That’s something that in general people can easily wrap their heads around. But in reality, that’s not quite accurate.”
Hanson made this point in a podcast earlier this year that outlined the many problems facing southern resident orcas, from low salmon runs to noise and pollution issues.
When Hanson began studying orca declines 15 years ago, he hoped the causes would be simple to identify, “but what we’re finding is that is not the case.”
Here’s what Hanson wants you to know:
Like all animals, orcas need food to survive. And yes, Chinook populations throughout the southern residents’ range have declined from historic numbers, so overall availability is not what it was historically. But Hanson is inclined to see the lack of food as a stress on the population, not necessarily the direct cause of the highly-publicized orca deaths.
“If lack of food, or access to it, was causing starvation we would expect to see it across families, pods, or the entire population but we don’t see that,” he says.
The question of starvation is more than an issue of semantics, he argues. It goes to the core of understanding orca declines and finding the most effective path to recovery.
If an animal is losing weight, Hanson explains, it doesn’t automatically mean that it can’t get food. There could be other causes. For example, toxic chemicals such as PCBs and other contaminants could be predisposing orcas to disease, making the animals too sick to eat.
Hanson thinks he saw an example of this last summer during much-publicized efforts to feed orca J50, known as Scarlet, since deceased. Scientists were trying to get J50 to eat a Chinook salmon injected with medicine, but “based on her behavior, I’m just not convinced that she was interested in eating anything. It’s just like people when they get sick, they are not necessarily interested in having something to eat.”
At least some southern resident orca’s prey range much closer to the heavily polluted urban waters near Seattle than their healthier counterparts, the northern resident orcas that also eat Chinook, possibly magnifying the effects of water-borne toxics. The small population could also mean serious genetic problems for the orcas, making them more susceptible to disease or other issues, Hanson says. In other cases, factors such as boat noise and disturbance could be interfering with the whales’ ability to find and catch prey.
“We’re continuing to proceed with the idea that increasing prey abundance is going to benefit the population,” Hanson says. “But the point is, you don’t die of being malnourished. If you die and you’re malnourished, it’s not the malnutrition that gets you. Unless it’s an extreme form which is essentially starvation, there may be some other factor that is related to a lower abundance of prey that is actually acting as sort of a tipping point.”
To date, no necropsy report for any southern resident orca has shown starvation as the cause of death, according to NOAA. A lack of evidence?
Other scientists have made similar observations. “There are certainly a lot less Chinook than there were 100 years ago,” says University of Washington fisheries biologist Ray Hilborn. “It’s really since the ‘70s that the ocean conditions changed, and that the abundance [of salmon] dropped a fair amount. But is it the lack of Chinook that is the dominant problem? There’s really no evidence that that’s the case.”
There are plenty of benefits to protecting salmon, Hilborn says, but is a lack of salmon the cause of orca declines? He is not convinced. In fact, he argues, the small size of the southern resident orca population makes it difficult to say much that is definitive about the overall health of the whales.
“It’s always been a small population,” Hilborn says. You’re just dealing with a small population size. [The southern resident orcas] have periods of going up and down. There is just a lot of randomness when you’re dealing with dozens of animals — the kinds of randomness that in a population of 500 wouldn’t be noticeable. You can see a ten or fifteen percent downturn in a few years if you have a couple of deaths and no births.”
Hilborn chaired a 2012 review panel on the impacts of Chinook fishing on orca survival and says the findings from that panel remain relevant. In that report his group wrote: “There are insufficient data to relate the incidence of poor condition to nutritional stress caused by low Chinook salmon abundance or other causative factors. These data serve primarily to support the assertion that poor condition, which is clearly linked to increased risk of mortality, and by implication to fecundity, may reflect nutritional stress.”
Hilborn says that without what he and other scientists perceive as enough data, the causes of orca declines are inconclusive. He also makes the point that while some orcas are emaciated, there are other southern resident orcas that appear to be doing OK.
