News

Klamath whale likely died from a fungal skin infection

12/29/11

”MaMa,” the gray whale that delighted throngs of motorists and tourists at the Klamath River over the summer, died of a fungal skin infection, scientists said Wednesday.

The news came amid reports that a gray whale washed ashore in Bandon, Ore., on Sunday could be her calf. Oregon state officials said that turned out to be incorrect.

Calum Stevenson, an ocean shore natural resource specialist for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department who helped bury the deceased whale on Wednesday, said it was definitely not a juvenile.

”It turned out to be an adult,” Stevenson said. “It was 39 feet long.”

A television group with the King Broadcasting Company in Portland, Ore., reported that a 20-foot-long juvenile gray whale had washed ashore and that biologists were trying to figure out if it could be the calf of “MaMa.”

Stevenson said the whale was found on the beach on Christmas day and that it had likely been deceased and out at sea for about a week. He said workers had to move the whale about one-quarter mile south of its location in order to bury it Wednesday.

”We dragged it and then dug a 15-foot-deep hole and buried it in the sand,” Stevenson said.

Humboldt State University marine biology professor Dawn Goley said a 39-foot whale is pretty much a full-grown adult and that it's highly unlikely such a large whale would be MaMa's calf.

MaMa entered the river with her calf

on June 24, swimming as far inland as the U.S. Highway 101 bridge. Three weeks after entering the river, her calf swam back to the ocean. MaMa stayed and eventually died on Aug. 16.

Before MaMa was buried on the Klamath riverbank by the Yurok Tribe, biologists did a necropsy -- an animal autopsy -- to determine the whale's cause of death. Goley said the recently received results of tissue samples from MaMa showed she had a secondary infection caused by the integrity of her skin being compromised.

”Cellularly, there were sort of breaks in the skin that could allow pathogens to get in,” Goley said.

Sarah Wilkin, stranding coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, said it was likely MaMa's skin infection that killed her. Wilkin said the whale had some sort of fungal infection.

”It is definitely from being in fresh water,” Wilkin said. “It weakened the skin and allowed for a way for the fungus to get in.”

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Newly Flooded Arcata Baylands Open to Humboldt Bay

12/21/11

The Arcata Baylands project recently passed a crucial milestone when its network of estuary channels was recently opened to Humboldt Bay.

The Baylands project helps establish a connectivity of habitat encompassing over 1,300 acres of local, state and federally-protected lands adjacent to the northern edge of Humboldt Bay.

Project work included enhancement of more than nine acres of seasonal wetlands located near Old Arcata Road and Union Street (by the CHP) and Old Arcata Road north of Jacoby Creek School (the newest one), restoring tidal activity to former tidal channels, and fencing and planting native trees and shrubs along Jacoby, Beith and Campbell creeks to improve habitat in and along these streams.

Community volunteers and Jacoby Creek students worked with the City to plant more than 1,300 trees and shrubs along Jacoby Creek.

The work in this area is part of a much larger conservation effort that includes upper watershed protection, and collaboration with the Jacoby Creek Land Trust, Humboldt Fish Action Council, California Conservation Corps, Humboldt State University, Redwood Science Lab and hundreds of community volunteers.

This work began over 10 years ago and involves more than 13 grant cycles funded by the Wildlife Conservation Board, California Department of Fish and Game, Natural Resource Conservation Service, USFWS Partners.

Flotsam from Japanese tsunami reaches West Coast

12/18/11

A big black float that was thought to be in the first wave of tsunami debris to be found on beaches in the U.S. has been identified as having come from Miyagi prefecture, one of the areas hardest hit by the March’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan, according to Japanese newspaper The Mainichi Daily News.

Yuuki Watanabe, a senior official of a fisheries cooperative association in the Miyagi prefecture, examined a photograph of one of the floats that was found and confirmed it looks like those used in oyster cultivation in the Miyagi area,The Mainichi Daily News said.

Miyagi prefecture is in northeastern Japan and includes the hard-hit city of Sendai.

The location of where the float was found was not reported, however, such findings have been made in Neah Bay.

A single black float found during a beach cleanup east of Neah Bay more than two weeks ago was identified by Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham as being from the massive magnitude-9.0 earthquake and resultant tsunami in Japan on March 11, Ebbesmeyer said at a Peninsula College lecture Tuesday.

Neah Bay, elsewhere

Since the announcement, more floats, each about the size of a 55-gallon-drum, have been reported from Neah Bay to Vancouver Island. Many of those who found the floats said they began seeing them in late November.

In LaPush, where two floats were found last month, the Quileute Tribe has organized a response to the arrival of the tsunami debris.

