Bite-Sized Bits of News From Around Puget Sound

October’s flooding and record rainfall in Western Washington probably made a significant dent in this year’s salmon runs, biologists and fish experts say. The exact impact won’t be known until spring, when the state counts the hatched fish, or even years later, when the fish return to spawn. But flooding usually churns up the nests that salmon leave on the river bottom, destroying fragile eggs or leaving them open to predators. (10/28/03), Seattle Times. From Tidepool.org.

No sweating, panicked, last minute phone calls this time. Like a long-distance runner crossing the finish line at an easy jog, the effort to save one of Puget Sound’s largest great blue heron nesting colonies finished a week early. Whidbey Camano Land Trust and Friends of Camano Island Parks have been trying all summer to raise $510,000 to purchase 31 acres of forested land near Davis Slough at the north end of Camano Island. (09/25/03), Everett Herald. From Tidepool.org.

Logging is not necessarily bad for the survival of grizzlies in the flat land and rolling hill area in north-central B.C., but roads are a killer, researcher Lana Ciarniello told a McGregor Model Forest forum on Tuesday. (10/08/03), Prince George Citizen. From Tidepool.org.

Can whales get the bends? Sure they can, says a scientific report out in October, and it appears that sonar is to blame. A research team said more care should be taken in using powerful Navy sonar systems around marine mammals. After a series of incidents in which naval sonar was suspected of killing or harming whales, orcas and other marine mammals—including one last summer in the San Juan Islands—today’s findings pinpoint for the first time at least one way sonar appears to harm the creatures. The findings come as the Navy, under increasing pressure from environmentalists, is devising new operating rules for use of its sonar, according to a National Marine Fisheries Service official. (10/09/03), Seattle P-I. From Tidepool.org.

What can the National Park Service do about protecting the famous panorama from scenery-spoiling development that occurs on private property as far as 20 miles away? It’s an increasingly common problem around the U.S. as population and the numbers of second homes both climb. And it brings up the thorny question: Can anyone own the view? Land buyers and developers who are attracted to the same spectacular scenery as visitors to an area ask: Who has the right to tell us what we can do with private property? Environmentalists and many local residents counter that the view belongs to everyone, and no one should be allowed to spoil it for future generations. (10/01/03), Christian Science Monitor. From Tidepool.org.

Differences among Skagit County’s Indian tribes have led one, the Upper Skagit, to pull out of the Skagit System Cooperative, ending a 26-year affiliation. The cooperative was formed in 1976 as a consortium of the Sauk-Suiattle, Swinomish and Upper Skagit tribes—the three tribes with fishing rights in the Skagit and Samish river systems. The cooperative functioned as the voice of the tribes when dealing with other governments, including Skagit County, the state and the federal government, on matters mostly dealing with fish and fish habitat. (09/30/03), Skagit Valley Herald. From Tidepool.org.

A scientific review of sea lice in the Broughton Archipelago has delivered some surprising results and posed new questions for researchers. Scientists found that virtually all returning adult salmon tested after being pulled from the waters off northeastern Vancouver Island and the Broughton Archipelago are arriving already infected with heavy loads of parasitic sea lice, says Dick Beamish, a senior fisheries scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo. Scientists had expected to see skin injuries from the lice, he said. (10/02/03), Victoria Times Colonist. From Tidepool.org.

Thirty years after Occidental Chemical stopped regularly discharging toxic solvents into a three-mile finger of this bay, poisoned sediment is being dredged and 30 pounds of pollution a day are being sucked from the ground water. Restoration work is taking place on all of the nearly 40 sites across Tacoma’s signature tideflats that were polluted by a century of steam heating, refineries, aluminum smelting, boat-building, log yards and concrete production. For the first time since the 6,000-acre estuary was placed on the Superfund cleanup list in 1983, the end of restoration work is finally in sight. Significant cleanup work is scheduled to be completed in 2006, followed by years of environmental monitoring. (10/08/03), Seattle Times. From Tidepool.org.

New laws protected salmon spawning grounds in 17 rivers, prohibiting the streams from being blocked with dams or fishing nets and imposing stiff fines for violations. It was hoped these steps would halt the sharp salmon population decline in the rivers. The year was 1715, and King George I of England enacted the laws in an effort to protect salmon runs throughout Great Britain. The attempt, and many more that came after, proved to be largely fruitless. Today few salmon ply British waterways, the victims of overfishing, degraded habitat, harnessing water power for industry, and misguided use of hatcheries to restore salmon runs. Strikingly, much the same scenario began playing out 100 years later in the rivers of northeastern North America. A century after that it began again in the Pacific Northwest. (10/08/03), Science Daily. From Tidepool.org.

Republicans offered a “Rural Contract for Washington Voters”—and the back of their hand to Democrats. The eight-point “contract” recalled the Contract With Washington and the Contract With America that Republicans used as a campaign theme in their 1994 landslide year. The rural platform largely calls for curbing state regulation of growth-management and use of resources. It calls for “rural economic vitality and responsible environmental stewardship,” and an end to state agencies that are “too impersonal, too restrictive and too insensitive to rural needs.” (10/08/03), Seattle P-I. From Tidepool.org.

The number of commercial salmon fishers plying Alaska waters has plummeted 37 percent in the last decade as cheaper farm-raised salmon flooded the market, the state labor department said. As the farmed salmon industry enjoyed a meteoric rise, Alaska’s wild salmon industry plunged, the department said in the October issue of its magazine, Alaska Economic Trends. Farm-raised salmon represented 1 percent of the world’s production in 1980 but has since grown to represent three of every five fish, said labor economist Neal Gilbertsen. The farmed salmon industry is expected to continue to be a powerful influence on prices even as Alaska continues a ban on salmon farms. (10/15/03), Anchorage Daily News. From Tidepool.org.