“You can look at the rest of the killer whales in the pod and they are looking fine. What is different about this individual? Does it have a disease? What is its problem? If the lack of Chinook was the issue, then why is this just sort of an individual here and there and not a population-wide phenomenon?” Hilborn says. “Clearly it’s much more complicated than that. It may have nothing to do with Chinook abundance. Or it may be that Chinook abundance is one of the thousand cuts that the southern residents are having to try to survive.” A case for salmon
Not all scientists would agree with Hilborn’s assessment. University of Washington biology professor Sam Wasser calls Hilborn “overly cautious” in this case. “In my mind there’s really no question about it (that the orcas are suffering due to a lack of salmon),” he says. “There is an enormous amount of evidence here.”
Wasser and his colleagues published a 2017 paper showing connections between orca fecundity and nutritional stress (see our story in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound, “Killer whale miscarriages linked to low food supply”), which Wasser says provides some of the evidence he mentions. The scientists looked at hormones from orca feces and presented a connection between a lack of food and high numbers of aborted pregnancies in southern residents.
“Low availability of Chinook salmon appears to be an important stressor among these fish-eating whales as well as a significant cause of late pregnancy failure,” the paper’s authors wrote.
In addition, low salmon runs may hurt orcas at nearly every turn, Wasser argues, magnifying stressors like underwater noise and disturbance. “The effects of vessel disturbance only come into play when the fish numbers get low,” Wasser says. Fewer food resources mean more energy spent for fewer returns, weakening orcas and potentially causing declines in immune systems that could lead to disease.
Wasser was one of several scientists who wrote a letter to the governor’s task force arguing that “increasing a wide variety of chinook salmon as quickly as possible must be the top priority for the Task Force and regional policymakers.”
Now, as the orcas decline further to a population of just 73 animals, Wasser continues his call to boost Chinook numbers. He sees the rarity of southern resident sightings in the Salish Sea this summer as a case for that argument. “It’s gotten so bad that for the first time known, the resident killer whales are rarely entering the Salish Sea because there are no Chinook for them to eat,” he wrote in an email. Waiting for the orcas
Just why the orcas have been largely missing from the Salish Sea this summer remains an open question. Is it a lack of salmon? That is not a given, several scientists we spoke to cautioned, despite poor returns that have curtailed the Chinook fishery in the San Juan Islands this month. Orcas have entered the Salish Sea during poor salmon years before, and the presumed loss of three more members of the population during their journey outside of the Salish Sea only adds to the mystery. Did the orcas find a trove of salmon somewhere on their long journey? If so, why do they continue to die? Will they find what they need here in the Salish Sea? For now, no one knows for sure.
By Christopher Dunagan
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Optimism, as related to a possible increase in funding for Puget Sound recovery, permeated discussions this week, when 80 officials from the region met with lawmakers in the nation’s capitol.
“It’s the first time in several years that we’ve actually been in a position to direct more money to Puget Sound programs,” said U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, during one of many “Puget Sound Day on the Hill” meetings.
With Democrats now in control of the House, they can draft a budget that fits their priorities for a host of projects — from civil rights legislation to funding for climate change. Of course, the challenge will be to get their issues through the Senate.
“It is really heartwarming to see the optimism that they are expressing, almost to a member,” said Stephanie Solien, vice chair of the Leadership Council, the oversight board for the Puget Sound Partnership. The Partnership coordinates the wide-ranging efforts to restore Puget Sound to ecological health.
Kilmer said he was sworn to secrecy about the actual numbers in the soon-to-be-released House appropriations bill, “but when it comes to fish funding and Puget Sound funding, we did very well.”
When Republicans controlled both the House and Senate, funding was substantially reduced for environmental programs, including money for the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which operate specific funds for improving salmon habitat and restoring major estuaries throughout the country.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget the past two years “zeroed out” funding for the Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund, which supports salmon-restoration efforts throughout the Northwest. But Republicans and Democrats worked together to restore the levels to $65 million, which is spread across five states.
