A new study in the journal Ecology finds that in the animal world,
there are worse things than being eaten alive. Rebecca Williams
reports:
Transcript
A new study in the journal Ecology finds that in the animal world,
there are worse things than being eaten alive. Rebecca Williams
reports:
Getting eaten by a predator might be bad, but it might be just the
beginning of the bad news for prey.
Scientists looked at the effects of an invasive species in the Great
Lakes called the spiny water flea. The water fleas eat tiny creatures
called daphnia. In the study, daphnia swam to deeper, colder water to
get away from the predator.
Scott Peacor is a fisheries scientist with Michigan State University
and the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab:
“Prey of course do all sorts of things to avoid becoming a meal. In this case,
the daphnia swimming down to colder waters means they reproduce at much
slower rates. So that’s a major cost in this case.”
So instead of one daphnia getting eaten, the entire population is at
greater risk of dying off. And that’s bad because daphnia are a key
food source at the bottom of the Great Lakes food web.
Ocean vessel loading grain at elevator in Superior, Wisconsin. Nine foreign ships have been identified in the lawsuit against international shipping companies. (Photo by Jerry Bielicki, USACOE)
Even if ballast water is pumped out of ships, puddles and sediment usually remain at the bottom of the tank, both of which can contain non-native living organisms. (Photo courtesy of NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)
For decades foreign ships have brought tiny stowaways – called invasive
species – into the United States. And once they get loose, they upend
ecosystems and cause billions of dollars in damage. The shipping
industry has yet to seriously address the problem, and now conservation
and environmental groups are suing the companies they say are most at
fault. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
For decades foreign ships have brought tiny stowaways – called invasive
species – into the United States. And once they get loose, they upend
ecosystems and cause billions of dollars in damage. The shipping
industry has yet to seriously address the problem, and now conservation
and environmental groups are suing the companies they say are most at
fault. Mark Brush has more:
In 1988, the now infamous zebra mussel slipped out of a ship’s ballast
tank near Detroit. It didn’t take long for it to spread, first
throughout the Great Lakes, then through the Ohio and Mississpi rivers,
then on to Alabama and Oklahoma, and now it’s as far west as Nevada.
The mussels clog up intake pipes at water and power plants and mess up
the food chain. In some places in the Great Lakes, they’ve severely
damaged the sport fishing industry.
And that’s the damage just one foreign pest can do. More than a
hundred have gotten in and more are on the way. The government has
done little to stop the spread of these pests from foreign ships. In
2005, a federal court in California ordered the EPA to set up a system.
The EPA appealed that ruling.
Andy Buchsbaum is the Director of the National Wildlife Federation’s
Great Lakes office. He says ballast water from foreign ships should be
regulated:
“The law is very clear. The Clean Water Act says you cannot discharge
pollution into navigable waters, like the Great Lakes, without first
obtaining a permit. Period. Any discharge without a permit
is illegal.”
So, instead of waiting for the EPA to act, several environmental and
conservation groups, including Buchsbaum’s group, say they are planning
to sue several shipping companies that operate ocean-going boats on the
Great Lakes. They’re targeting nine boats they feel are the biggest
violators.
Industry representatives have said that ballast water regulations would
hurt international shipping, but in the Great Lakes, it’s estimated
that ocean-going ships make up only 6% of the overall tonnage.
Joel Brammeier is with the Alliance for the Great Lakes, one of the
groups that intends to sue the ship owners. He says a few ocean-going
boats have caused a lot of damage:
“The cost savings that we’re seeing from allowing unregulated ocean
shipping on the Lakes pales compared to the economic burden that
invasive species are placing on the Lakes. That’s stunning. The
ocean-going shipping industry is actually bringing in less than the
region is losing because of the things that ocean going ships
unintentionally bring in.”
The environmental and conservation groups who intend to sue say there
are ballast water cleaning technologies available now. The National
Wildlife Federation’s Andy Buchsbaum says they’re willing to back off
their lawsuit if the ship owners promise to clean up their ballast
water:
“This legal action is not designed to shut down the shipping industry
in the Great Lakes. That is not our intention. Our intention is to
get these guys to comply with the Clean Water Act. And that means
putting on treatment technology and getting permits.”
The shipping industry says it needs more time. Steve Fisher is with
the American Great Lakes Ports Association. He concedes there are some
technologies to clean up ballast water:
“I’ll be very frank with you. There’s technologies out there that will
do something.”
(Brush:) “So, why not use those?”
