News

9/17/11

The sudden death of thousands of red abalone and other invertebrates along the Sonoma County Coast over the past few weeks has prompted state wildlife officials to propose an indefinite ban on abalone fishing while biologists search for a cause.

The California Fish and Game Commission passed an emergency order Thursday to close the only abalone fishery in the state after continued reports of dead mollusks along the shoreline and in the water in Bodega Bay, Russian Gulch, Fort Ross, Timber Cove and Salt Point State Park.

California Department of Fish and Game officials said the mass die-off was caused by an unusual and virulent red tide.

"It is an unprecedented event," said Ian Taniguchi, the senior marine biologist for fish and game. "It's definitely going to affect the fishery. It is such a significant event that it may change how we manage the overall abalone fishery in the future."

Taniguchi said the red tide, which is a large bloom of phytoplankton, suddenly appeared late last month. Abalone divers reported a dark reddish brown tide and very low visibility. On Aug. 27, huge numbers of dead abalone, urchins, starfish and gumboot chitons, an oval shaped mollusk, were strewn all over the beaches, he said.

The carnage continued at a startling pace. Tom Jahng, 39, who was diving in the Fort Ross and Timber Cove areas on Sept. 5, said he encountered the rotting carcasses of hundreds of abalone and other mollusks on the beach and lying underwater.

"In the shallows, within the first quarter-mile of diving, there was just dead abalone and sea urchin everywhere," said Jahng, 39, of Los Angeles, who grew up in the Bay Area and often dives along the pristine Sonoma coast, which is normally teeming with colorful urchins and sea life. "I was heartbroken. I was devastated. It was a graveyard."

Taniguchi said the deadly bloom spread from Bodega Bay all the way to Anchor Bay, in southern Mendocino County, but the hardest hit area was at Fort Ross. A team of biologist divers from the department estimated that 30 percent of the red abalone at Fort Ross had died. At Timber Cove, 25 percent were dead. Some 12 percent of the abalone at Salt Point died too, according to the survey.

Marine scientists up and down the coast are trying to figure out what caused the tide and why it is so deadly. One possibility is that the phytoplankton was so plentiful that it sucked all the oxygen out of the water, suffocating invertebrates. The other theory is that this particular plankton species is emitting biotoxins that are essentially poisoning sea life.

"We haven't figured out for sure yet, but we are leaning more toward toxic poisoning," Taniguchi said.

The makeup of this particular tide is of particular interest to biologists, who took samples and found that the most abundant organism in the killer bloom was an algal species called Gonyaulax spinifera. This particular spore creates a biotoxin called Yessotoxin, which was found in low levels in the dead abalone, Taniguchi said.

"We have never seen this species off our coast in California as far as we know, at least not in a large algal bloom like this one," said Taniguchi, adding that the species was also found in blooms this summer in Washington state. "There is not much known about this particular biotoxin, but it appears to affect invertebrates."

9/17/11

The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District Commission has placed its chief executive officer on administrative leave, pending termination of his contract next week.

CEO David Hull, who was out of the office on vacation, said he was surprised by the commission's decision, which is “a huge disappointment,” but he acknowledge that he serves at the will of the board.

”I guess they're looking for a change of direction,” Hull said. “I think my team and myself has done a good job.”

The harbor district commission unanimously voted to terminate Hull's contract at a special meeting Thursday. His contract will be terminated on Sept. 23, and the matter will not come before the board again.

Hull has been the CEO for 15 years.

In a statement released by the district, President Mike Wilson “acknowledges that Hull had provided valuable service to the district over the years of his tenure as CEO and the commission's decision was difficult.”

”However,” Wilson continued in the statement, “the decision was one that the entire commission agreed was necessary at this time.”

Wilson said details of the decision will not be discussed because it is a personnel matter.

The district plans to hire an interim CEO in the near future and then begin its search for a permanent replacement. 