Now, said Kilmer, “rather than working from a posture of trying to dig out of a hole, we are starting the conversation at a very good point.”
If the budget process works this year, Kilmer says funding for Puget Sound proposed in the House budget faces reasonably good prospects of getting through the Senate. Besides the support of Washington’s Democratic senators Patty Murray and Marie Cantwell, a number of Republican senators — including Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski — understand the importance of salmon to the Northwest.
The biggest obstacle will be to complete a budget, given the political divisions between House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, on many other issues. Not completing a budget might mean sequestration — automatic spending cuts — or another “continuing resolution” to keep the government operating under the status quo.
Nobody wants that, Kilmer said, and everybody says they are committed to a new budget before the end of the fiscal year in September. The key, he added, is to get House and Senate leaders to agree to a “cap” for the total budget, which would then allow final negotiations about where the available money would be spent.
For Puget Sound, national attention was drawn to the plight of the waterway and southern resident killer whales when Tahlequah, a mother orca, carried her dead baby on her head for 17 days. The orcas, considered to be on the verge of extinction, have helped people make a critical connection between those revered animals and the dwindling population of salmon — including chinook, their primary prey.
The governor’s task force on orcas came up with recommendations to help the Southern Residents. Those ideas were largely supported by the Legislature with new laws and funding. Now, Puget Sound officials are looking for financial assistance from the federal government.
The loss of salmon also affects the culture and traditions of Native American people, whose identity was formed around salmon over thousands of years. Through all the struggles, tribes maintain a right to fish, a right guaranteed by federal treaties and confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. That makes tribal officials a key part of the legislative discussions.
About 20 tribal leaders joined the annual “Puget Sound Day on the Hill,” which this year was combined with a separate effort called “Salmon Day on the Hill.”
“It’s not often that our treaty rights are in the vernacular of Congress,” said Ed Johnstone, an official with the Quinault Indian Nation and Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. “We have a long history, going back through Congressman (Norm) Dicks and Senators (Warren) Magnuson and Scoop Jackson. We are here to help this process.”
Kilmer agreed with Johnstone that the personal connections between people and the natural world are priceless. He said some of the best moments of his life are those times he has spent outdoors with his children “enjoying nature in this incredible part of the world.”
“The main thing I want to say is thank you,” Kilmer told the group of 80 delegates gathered together Wednesday morning. “The impact that this group has had over the years is significant.”
In addition to Kilmer, the delegates from Puget Sound met as a large group with both Washington state senators as well as with Reps. Denny Heck, D-Olympia; Kim Schrier, D-Sammamish; Suzan DelBene, D-Medina; Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle; and Rick Larsen, D-Everett.
Some of the delegates met again in small groups with those lawmakers, while others joined up with other representatives from Washington state. Still others carried the message to senators and representatives from other parts of the country, talking about the importance of the Puget Sound ecosystem and how to go about restoring the waterway to a healthy condition. — Christopher Dunagan is a senior writer at the Puget Sound Institute.
By Christopher Dunagan
After five weeks at sea, a team of 21 scientists from five countries returned Monday with some surprising findings about the mysterious lives of salmon in the Pacific Ocean, according to Laurie Weitkamp, a salmon biologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Newport, Ore.
“It was quite an experience,” said Weitkamp, one of three chief scientists aboard the Russian research vessel Professor Kaganovsky.
The groundbreaking studies of the past month became intertwined with the mixture of cultures from the international research team including the Russian captain and crew who shared a differing lifestyle and taste in foods.
“It was very different from being on a U.S. ship,” Weitkamp said. “At times, there was a feeling that we were actually in Russia.”
The expedition was part of activities associated with the International Year of the Salmon and was meant to look at how salmon fare in the open ocean. Among the surprises that emerged from the cruise was the relatively small number of pink salmon. Pinks, the most abundant salmon in the Pacific Ocean, normally make up about half of all the salmon in the region. Yet during the expedition — which covered some 345,000 square miles — pink salmon made up only about 10 percent of the salmon caught in the researchers’ nets.