“Because a ship owner needs to know how high the bar is before he jumps
over it.”
In other words the ship owners won’t clean up their ballast water until
the federal government tells them how clean is clean, and so far, the
federal government hasn’t done that.
The EPA and the shipping industry say they’re working on the decades
old problem, but the groups that intend to sue say they’re not moving
fast enough. More invasive species are getting in. They’re hoping the threat of a
lawsuit will help force more action sooner.
Some environmentalists are calling for a moratorium on foreign ships entering the Great Lakes. Foreign ships are believed to be responsible for many of the invasive species causing billions of dollars of damage to the Great Lakes economy and ecosystems. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Environmentalists are trying to ratchet up pressure on the shipping
industry over invasive species. They’re calling for a moratorium on
allowing ocean-going ships into the Great Lakes. David Sommerstein
reports:
Transcript
Environmentalists are trying to ratchet up pressure on the shipping
industry over invasive species. They’re calling for a moratorium on
allowing ocean-going ships into the Great Lakes. David Sommerstein
reports:
Foreign freighters account for about 25% of overall tonnage on the
Great Lakes.
Jennifer Caddick says those ships’ ballast water bring a new invasive
species into the region, on average, every six months. Caddick’s
group, Save The River, has joined Great Lakes United in a petition
campaign for a moratorium:
“There is continuous talk, you know over the past 10 or 15 years, about having new, stronger ballast regulations
to stem the flow of invasive species, and unfortunately, nothing has
happened. Frankly, we have said enough is enough.”
Caddick admits a moratorium is unlikely. The agency that runs the
shipping lanes says it would violate a 1909 treaty with Canada.
Invasive species do billions of dollars of damage in the Great Lakes.
There are five bills in Congress to address the problem, but none has made
it out of committee.
For The Environment Report, I’m David Sommerstein.
Foreign ships like this one from Cypress are known as "Salties." They account for about 5% of ship traffic on the Great Lakes. If a salty dumps its ballast water in a Michigan port, they first have to show the state that they've sanitized the water. International shipping agencies have sued the state over this law. (Photo by Mark Brush)
The fight over foreign invasive pests in cargo ships is heating up. Mark Brush
reports environmental and conservation groups are going to court to defend
one of the toughest ballast water laws in the country:
Transcript
The fight over foreign invasive pests in cargo ships is heating up. Mark Brush
reports environmental and conservation groups are going to court to defend
one of the toughest ballast water laws in the country:
It’s been estimated that invasive species in the Great Lakes do billions of dollars in
damage every year. To stop foreign pests from getting into its waters, the state of
Michigan passed a law that affects all ocean-going ships stopping in
its ports. It requires them to sanitize their ballast to eliminate
invasive species that stow away in it.
International shipping agencies sued the state. They say Michigan’s
law will hurt interstate commerce.
Andy Buchsbaum is the director of the National Wildlife Federation’s
Great Lakes office. It’s one of the groups defending the ballast water
law. He says the international shipping industry might have opened
itself up to counter litigation:
“They fired the first shot – the ocean going shipping industry fired
the first shot, but it’s only the first shot. And I think you’re going
to see an awful lot of action that follows through on this. They’re
going to regret that they filed this lawsuit.”
A hearing on Michigan’s Ballast Water law is scheduled to take place
this May.
Ballast holds can carry aquatic species from foreign ports to U.S. ports. Those species can cause severe damage to the ecological system of harbors, lakes and rivers. (Photo courtesy of NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)
The Saint Lawrence Seaway is now open to international ship
traffic from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. But as
Sarah Hulett reports, the start of this year’s Great Lakes
shipping season is raising questions about a new state law aimed
at protecting the lakes from invasive species:
Transcript
The Saint Lawrence Seaway is now open to international ship
traffic from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. But as
Sarah Hulett reports, the start of this year’s Great Lakes
shipping season is raising questions about a new state law aimed
at protecting the lakes from invasive species:
The state of Michigan is now requiring ocean-going ships that
come into the state’s ports to get ballast water permits, and
agree not to discharge untreated ballast into the lakes.
Ballast water is pumped in and out of a ship to help keep it
level in the water, but ballast water is known to carry small
organisms from foreign waters that can wreak havoc on Great
Lakes’ ecosystems.
So far, only two shipping companies have applied for the
permits. John Jamian heads the Seaway Great Lakes Trade
Association:
“The joke is that the big players that represent over 98% of the
cargo that comes into Michigan ports have not filed for permits.”