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The dynamic history of and public interest in the site has culminated in a situation where the zoning and designation within the Local Coastal Plan conflicts with a conservation easement held by the Audubon Society. The coastal dependent industrial use zoning is a product of the land being a former mill site and adjacent to a deepwater dock site. A conservation easement was placed on the site when no suitable development arose after purchase by the City of Eureka and State Coastal Conservancy in 1985. Because the zoning and conservation easement effectively cancel each other out, the property has sat undeveloped and largely unmanaged up to the present. While irregular site cleanups have been organized, the property has largely succumbed to use as a waste disposal site, homeless encampment, location housing a variety of unmanaged and potentially unsafe recreation uses including hiking, art, an after-school hang-out, bicycling and birding.

Where: Parcel 4 located behind the Bayshore Mall; please park in the parking lot north of the Mall buildings and look for the event table

When: Tuesday September 20th from 5:30pm to 7:00pm; show up a little early to register

Who should attend: Anyone from the public interested in participating in a tour and creative visioning session looking forward to improving public access and the environment at a long-neglected site along the Eureka waterfront. While there will be some clean-up and a site inspection prior to the field tour, the area has not been maintained for use by the public and we discourage bringing small children on the tour.

What participants will be doing: When you arrive, you will be guided to a table where you will sign a waiver. Staff leading the tour will give a brief presentation about the goals for looking at the site and a few details about safety. Once the walk begins, we will be looking at historic relics, modern problems and opportunities, and brainstorm together about future goals and visions for Parcel 4. The tour will take us all around the site, providing a thorough feel for existing activities behind the Bayshore Mall and showing off the dramatic views from the shoreline. At the end of the tour, all participants will have a chance to weigh in through written comment on future public access and open space ideas for Parcel 4.

What to bring: Please come prepared with sturdy closed-toed shoes, water, warm clothing that’s easy to hike in, and ideas about what you want to see on the site.

9/10/11

For sharks, life at the top of the ocean food chain is becoming safer — at least from human predators. 

The last 12 months have seen a flurry of laws, regulations and industry actions to end the international trade in the age-old delicacy, including bans on shark fin sales in Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and parts of Canada.

Last week, the California Senate also voted to ban the sale or possession of shark fins — a billion-dollar global trade that has led to the brutal deaths of tens of millions of sharks a year and resulted in many open-ocean shark species being threatened with extinction. The Bahamas and Honduras have prohibited shark fishing in the last two years.

“We’re really enthusiastic to see good things finally starting to happen for sharks,” said Elizabeth Wilson, a marine wildlife expert at Oceana, a nonprofit conservation group that has long campaigned against the trade.

Shark fins are used to make a coveted Chinese banquet soup that can sell for over $100 a bowl. It has the ceremonial mystique of benefiting health and virility, and serving it to guests is considered to be a sign of great honor and respect.

In an increasingly prosperous Asia, the market for the soup has grown drastically, causing overfishing around the globe. The presence of the once-common hammerhead in large parts of the western Atlantic, for example, has decreased by up to 89 percent over the last 25 years.

The spate of new protections is a result of efforts by environmental groups to reduce market demand for shark fins, because international treaties have failed to adequately curb shark fishing.

The Food Network recently removed all shark recipes from its offerings, and the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has been pressing Chinese restaurants in London to renounce the soup this year.

Shark populations cannot tolerate intensive fishing because sharks have few offspring and often do not reproduce until they are over 10 years old. Even by conservative estimates, more than 10 million shark fins moved through Hong Kong in 2008, the main distribution center for the trade. Fins sell for over $300 a pound.

Many marine biologists support tougher regulation of shark fishing itself.

“These bans go part way, but you’re still allowed to fish sharks without a permit,” said John Bruno, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “In North Carolina, there are shark derbies for fun, where they are hung by their tails. We think it’s O.K. to do that with this ocean predator, but we wouldn’t dream of doing it to a terrestrial animal like a bear.”

The California ban, which has passed both chambers and now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown, would have a major impact on the availability of shark fins in the United States because most are imported from Hong Kong via California. The legislation bans imports as of Jan. 1, 2012, but allows those who possess shark fins to dispose of their stocks until June 30, 2013.

Though one of the bill’s sponsors is Paul Fong, a Chinese-born assemblyman from Sunnyvale, some Asian-Americans in the state have objected that the measure is discriminatory, singling out an important cultural tradition. But some surveys have shown that 70 percent of Asian-Americans in California support the bill.

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