“We kept asking, ‘Where are the pinks? Why aren’t you here?’” Weitkamp recalled.
Russian members of the crew spent about two weeks collecting fish in the Western Pacific Ocean before crossing over to North America and picking up the remainder of the research team in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“They weren’t finding many pink salmon there either,” she said.
Some speculated that the pinks had moved from the deep ocean into coastal waters during the February-March time period. Another possibility is that some pinks had moved south. It appeared that more pink salmon were caught by the researchers in the southern portion of the study area, which stretched south to a line extending west from Seattle.
The most abundant salmon caught in the research nets was chum, Weitkamp said. They were distributed throughout the study area, perhaps with slightly more toward the south.
“Chum were really interesting,” she said. “Previous research has shown that most of them are probably Asian,” arriving from across the ocean.
Many of the chum were skinny, as if they hadn’t gotten enough food, and their stomachs were empty. Younger chum seemed to be in somewhat better condition. “The coho looked great”
On the other hand, coho salmon were in far better shape. They were the second-most-abundant fish caught in the study, which was another big surprise. Other studies, conducted mostly in the summer, had led researchers to believe that coho stayed in the coastal regions. That seemed reasonable, since coho spend only a year and a half in the ocean. And yet here they were far out at sea.
“The coho looked great,” Weitkamp said. “They had full stomachs. But it’s really puzzling, because we thought that they were a coastal fish.”
Why coho were foraging well and chum were practically starving has not yet been explained, Weitkamp said. Was it a preference for a particular food, or did one of the species arrive within the study area after spending time where prey availability was different? Coho salmon. Photo courtesy of NOAA.
Sockeye salmon provided another interesting finding, Weitkamp said. Water temperatures seemed to be satisfactory for sockeye throughout the study area, yet sockeye seemed to congregate more in the northern portion, including areas as far north as Kodiak, Alaska.
Only three Chinook salmon were caught during the entire trip, according to Weitkamp, probably because they were staying in water too deep to be caught using nets that stretched down to 160 feet.
Genetic testing of salmon tissues at sea showed a mixture of species coming from streams as far north as Alaska and as far south as the Columbia River. Further testing following the expedition could determine the origins of all the fish caught, providing evidence of where salmon may go during the winter months at sea.
“One thing we don’t know is whether what we saw was typical,” Weitkamp said, noting that this is just one year and the researchers are fully aware that conditions can change and fish can move around.
To clarify, she said, imagine Times Square in New York City on New Year’s Eve. One can’t assume that the huge crowds one sees at that time will be there all year round. Further studies are needed to establish the most typical patterns for salmon, as the search for explanations goes on.
What the fish were eating, as found by examining their stomach contents, was fairly consistent with what was being caught in the various nets designed to catch plankton and smaller fish, Weitkamp said. Krill, especially in the northern areas, was a common prey for the salmon, while 3- to 4-inch lanternfish — which rise to the surface only at night — were common throughout the area.
The nets caught a lot of squid, she said, but the species of squid eaten by Chinook as well as some of the coho and sockeye are a species that lives in water too deep for the nets to reach. Why the salmon chose the deep-water squid and not the shallow-water variety that seemed abundant in the area remains another unanswered question. Life aboard the ship
The diversity of scientists from many fields was extremely valuable as incoming data were shared constantly, Weitkamp said. The research leaders met at 9 a.m. daily to share top-level information and plan out upcoming research activities conducted by the scientists. The team was composed of 10 Russians, six Canadians, three Americans, one Japanese and one Korean.
Most of the Russian scientists spoke English to some degree and three of the Canadian researchers were originally from Russia, so there were plenty of interpreters to assist the non-English-speaking scientists as well as the ship’s crew, most of whom did not speak English, she said.
The food served on board was “very Russian,” practically devoid of spices, Weitkamp said. “I don’t know how many bottles of hot sauce we went through.”