Jamian’s organization and others are suing to get the law
overturned. They say it violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S.
Constitution.
Garlic mustard is an exotic species in some places, so it doesn't have any natural predators. That means it can push out native plant species and disrupt ecosystems. Researchers are trying to find ways to prevent this by targeting smaller populations. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)
Invasive species cost the United States economy some 120 billion
dollars per year. Adam Allington reports some researchers plan study
new methods of controlling and eliminating some invasive plants:
Transcript
Invasive species cost the United States economy some 120 billion
dollars per year. Adam Allington reports some researchers plan study
new methods of controlling and eliminating some invasive plants:
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are developing a
model that targets small populations of invasive plants before honing
in on big clusters.
Dr. Tiffany Knight says the idea is that small populations often spread
quicker then larger ones:
“If you can focus your efforts on satellite individuals that are just
at the front of where the population is spreading, it might be a more
efficient method which saves time and money of managers.”
The invasive plant they’re working with is garlic mustard. It’s a
European species that spreads by out-competing native plants on the
forest floor.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding the research, banking on
the idea that a method which effectively controls garlic mustard, might
also be applied to other invasives such as kudzu, which is
devastating Southern forests, or spartina, which is causing troubles in
coastal areas.
Federal restrictions have not stopped importation of invasive species. Now some states are passing laws that will stop some ocean-going ships from docking in their ports. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Ocean-going cargo ships are blamed for bringing in many aquatic invasive species that damage the environment, such as zebra mussels, quagga mussels and round gobies. These foreign species also cost the economy in lost fishing, clogged intake pipes, and in eradication efforts. (Photo by Lester Graham)
US ports receive more than imported cargo.
They often receive fish and other aquatic organisms
from foreign ports. They stow away in the ballast
water of cargo ships. Once in US waters, some of
the foreign species become invaders, damaging the
ecosystem. The federal government has done little
to stop these invasive species. Rick Pluta reports now some states have decided to take
things into their own hands:
Transcript
US ports receive more than imported cargo.
They often receive fish and other aquatic organisms
from foreign ports. They stow away in the ballast
water of cargo ships. Once in US waters, some of
the foreign species become invaders, damaging the
ecosystem. The federal government has done little
to stop these invasive species. Rick Pluta reports now some states have decided to take
things into their own hands:
The damage caused by invasive species carried to the US in
ballast water is not only harmful to the environment, but it
hurts the economy. The federal regulations have not stopped the
problem. So, states such as California and Michigan have passed
laws that require foreign ships to treat ballast water like
pollution. They have to clean it up before they can discharge it
into a port. The problem is, almost no ships have a way to treat
the ballast.
In Michigan, the Great Lakes shipping industry is trying to delay
the new Michigan rules. Shipping companies, port owners, and
dock workers say Michigan’s new rules are jeopardizing jobs
without actually stopping the introduction of new species into
the Great Lakes.
The damage caused by invasive species carried to the US in
ballast water is not only harmful to the environment, but it
hurts the economy. The federal regulations have not stopped the
problem. So, states such as California and Michigan have passed
laws that require foreign ships to treat ballast water like
pollution. They have to clean it up before they can discharge it
into a port. The problem is, almost no ships have a way to treat
the ballast.
In Michigan, the Great Lakes shipping industry is trying to delay
the new Michigan rules. Shipping companies, port owners, and
dock workers say Michigan’s new rules are jeopardizing jobs
without actually stopping the introduction of new species into
the Great Lakes.
People in the shipping business say the problem is Michigan is
the only state in the Great Lakes region that is requiring ocean-
going freighters to install expensive technology as a condition
of using one of its ports.
John Jamian is the president of the Seaway Great Lakes Trade
Association. He says requiring ocean-going freighters to install
expensive technology before they can dock in Michigan ports won’t
solve the problem. The ships will just go to other Great Lakes
ports.
If a ship goes to Windsor or Toledo that doesn’t have these rules
and regulations, they will discharge their cargo. If there were
any critters on those ships they could still swim or crawl into
Michigan waters, so you still haven’t solved anything.
Jamian represents the owners of ships that travel from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes via the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
He says ship owners will very likely avoid Michigan ports, and
choose to unload at ports in other states and Canada:
“The fact of the matter is that they’re not going to put an
expensive piece of equipment just because Michigan calls for it
on their ship when in fact it may not be acceptable anywhere else
in the world and it might just be easier to take that cargo
across the river and unload it where they don’t have these
regulations.”