“We are asking that community members and visitors please contact law enforcement or the local Coast Guard if they find anything that may have possibly traveled to our shore as a result of the Japanese tsunami,” said Jackie Jacobs, tribal spokeswoman.

In other areas, phone local police, the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office or Olympic National Park rangers to report suspected tsunami-related debris.

Over next year

About a quarter of some 100 million tons of debris from Japan is expected to begin to make landfall on Pacific coastlines in the next year, Ebbesmeyer said.

Most of the debris is still in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, traveling on average seven miles per day, but some lighter, windblown flotsam travels faster, as much as 20 miles per day, he said.

Neah Bay is located on a cape at the northwestern tip of the continental U.S., at a point where two major east-flowing currents split, one north to Alaska and another south toward California. It is a dropping-off point for flotsam caught in those currents, the researchers said.

Much of the debris snagged by currents leading into the Strait of Juan de Fuca eventually will wash up on beaches from the mouth of the Elwha River to Port Townsend, they said.

Many beaches on the Pacific Coast, from Alaska to California, are likely to accumulate significant amounts of tsunami debris over the next few years.

Eventually, huge rafts of debris containing anything from boats to houses — and possibly human body parts — could wash up on western shores, Ebbesmeyer said.

Email Ebbesmeyer at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for assistance in translation and to track tsunami debris back to its Japanese origins.

Northwest Oyster Die-offs Show Ocean Acidification Has Arrived

11/21/11

The acidification of the world’s oceans from an excess of CO2 has already begun, as evidenced recently by the widespread mortality of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest. Scientists say this is just a harbinger of things to come if greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar.

Standing on the shores of Netarts Bay in Oregon on a sunny fall morning, it’s hard to imagine that the fate of the oysters being raised here at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery is being determined by what came out of smokestacks and tailpipes in the 1960s and ‘70s. But this rural coastal spot and the shellfish it has nurtured for centuries are a bellwether of one of the most palpable changes being caused by global carbon dioxide emissions — ocean acidification.

It was here, from 2006 to 2008, that oyster larvae began dying dramatically, with hatchery owners Mark Wiegardt and his wife, Sue Cudd, experiencing larvae losses of 70 to 80 percent. “Historically we’ve had larvae mortalities,” says Wiegardt, but those deaths were usually related to bacteria. After spending thousands of dollars to disinfect and filter out pathogens, the hatchery’s oyster larvae were still dying.

Finally, the couple enlisted the help of Burke Hales, a biogeochemist and ocean ecologist at Oregon State University. He soon homed in on the carbon chemistry of the water. “My wife sent a few samples in and Hales said someone had screwed up the samples because the [dissolved CO2 gas] level was so ridiculously high,” says Wiegardt, a fourth-generation oyster farmer. But the measurements were accurate. What the Whiskey Creek hatchery was experiencing was acidic seawater, caused by the ocean absorbing excessive amounts of CO2 from the air.

Ocean acidification — which makes it difficult for shellfish, corals, sea urchins, and other creatures to form the shells or calcium-based structures they need to live — was supposed to be a problem of the future. But because of patterns of ocean circulation, Pacific Northwest shellfish are already on the front lines of these potentially devastating changes in ocean chemistry. Colder, more acidic waters are welling up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and streaming ashore in the fjords, bays, and estuaries of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, exacting an environmental and economic toll on the region’s famed oysters.

For the past six years, wild oysters in Willapa Bay, Washington, have failed to reproduce successfully because corrosive waters have prevented oyster larvae from forming shells. Wild oysters in Puget Sound and off the east coast of Vancouver Island also have experienced reproductive failure because of acidic waters. Other wild oyster beds in the Pacific Northwest have sustained losses in recent years at the same time that scientists have been measuring alarmingly corrosive water along the Pacific coast.

The region’s thriving oyster hatcheries have had to scramble to adapt to these increases in acidity, which pose a threat to their very existence. Some of the largest operations, such as Whiskey Creek, are buffering the water in which they grow their larvae, essentially giving their tanks a dose of antacid in the form of sodium bicarbonate.

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Parcel tax sought to support Contra Costa County, cities clean water program

12/6/11

Contra Costa County will pursue a countywide parcel tax of $12 to $22 per house per year to raise money to help meet more stringent federal clean water and stormwater runoff regulations.

The board of supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to participate in the election with the county's 19 cities in a partnership called the Contra Costa Clean Water Program. The cities and county are members, and each agency already pays a share based on population.

But experts estimate the coalition will be short $14 million in the next five years in its work to reduce pollution in water that runs off parking lots, buildings and other urban structures.

Property owners will receive ballots in the mail in February, and voting will continue until April 6.