Tuesday, August 4, 2015

UNUSUAL MORTALITY EVENT, PACIFIC SALMON

"a stranding that is unexpected;  a significant die-off of any marine mammal population; demands immediate response."   
DOES A LOSS OF 80% OF RETURNING PACIFIC SALMON COUNT AS A "UME"?

SHOULDN'T NOAA BE CONCERNED ABOUT SO MANY DEAD SALMON THAT LOOK LIKE THESE?



SALMON FROM ALASKA'S DIE-OFF, 2013-2014


SALMON FROM THIS YEAR'S DIE-OFF, COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON

REMEMBERING WHEN THE REASON SUGGESTED OR QUESTIONED BY EVEN NOAA WAS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ONE.
  • NOAA/GEOMAR: After about 2 years… the northern edge [OF THE FUKUSHIMA "PLUME"] has begun to enter the Bering Sea
  • Fisheries and Oceans CanadaWhy Measure 137Cs in Arctic?
    Pacific water contaminated with Fukushima 137Cs flows through Bering Strait  
  • Dept. of Energy: Monitoring at Amchitka [Alaska]
    Appears to Show Impacts from Fukushima

NO, NO, SCRATCH THAT...PEOPLE WILL PANIC!

NEXT IT WAS TOXIC ALGAE BLOOM...RULED OUT!

SOME STRANGE DISEASE?
NOPE...NO "PATHOGENS FOUND".

HOW ABOUT WARM WATER AND DROUGHT?
My guess is that this is going to be one of the poorest years for salmon (ocean) survival said Bill Peterson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries scientist based in Newport, Ore. “Things do not look good.”

Of the more than 500,000 that passed Bonneville Dam on the Lower Columbia River, most are struggling ...


Dead salmon have been spotted around the fish ladders at Bonneville Dam. Diseased fish with red marks that are signs of a bacterial infection have been found in tribal dip nets.
“Some of them actually have red splotches all over, and we threw them back because we didn’t want to keep them,” said Jessie Yallup, a Yakama Nation fisherman who works a dip net downstream of Bonneville Dam.
“We probably lost 13,000 or 14,000 fish. None of them survived,” said Korth, the Washington state biologist.
There also is concern about the fate of Idaho’s sockeye, one of 13 Columbia Basin runs listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.During a tense teleconference on July 22, Idaho biologist Russ Kiefer pushed his counterparts in other Northwest states ... “All I hear is, you want more analysis,” Kiefer said. “We’re at the time that the more we delay, the more sockeye die.”
GOOD LUCK, RUSS!
BUT, TELL US...HOW CAN WARM WATER DO WHAT WE SEE IN PHOTOS TO THE FISH?
AND IF IT'S "WARM WATER", WHY THE HELL IS THE SAME THING SHOWING UP IN ALASKAN SALMON AND IN THE VERY COLD WATERS INLAND AND OFFSHORE OF CANADA AS WELL?
THAT'S BEEN GOING ON THERE AND IN OREGON AND WASHINGTON FOR 2 YEARS NOW!

HOW CAN THAT BE?
NO WARM WATER BLAMED THEN!
Local Environmental Observers (LEO) Network, Updated Dec. 12, 2013 
Unusual growth observed in salmon tissue — Hydaburg, Alaska, August 12, 2013 
We have found strange growths in the flesh or meat of salmon. We were fishing for cohos (silver salmon) at the mouth of the Hydaburg River with line and reel. I caught about thirty fish. Most were fine but eight  were filled up inside with strange growths that were either white or pink in color. 
On the outside the fish looked fine. The growths looked kind of like individual little salmon eggs, and about the same size. Other people were seeing the same kind of growths in their fish as well.  
We have only seen this in the cohos and not with the other fish (pink salmon, dog salmon, steel head or trout).  
We are seeing many coho salmon with these growths, and we are concerned about the health of the fish and the safety of the food.
KOIN transcript, Jul 27, 2015: 

Half of the sockeye salmon in the Columbia River are dying… Biologists are calling this die-off unprecedented… (Nick Blevins, fisherman:) “The fish are not looking in good condition… Some of them will have lesions… The sockeye already have gill diseases“… It could be the end for these endangered species. (Blevins:) “For something that’s been here longer than us that’s going to go to extinction, we’re not too far behind then.”


FROM THE TIMES STANDARD,  
"With recent fish counting surveys on two Klamath River tributaries showing alarmingly low numbers for one of the last wild runs of spring-run Chinook salmon, local fisheries experts are growing increasingly concerned.A survey sponsored by the Salmon River Restoration Council and U.S. Forest Service that covered the entirety of the Salmon River found only 256 spring-run Chinook salmon adults on July 24 — the fourth lowest count in 20 years.