And for Michigan ports that are near other competing ports,
that’s a concern. Patrick Sutka is the treasurer for Nicholson
Terminal and Dock Company at the Port of Detroit:
“We fear these ships may be going to other ports, such as Windsor
right across the waterway, or other competitors of ours such as
Toledo or Cleveland.”
At the height of the shipping season, there might be three
freighters at a time moored to the docks, offloading steel and
other cargo. A hundred trucks a day will move in and out of the
docking area to get those commodities to factories.
On the dock right now are dozens of stacks of 20-ton slabs of
steel from France and Russia. That Russian steel was most likely
shipped from a port in the Caspian Sea or the Black Sea. The
freighters take on ballast water from those seas for the voyage
to the Great Lakes. That ballast water helps keep the ships low
and steady in the water.
The ships are required to exchange the water in deep ocean mid-
journey. The salt water is supposed to kill the fresh water
organisms. But, some organisms can survive the trip. That’s how
zebra mussels, quagga mussels and the round goby fish made their
way from the Balkans to the Great Lakes.
Those invasive species and others combine to cost the economy an
estimated 5 billion dollars a year. For example, zebra
mussels cost taxpayers and utility customers. It shows up in
your power bill because the utilities have to pay divers to
scrape the crustaceans off pipes carrying cooling water to power
plants.
Shipping companies, port owners, and dock workers’ unions are all
pressuring Michigan to hold off on enforcing its new law. What
they’d really like is for the federal government to step in,
negotiate with Canada, and create a regional set of rules for
combating aquatic invaders:
“…But the federal government has not had the guts or the
gumption to step up to the plate and get this done.”
Patti Birkholz chairs the Michigan Senate Environmental Affairs
Committee. She sponsored the law:
“So we’re going to do it on a state-by-state basis. Our eco-
system within the Great Lakes is what many scientists have termed
‘on the tipping point.’ We cannot deal with any more invasive
species in this system, and we know the majority of the invasive
species come through the ocean-going vessels. They know they’re
the cause. We know they’re the cause. We’ve got to deal with this
situation.”
Michigan’s new law is as much a political statement as anything
else and other states are starting to follow Michigan’s lead.
Birkholz says Wisconsin and New York could pass ballast standards
this year.
In the mean time, Michigan environmental officials say they
intend to enforce the state’s requirements when the Great Lakes
shipping season resumes in the spring. But, so far, no ocean
freighters have applied for a permit to dock at a Michigan Port.
The recent appearance of a new invasive species shows just how easily an even worse invader could make its way into the Great Lakes. Rebecca Williams reports the invaders are hitching a ride in the ballast water of foreign ships:
Transcript
The recent appearance of a new invasive species shows just how easily an
even worse invader could make its way into the Great Lakes. Rebecca
Williams reports the invaders are hitching a ride in the ballast water of
foreign ships:
The new shrimp that’s here is called the bloody red mysid. Scientists say
the shrimp eat tiny organisms at the bottom of the food web… and could
compete with fish for food.
Steve Pothoven is a fisheries biologist with the Great Lakes Environmental
Research Lab. He discovered thousands of the shrimp near Lake Michigan.
“They’re originally from the Ponto-Caspian region, which is the Black and
Caspian Seas. The Ponto-Caspian is the same region that zebra mussels,
quaggas mussels are from, gobies, so that’s the region we’ve got a lot of
the more recent well known invaders.”
Scientists have an eye out for another invader from that same region. It’s
called the killer shrimp. It’s known for biting and shredding its victims…
and doesn’t always eat what it kills. Some scientists are worried if it
gets in, the killer shrimp could cause even more devastation to the Great
Lakes food web.
A naturally reproduced wild lake trout fingerling. (Photo courtesy of MI DNR.)
Alewives held up in a net. Alewives are an invasive species on which introduced salmon and other predator fish feed. They are among the prey fish species that have declined severely in Lake Huron. (Photo courtesy of MI DNR.)
Alewives being pulled from the lake. (Photo courtesy of MI DNR.)
The fisheries in the Great Lakes are seeing dramatic changes. In one lake, an invasive species that has become part of the food chain has collapsed. But some native fish are doing better because of that collapse. Lester Graham reports some fishery managers are debating what to do next:
Transcript
The fisheries in the Great Lakes are seeing dramatic changes. In one lake, an invasive species that has become part of the food chain has collapsed. But, some native fish are doing better because of that collapse. Lester Graham reports some fishery managers are debating what to do next:
When we started digging canals, connecting the lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, things changed a lot for the fish in the Great Lakes.