Breakfast was normally freshly baked white bread and butter with a weekly slice of cheese. Both lunch of dinner were typically some kind of soup with meat and rice or potatoes. Tea time at 3:30 p.m. was served with various teas and a wide variety of accompaniments: white cake, fried eggs, ricotta-like cheese with dried plums, sweet oatmeal porridge, pickled herring pie and more.
As for life aboard a Russian ship, the vessel seemed “homey and lived in,” Weitkamp said. The windows were adorned with lace curtains; the crew maintained living plants; and a ship’s cat spent his time hanging out in one of the labs on board. Unlike American research ships, where researchers take their gear with them, the visiting scientists on the Kaganovsky found every drawer, cabinet and counter space chocked full of stuff, presumably left by generations of researchers, she said. [For her full account, read “Life aboard the Russian research vessel Professor Kaganovskiy.”]
Seas were fairly calm coming out of Vancouver on Feb. 16, but there was a bit of rough weather on the second or third day as the ship reached the research area, Weitkamp said. Most people recovered from any seasickness after a few days, although at least one person struggled to work while being sick the entire trip.
The original goal was to stop and perform research operations at 75 stations along a 6,000-mile route, following a back and forth pattern. Based on travel time, however, that was soon revised to 60 stations.
It normally worked well to visit three stations each day, usually taking six hours to travel between stations. But one day, about two-thirds of the way through the expedition, a storm showed up, forcing the ship and all its passengers to struggle through high winds and waves for 16 hours before reaching their destination.
Many of the scientists returned home with samples of marine life to be examined and shared with many more colleagues unable to be accommodated on the vessel. Some will be examining salmon tissues genetically to determine where the fish came from.
Others will take a close look at the ear bones, or otoliths, to measure growth rates and compare them with fish leaving and returning to the streams. It has long been suspected that faster-growing salmon are better suited to avoid predators and survive through winters of low prey abundance.
Still others will measure the ratio of various chemicals found in the fish tissues to determine where in the ocean the fish had likely gained the most weight. Proposed expedition route. Map courtesy of International Year of the Salmon.
Measuring the density of prey found during the expedition and combining that with other information about the Eastern Pacific could help determine the region’s carrying capacity — a measure of how many fish and other creatures can survive within the prescribed area.
The expedition is expected to generate a variety of focused research papers, according to participants, and probably an over-arching summary, which could be released first, they say. Organizers and researchers would like to conduct a follow-up expedition to determine if this year’s findings will hold up to further scrutiny and to investigate the possible reasons for all the unexpected findings.
The expedition was conceived by longtime Canadian salmon researcher Dick Beamish, who helped raise $1 million for the five-week voyage involving the Russian crew, which was experienced in winter fishing and taking scientific measurements under grueling high-seas conditions. — Christopher Dunagan is a senior writer at the Puget Sound Institute.
This week we present “The Orca Docs,” a two-part series from our senior writer Christopher Dunagan. The series focuses on some of the issues related to proposed medical intervention for Puget Sound’s endangered orcas.
The death of a young female orca in September has sparked a discussion of how and whether scientists should step in with medical care for distressed animals in the wild. Medical intervention has become routine for some endangered mammals, but scientists say Puget Sound’s resident orcas present a series of unique challenges and ethical questions. In part one of our series we look at how scientists are preparing to treat endangered southern resident orcas that face starvation and risks of disease. Part two examines how this has worked for other species such as mountain gorillas and whether those efforts might inspire local actions.
Part one: When should medical experts intervene to save a killer whale?
Part two: Wildlife rescues may inform orca strategies
Hundreds of years ago, old-growth cedar and spruce loomed over estuaries and bottom lands throughout Puget Sound, creating what are known as tidal forests. These forests were the Pacific Northwest’s answer to the Everglades — giant spongy swamps with a touch of saltwater that made up some of the finest salmon habitat in the region.