"More than a quarter million sockeye salmon returning from the ocean to spawn are either dead or dying in JUST the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Oregon and Washington have both enacted sport fishing closures and sturgeon fishing in the Columbia River upstream of Bonneville Dam has been halted after some of the large, bottom dwelling fish started turning up dead.

Of the 4,000 fish that passed Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, less than a fourth made it to Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River. An average year is 70 percent.

Thirteen species of salmon and steelhead are listed as endangered or threatened in the Columbia River basin. "

AND STILL NO "UME" ON SO MANY SALMON DEATHS...AFTER MILLIONS HAVE DIED IN THE PAST 3 YEARS... REALLY?

Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Events 1991-2013
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/health/ume_causes_years.pdf

ONE THING STANDS WAY OUT IN THE NOAA REPORTS ON "UMEs"...THEY DON'T HAVE A FLAMING CLUE, IF WE BELIEVE THEM, WHAT KILLED BILLIONS OF MARINE ANIMALS SINCE 1991!
THEY STILL DON'T KNOW "FOR SURE", CAUSES ARE "UNDETERMINED" IN MORE CASES THAN WERE "SOLVED".
THAT'S A LOUSY RECORD!

MAYBE THEY SHOULD INVESTIGATE???
NAAAAH...WHY RISK FINDING A REAL REASON?

HOW MANY YEARS HAVE SCIENTISTS AND LOCALS BEEN SAYING THE HANFORD NUKE FACILITY NEAR RICHLAND, WA, HAS COMPLETELY POISONED THE COLUMBIA RIVER?
A DAMNED FINE PDF EXPLAINS THAT WITH ABSOLUTE PROOF!
SEE THAT <HERE>


AND SEE ESPECIALLY PAGE 9 THAT SHOWS THE "COINCIDENCE" OF HANFORD'S DUMPING AFFECTING THE COLUMBIA RIVER FISH, AND THE MAP ON PAGE 10.

THE WHOLE THING IS A GREAT PIECE OF DILIGENT, LONG-TERM RESEARCH AND DEDICATION TO SAVING THE COLUMBIA.
SO WHAT IS OUR WONDERFUL GOVERNMENT DOING ABOUT THE BIG SALMON DIE-OFF?
WHY, IT'S KILLING 16,000 CORMORANTS AND DESTROYING THEIR EGGS!


In an effort to protect endangered salmon species, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Thursday that it has begun culling double-crested cormorants and terminating their eggs on East Sand Island, located in the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon states.  

Last summer the corps announced a proposal to kill 16,000 double-crested cormorants on the island over a period of four years. It also proposes to remove enough sand to inundate the nesting area of the cormorants, so that birds that leave won't come back. 
The “Cormorant Management Plan” has so far resulted in the culling of 109 adult cormorants, an aquatic fish-eating bird species, and the targeting of 1,769 nests, the Corps said in a statement.
Members of the Corps have been instructed to shoot adult cormorants and oil their nests — a process in which eggs are submerged in oil to prevent oxygen from reaching the developing embryos, and then returned to their respective nests so that mother birds do not lay new eggs, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).
In 2014, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a mandatory action to protect ESA salmon by improving fish passages at dams, cultivating their habitats, and managing predator populations, the Corps noted in its statement.
But critics and conservationists have questioned the culpability of the cormorants, and instead blamed the Columbia River’s hydroelectric dams for pushing salmon towards extinction.
To stop what they called a "slaughter," the Audubon Society of Portland filed a lawsuit in April along with four other animal and conservation organizations against the Corps, the FWS and the USDA Wildlife Services, the group said in an April 20 statement.
The suit alleges that the cormorants are merely scapegoats for the salmons' decline while the real threat is mismanagement of the federal hydropower system.
“This is not about birds versus fish,” said Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the Audubon Society of Portland. “The Corps and other federal agencies have proposed rolling back dam operations that benefit salmon while at the same time targeting thousands of cormorants."
"Blaming salmon declines on wild birds that have coexisted with salmon since time immemorial is nothing more than a diversion,” he added.

JUST CHALK IT UP TO "UNKNOWN CAUSE" AND GET THE NEWS OUT OF THE PRESS!
THINGS ARE FINE, JUST FINE...

WHO CARES ABOUT A FEW MILLION SALMON OR THE END OF A SPECIES?

WE NEED NUKES....RIGHT?

WRONG.





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