First, the sea lamprey got into the lakes through the Welland canal that bypasses Niagara Falls.
The lamprey is an eel-like parasite that nearly wiped out the big fish in the Great Lakes by attaching to them and sucking the life out of them.
Also slipping through the canals was a smaller fish, the alewife. Since the lamprey wiped out most of the predator fish in the lakes, the alewife population exploded. They out-competed native fish for food. It got so bad, that by the mid 1960s, if you weighed all the fish in Lake Michigan, more than 80% of the weight would have been alewives.
So, once wildlife managers got the sea lamprey under control, they had to figure out what they could do to get alewives under control. The fish biologists decided to introduce new predators, trout and salmon, to prey on the alewives. These fish were not native to the Great Lakes. Expensive nurseries were built by federal and state game agencies to keep supplying new trout and salmon every year to prey on alewives.
Forty years later, in Lake Huron, the alewife population collapsed, and in Lake Michigan alewives are declining rapidly. Mission accomplished, right?
Well, in that 40 years, a whole recreational fishing industry has grown up around fishing for those introduced trout and salmon. Some fishery managers now say we have to find a balance of the right amount of alewives to sustain the introduced trout and salmon fishery. So, recently states have cut their trout and salmon stocking programs to give alewives a chance to recover.
Tom Trudeau [who] operates a fish nursery for the state of Illinois says it would cause trouble to try to take the Great Lakes back to native fish only.
“We do have this industry that we have pressure to keep. You know, you’re putting a lot of people out of business if you get rid of it.”
And Trudeau says because of ecological damage, many of the smaller native fish on which big predators used to feed have been wiped out.
“So, I mean, of the six or seven species in that category, we only have one. And a couple of them are extinct. So, I mean, we could talk about going back to the ideal situation of pure native species, but we’ve disrupted the habitat so much.”
So, the argument goes, the invasive alewives are now needed. But something unexpected happened when the alewives disappeared from Lake Huron. The native fish, walleye, yellow perch, and lake trout started doing better.
Dave Fielder is a fisheries research biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“We’ve long known that adult alewives were a predator and a competitor on newly hatched perch and walleye fry. We just didn’t realize how substantial that effect was until finally the adult alewives were removed from the system and now we’re enjoying some greatly increased reproductive success. Walleye, particularly in Saginaw bay, are at some of the highest levels that we’ve seen in a long time.”
But, after 40 years, people are used to fishing for those introduced trout and salmon. And some fisheries managers are wondering what will happen to all those expensive nurseries that provide their jobs.
What happens to all of those charter boat fishing operations, fishing tourism, if the government were to stop stocking those trout and salmon? Would they switch to fishing for native fish? And, can the native fish even survive in the long-run since so many of the smaller native prey-fish are no longer around?
Dave Fielder says it’s hard to say.
“So, we’re kind of in the middle of a change – it’s really a paradigm shift in many ways – and that’s always scary because nobody really knows how we’re going to end up, but I prefer to be optimistic. I think there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful in regards to the benefits that we’re seeing for our native species.”
But some fisheries managers say the debate of whether to go all native or to try to find the right mix of native and non-native fish is not over. Since invasive species, pollution, and habitat destruction have changed the Great Lakes so much, wildlife managers think they’ll still have to keep stocking one kind of fish or another to keep the recreational fishing industry going. If that’s the case, does it matter whether it’s native fish, or the introduced fish that anglers have grown to like so much?
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
An emerging fish disease known as viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS, has prompted a proposed ban on the use of ballast water in the Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach reports the proposed ban is leading to predictions of economic disruption:
Transcript
An emerging fish disease known as viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS, has prompted a proposed ban on the use of ballast water in the Great Lakes. The proposed ban is leading to predictions of economic disruption. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The US Government has put temporary limits on the shipments of live fish from the great lakes states. That’s because of a virus in some great lakes waters that is fatal to fish. The state of Michigan says a better way to prevent that virus from spreading is to ban freshwater ships from taking in ballast water from the lakes that are contaminated.
Jim Weakley is president of the Lake Carriers Association. He says ships couldn’t operate if they couldn’t take on ballast.
“You’re talking about shutting down the movement of iron ore, coal, limestone, cement, salt; all the products we move that keep the manufacturing basis of this area moving.”
Environmental groups support the proposed ban on ballast water intake, saying ballast transfers move around a lot of unwanted species.