This week we travel to Otter Island, one of the last of these forests. It is a journey into Puget Sound’s past and maybe, scientists hope, its future. Read the full story in Salish Sea Currents.
Many people thought the issue of regulating toxic chemical discharges into Puget Sound was settled when the federal government forced Washington state to use stricter criteria, but the debate may be underway once again. By Christopher Dunagan
An unlikely disagreement between state and federal authorities over water-quality standards has flared up again. Two years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency stepped in to impose more stringent water-quality standards than those approved by Washington state. Now a petition from industry groups is causing the EPA to review its earlier stance.
For years, Washington Department of Ecology had been under the gun to update its rules to protect water quality and ultimately control levels of contaminants discharged from single pipes. Water-quality standards, based on chemical concentrations and other factors, help to define whether a waterway is healthy or “impaired” under the federal Clean Water Act.
The new human health criteria were based in no small part on assumptions about how much fish people eat — the “fish-consumption rate” — as well as other factors, including what should be considered an acceptable cancer risk for people who eat a lot of fish.
Because the diet of Southern Resident killer whales is almost entirely fish, water-quality standards also became an issue for the governor’s orca task force, which recently released recommendations to help save the whales from extinction.
During the debate over allowable levels of chemicals, Northwest Indian tribes pushed for the most stringent standards, because their members generally consumed the most fish and faced the greatest health concerns, according to Fran Wilshusen, habitat services director for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. “It was a contentious discussion,” she noted.
Ecology eventually settled on specific criteria for 95 contaminants, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a class of chemicals that accumulate in the human body with potential effects on metabolism, reproduction and immune function as well as a risk of cancer. PCBs also are implicated in the orcas’ declining health and reproductive rates. [Read more about how toxic chemicals are affecting Puget Sound’s endangered orcas.]
Using somewhat different assumptions, the EPA developed standards that were generally more stringent than what the state had proposed. Several major industry groups argued that the state standards were too restrictive, and they objected when the EPA came up with even stricter standards for 75 of the 95 chemicals — including PCBs with an approved limit 24 times lower than what the state had proposed.
For PCBs, the primary difference between Ecology’s proposal and EPA’s approved standards was the level of acceptable cancer risk: 10 in a million for Ecology versus 1 in a million for EPA, although there were also other issues involved.
For most other chemicals, Ecology used the one-in-a-million cancer risk factor, and most of the difference with EPA’s standards came from assumptions about how organisms become exposed to toxic chemicals. Petition to revise the standards
After President Trump was elected on a promise to rein in environmental regulations, a consortium of eight business and industry groups petitioned the federal government to reverse EPA’s previous findings and approve Ecology’s water-quality standards.
The EPA standards improperly usurp state authority, claims the 65-page petition, which examines each factor used to develop the chemical criteria. “EPA has imposed on the people of the state of Washington arbitrary and capricious human health water quality criteria that will likely be devastating to our local communities and businesses,” the petition states.
After reviewing the petition, the EPA agreed in August to reconsider its 2016 approval of water-quality standards for Washington state and decide whether any changes are justified. That review process is still underway, according to EPA spokesman Mark Macintyre.
One of the arguments in the petition concerns the ability to measure contaminants. The approved limit for PCBs in fresh and marine waters is so low that a waterway could contain PCBs above the allowable limit but regulators would not know it, because current testing methods are not sensitive enough to detect them, said Chris McCabe of Northwest Pulp and Paper Association, one of the petitioners.
That’s a problem, he argued, because if someone were to develop a more sensitive test for PCBs, every sewage-treatment plant in the state would exceed the water-quality standard, he said, and every waterway would be listed as “impaired” for PCBs.
Cities, counties and industrial facilities could be faced with spending tens of millions of dollars to upgrade their equipment and still not meet the standard, McCabe asserted.
Wilshusen, representing the tribes, argues that the PCB standard should be based on an understanding of toxicity and health risks, as required by the Clean Water Act. [Read “Ten things to understand about the Clean Water Act” in the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound.] Whether the standards can be met for an industrial facility or body of water should be a separate issue, she said.
