News

The Hiksari Trail from Truesdale Street to the Herrick Avenue Park and Ride is the newest segment of the Eureka Waterfront Trail

The City of Eureka and Redwood Community Action Agency (RCAA) held a community celebration of the Elk River Access Area and Hiksari Trail, a new segment of the Eureka Waterfront Trail that has been in the planning stages for years. Heavy equipment work is scheduled to begin Tuesday.

Above: 4th District Supervisor Virginia Bass and Eureka Mayor Frank Jager wield cremonial Golden McClouds to break ground at the Truesdale Vista Point on Saturday.

On Tuesday, June 5, the Eureka City Council will consider reallocating State Transportation funding to the next segment of the trail, from Truesdale Street north to Del Norte Street.

5/28/12

New findings from the first statewide study of contaminants in fish caught off the California coast show that methylmercury, a toxin that damages the nervous system of humans, was found in high concentrations in more than a third of the locations that researchers sampled.

The report, released Tuesday by the state's water quality agency, yields new information for anglers and consumers on which species of fish tend to accumulate the substance. It also indicates that older, predatory fish have higher levels of methylmercury regardless of where they're caught.

Seven species popular with recreational fishermen had high concentrations of methylmercury: leopard sharks, brown smoothhound sharks, spiny dogfish, copper rockfish, rosy rockfish, china rockfish and striped bass, the report stated, so children and pregnant women should not eat them.

The analysis also found a higher rate of contamination in fish caught on the Northern Coast than those caught in the Bay Area.

Since there are not significant sources of mercury pollution to the north, the findings indicate that faraway sources can affect local fish, said Jay Davis, leader of the study produced by the Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program of the State Water Resources Control Board.

”It suggests there's enough mercury coming into these aquatic ecosystems from global sources in the atmosphere to drive significant accumulations in the species that are prone to high accumulations,” said Davis, senior scientist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute.

The higher rates to the north are also due to the age and types of fish caught there. They tend to be longer-lived predators, and mercury levels increase with age and among fish higher up the food chain.

Methylmercury is produced by bacteria that convert mercury pollution, from sources including gold mines and coal-burning power plants, into an organic form.

Children are particularly vulnerable to the toxin, which is why the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment recommends stronger limitations on eating certain species of fish for children and women of childbearing age.

Overall, the study found that 37 percent of the 68 locations where fish were sampled along the coast produced at least one species with high concentrations of methylmercury.

The study also measured polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and other toxins. Just 7 percent of the sites where fish were sampled had a species in the high-contamination category for PCBs. San Francisco Bay and San Diego Bay were among them.

To read the report, visit www.waterboards.ca.gov/swamp and scroll down to “California Coastal Contamination Study in Sport Fish.”

To view fish consumption guidelines, go to www.oehha.ca.gov and click on “Fish” at the top of the page.

For information on fishing locations, visit www.cawaterquality.net.

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5/17/12

Klamath Riverkeeper (KRK) announced in a press release today that it has filed its lawsuit against the Montague Water Conservation District (MWCD) over its operation of Dwinell Dam on the Shasta River. The release also states that the Karuk Tribe will be joining the lawsuit.

“The legal filing by KRK follows a 60-day notice period during which KRK offered MWCD an opportunity to negotiate a settlement outside the courtroom,” the release states. “The action effectively calls on the irrigation district to remedy its impacts to salmon runs verging on extinction there.”
KRK Executive Director Erica Terence told the Daily News that there had been some communications between her group and the MWCD during the 60-day notice period, but “no concrete solutions have emerged.”

Terence said KRK is still interested in seeking a settlement if possible, but she noted that the original filing clearly stated that the lawsuit would go forward after 60 days even if negotiation were ongoing.

“We just can’t afford to wait,” Terence said. “Shasta River coho are nearly extinct. There’s no time left.”

Craig Tucker, Klamath coordinator for the Karuk Tribe, said they are joining the lawsuit for several reasons.

“The tribe bases their restoration strategy on science,” Tucker said. “We’ve just completed several studies on the Shasta River and they make it very clear that Dwinell Dam is the biggest limiting factor to Shasta River coho populations.”

Tucker said the tribe does not currently fish for coho salmon, but they hope the fish will someday be removed from the Endangered Species List so they can.

“We are working for the restoration of all anadromous species in the Klamath system. We want to get them off the ESA and into the tribe’s smokehouses,” Tucker said.

Both KRK and the Karuk Tribe say that they understand and appreciate the importance of agriculture to the Siskiyou County economy, but believe there needs to be a better balance of water use for both agriculture and fish-dependant communities.

The Karuk Tribe will file a 60-day intent-to-file-suit on Friday. After that 60-day period they will officially be co-litigants in the case.

Look for further coverage of this issue in an upcoming edition of the Daily News.

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5/9/12

A 100-fold upsurge in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean is altering habitats in the marine environment, according to a new study led by a graduate student researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

 In 2009 an ambitious group of graduate students led the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) to the North Pacific Ocean Subtropical Gyre aboard the Scripps research vessel New Horizon. During the voyage the researchers, who concentrated their studies a thousand miles west of California, documented an alarming amount of human-generated trash, mostly broken down bits of plastic the size of a fingernail floating across thousands of miles of open ocean.

At the time the researchers didn’t have a clear idea of how such trash might be impacting the ocean environment, but a new study published in the May 9 online issue of the journal Biology Letters reveals that plastic debris in the area popularly known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” has increased by 100 times over in the past 40 years, leading to changes in the natural habitat of animals such as the marine insect Halobates sericeus. These “sea skaters” or “water striders”-relatives of pond water skaters-inhabit water surfaces and lay their eggs on flotsam (floating objects). Naturally existing surfaces for their eggs include, for example: seashells, seabird feathers, tar lumps and pumice. In the new study researchers found that sea skaters have exploited the influx of plastic garbage as new surfaces for their eggs. This has led to a rise in the insect’s egg densities in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

Such an increase, documented for the first time in a marine invertebrate (animal without a backbone) in the open ocean, may have consequences for animals across the marine food web, such as crabs that prey on sea skaters and their eggs.

“This paper shows a dramatic increase in plastic over a relatively short time period and the effect it’s having on a common North Pacific Gyre invertebrate,” said Scripps graduate student Miriam Goldstein, lead author of the study and chief scientist of SEAPLEX, a UC Ship Funds-supported voyage. “We’re seeing changes in this marine insect that can be directly attributed to the plastic.”

The new study follows a report published last year by Scripps researchers in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series showing that nine percent of the fish collected during SEAPLEX contained plastic waste in their stomachs. That study estimated that fish in the intermediate ocean depths of the North Pacific Ocean ingest plastic at a rate of roughly 12,000 to 24,000 tons per year.

The Goldstein et al. study compared changes in small plastic abundance between 1972-1987 and 1999-2010 by using historical samples from the Scripps Pelagic Invertebrate Collection and data from SEAPLEX, a NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer cruise in 2010, information from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation as well as various published papers.

In April, researchers with the Instituto Oceanográfico in Brazil published a report that eggs of Halobates micans, another species of sea skater, were found on many plastic bits in the South Atlantic off Brazil.

“Plastic only became widespread in late ’40s and early ’50s, but now everyone uses it and over a 40-year range we’ve seen a dramatic increase in ocean plastic,” said Goldstein. “Historically we have not been very good at stopping plastic from getting into the ocean so hopefully in the future we can do better.”

Coauthors of the study include Marci Rosenberg, a student at UCLA, and Scripps Research Biologist Emeritus Lanna Cheng.

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