For its part, Ecology never appealed the stricter criteria adopted by the EPA, and Ecology Director Maia Bellon has written in support of maintaining the two-year-old EPA regulations, calling for consistency.
“What Washington state’s communities and businesses need the most right now is predictability, certainty and flexibility to meet clean water requirements,” Bellon wrote in a letter to EPA. “We are well on the path of providing just that. We have been engaging with wastewater dischargers since last year … striving to develop clean water permits that are both protective and practical.”
Since adoption two years ago, the water-quality standards imposed by the EPA have been incorporated into the rules used to write permits that limit the amount of pollution discharged from pipes, according to Ecology officials. So far, about one out of five individual industrial and municipal permits have been updated since the new criteria went into effect in December 2016, but any sudden changes are seen as unlikely. One reason is that discharge permits address only known contaminants, and it could take years to identify chemicals that fail to meet the new standards, officials say. [Editor’s note: This article was produced with funds provided by a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency but is not meant to represent the views of that agency or any of its employees. The Agency does not endorse or take a position on the content of the article.]
By Jeff Rice
The governor’s Southern Resident Orca Task Force released its final report and recommendations today, focusing on three key threats to Puget Sound’s endangered orcas: Lack of food, disturbance from noise and vessel traffic, and toxic contaminants. In all, the report makes 36 recommendations for recovering the fast-declining orca population, which now stands at 74 animals.
“The extinction of these orcas would be an unacceptable loss,” reads the report, which identifies a wide variety of potential actions that will require extensive funding and long-term commitment on the part of state and federal agencies. The task force met six times between May and November of this year and received more than 18,000 comments from the public.
Of the 36 recommendations, the first and most extensive is the improvement of habitat for Chinook salmon, the orcas’ primary source of food, including habitat acquisition and additional funding in support of ongoing restoration efforts. The report also calls for an increase in the production of hatchery Chinook and recommends establishing “a stakeholder process to discuss potential breaching or removal of the lower Snake River Dams” seen as a barrier to Chinook spawning. Other measures would include bolstering forage fish populations, which Chinook eat in abundance. Several of the recommendations, such as improved enforcement of habitat protection would require legislative action.
Among the potentially sensitive issues addressed by the report are new studies showing high predation of juvenile Chinook salmon by seals and sea lions, in particular Puget Sound’s booming harbor seal population. The report recommends a study to determine the potential impact of pinniped predation on Chinook to “evaluate potential management actions” such as the removal of some animals or the altering of select haul out sites.
Task force members voted 33 to 1 to approve the recommendations, with six members abstaining and seven absent from the vote. The lone dissenting vote was cast by a representative on behalf of the Pacific Whale Watch Association which objected to the task force’s recommendations to curtail commercial whale watching for the next 3 to 5 years.
“The association feels strongly that Recommendation 28 restricting viewing on the Southern Residents was not properly vetted and the implementation will lead to unintended consequences,” the Pacific Whale Watching Association wrote in a statement. “PWWA is working in partnership with the scientific community to develop a science-based vessel management plan to mitigate risk of harm to the Southern Residents.”
Many of the threats listed in the report are well-known, such as the impacts of toxic chemicals including PCBs and PBDEs that accumulate in Chinook and have led to a high incidence of miscarriages among southern resident orcas [for more on this subject, read our story in Salish Sea Currents, “For declining orcas, food is fate”]. The task force is encouraging legislative action in 2019 “for a program that incentivizes the accelerated removal of primary legacy sources of PCBs, PAHs, PBDEs and per and polyfluoroalkyl substances present in the built environment in the central Puget Sound.” It also calls for improvements in the effectiveness and enforcement of permits for the discharge of toxic chemicals harmful to orcas.
The task force is expected to continue its work into 2019 and will prepare a follow-up document assessing its progress by October 1, 2019.
