Recent studies show about a third of all sea grasses have disappeared worldwide.(Photo courtesy of NOAA/Heather Dine)
The Gulf of Mexico is losing sea grass beds at an alarming rate. According to a new aerial survey, Mobile Bay has lost nearly 14-hundred acres of sea grass beds in the last few years. And as Tanya Ott reports, that could affect your dinner plate:
Transcript
The Gulf of Mexico is losing sea grass beds at an alarming rate. According to a new aerial survey, Mobile Bay has lost nearly 14-hundred acres of sea grass beds in the last few years. And as Tanya Ott reports, that could affect your dinner plate.
Americans love shrimp. And shrimp love sea grass beds. But as Tanya Ott reports sea grass beds are dying at an alarming rate.
Each American eats on average four pounds of shrimp a year. But a new aerial survey of the Gulf of Mexico finds the place where shrimp, crab and a lot of different fish find their food is disappearing. Scientists say agricultural runoff and sediment from development are killing off sea grass beds. Dauphin Island Sea Lab scientist Ken Heck says part of the problem is PR. Sea grass beds just are’t as sexy as some other ecosystems.
“Many people know about coral reefs and they know about tropical rain forests. But sea grass habitats are a bit under-loved and under-appreciated.”
Sea grass decline isn’t just a problem in the Gulf of Mexico. Heck is part of team doing a global sea grass census. He says worldwide a third of sea grass beds have disappeared.
It’s estimated there are already hundreds of thousands of pythons, anacondas and boa constrictors breeding in the Florida Everglades. (Photo Courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service)
The Fish and Wildlife Service wants to stop people from bringing giant snakes into the country. Rebecca Williams reports pythons, anacondas and boa constrictors are getting a little too comfortable in the U-S:
Transcript
The Fish and Wildlife Service wants to stop people from bringing giant snakes into the country. Rebecca Williams reports pythons, anacondas and boa constrictors are getting a little too comfortable in the U-S:
It’s estimated there are already hundreds of thousands of pythons, anacondas and boa constrictors breeding in the Florida Everglades.
Ken Warren is with the Fish and Wildlife Service. He says some of the snakes can get up to 20 feet long and 300 pounds. People buy them in pet stores and some release the snakes when they get too big.
It’s become a noticeable problem in the last 15 or 20 years. But the Fish and Wildlife Service is only now starting the process to ban the importation of these snakes.
“It takes a while before you realize the threat. As soon as the threat became pronounced and identified we started to look at the various actions we could take to help get it under control.”
He says it’s getting to be a bigger problem because the snakes are eating endangered species.
Critics of sonar say it’s so loud that it confuses whales and other marine animals, and can cause them to be injured or even die.
(Photo courtesy of NOAA)
A new federal ruling could
protect marine animals by
changing how and where
the Navy uses sonar. Samara Freemark reports:
Transcript
A new federal ruling could
protect marine animals by
changing how and where
the Navy uses sonar. Samara Freemark reports:
Critics of sonar say it’s so loud that it confuses whales and other marine animals, and can cause them to be injured or even die. That’s why environmental groups have been pushing for tighter regulations on the technology.
This week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, took a step in that direction. The agency acknowledged that current policies are not doing enough to protect marine mammals. And NOAA says it will identify critical marine habitats impacted by sonar.
Michael Jasny is a policy analyst with the environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council. He hopes the policy will be a first step to banning sonar in those habitats.
“It’s not a prescription, it’s a plan. And it sets in motion potentially a very significant change. I mean, the proof will be in the pudding, of course.”
Jasny says his organization will work with NOAA and the Navy to negotiate sonar policy so that marine mammals are not hurt.
Asian Carp can weigh up to 100 pounds and are notorious for jumping out of the water and injuring boaters.
(Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
The US Supreme Court has turned
down a request from Michigan and
other Great Lakes states. They
wanted the locks in a canal to
be closed immediately. That man-made
canal artificially connects the
Mississippi River system and the
Great Lakes. For now at least,
those locks will stay open to cargo
traffic. This fight is all about
a fish, a type of Asian Carp, that
many people don’t want to get into
the Great Lakes. Lester Graham
spoke with David Jude about the
threat of the fish. Jude is a
research scientist and fish biologist
at the University of Michigan:
Transcript
The US Supreme Court has turned
down a request from Michigan and
other Great Lakes states. They
wanted the locks in a canal to
be closed immediately. That man-made
canal artificially connects the
Mississippi River system and the
Great Lakes. For now at least,
those locks will stay open to cargo
traffic. This fight is all about
a fish, a type of Asian Carp, that
many people don’t want to get into
the Great Lakes. Lester Graham
spoke with David Jude about the
threat of the fish. Jude is a
research scientist and fish biologist
at the University of Michigan:
Lester: We keep hearing if this fish gets into the Great Lakes system, it will be devastating for the ecology of the lakes, ruin the commercial and recreational fishing. What is it that all these people think this Asian Carp fish will do to the Great Lakes?
David Jude: Well, I am sure they all watch the video where the fish are jumping out of the river, in the Illinois River, and harming some biologists and some people that are there.
Lester: Smacks them in the head!
David: Yes, so they are very concerned about that. And then biologists are concerned about the fact that they have taken over the river there, they are very voracious feeders, and so they have really crowded out a lot of other fish in the river. So there are a lot of things that are going on with regards to impacts on humans as well as impacts on fish communities that we certainly don’t like.
Lester: And these are big fish, they are up to 100 pounds.
David: Exactly.
Lester: There’s this electric barrier in place in the canal that is supposed to prevent these Asian Carp from swimming from the Mississippi River into the Great Lakes. Environmentalists say that there’s still too much of a risk, too many scenarios where the fish could get through because of flooding or some other scenario, and that canal should be closed. The Obama Administration is fighting that, the state of Illinois if fighting that, they say we need that open. There’s barge traffic carrying steel and rock and gravel and grain, all of this seems to be coming down to money. Is money the right measure when we’re looking at this situation?
David: No, it’s not. I mean traditionally, we’ve gone into the, a lot of these decisions are made and the environmental costs are not taken into consideration. The costs of having that canal open are going to be very very high and, uh, and you have to balance it against what the sport fishery and the commercial fishery is the Great Lakes is going to be because once they get in there it’s going to be a very detrimental impact on them.
Lester: This fish is knocking at the door, we’re not even sure it’s not already in, so, is there a certain inevitability that this fish is going to be in the Great Lakes and we should just start making plans to deal with it?
David: Well, I don’t think it’s inevitable and I think if we did stop them and somehow were able to shut down the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal and prevent that avenue, we’d go a long way toward preventing them from coming in. The other avenue for them getting in, of course, is people that like to eat them and they might bring them in and stock them. So, I think we should be doing everything we can right now to stop them, I mean this is our opportunity to do that. But, the other part of it is, because they’re so close, and because as you know there probably could be some in the Lakes already, you know, we should be prepared to have some plans on what we might want to do to try to, you know, focus on some of these optimal spawning sites and see what we can do to keep their populations down there.
Lester: David Jude is a research scientist and fish biologist at the University of Michigan. Thanks for coming in!
Charter boat captain Eric Stuecher says Asian Carp will likely ruin his business.
(Photo by Jennifer Guerra)
A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:
Transcript
A big monster of a fish is at
the center of a US Supreme Court
case. Asian Carp are making their
way up the Mississippi towards the
Great Lakes. Michigan’s Attorney
General filed a lawsuit asking the
Court to close a Chicago canal in
order to keep the carp out. The
shipping industry says, ‘no can do.’
Jennifer Guerra has
a closer look at what’s at stake:
There’s one way to look at this as a purely economic story. In one corner you’ve got the people who ship cargo by water.
“Lynne Munch, senior vice president regional advocacy of the American Waterways Operators.”
She says, if the Illinois is forced to close two of the locks in the Chicago canal permanently, more than 17 million tons of cargo will have to be shipped by truck instead of barge, and hundreds of jobs will be lost.
“One company alone has reported that they will lose 93 jobs next year if the locks are closed. One of our towing companies estimates they’ll lose more than 130 jobs if the locks are closed.”
In the other corner, you’ve got the seven billion dollar tourism and fishing industries.
“Oh hi, I’m Eric Stuecher, I own a company called Great Lakes Fishing Charters.”
Stuecher takes people out on the Great Lakes and in rivers across Michigan. Salmon, Trout, Perch, you name it, he’ll help you fish it. But if the invasive Asian Carp get into the Great Lakes?
“It would probably cost me the business. They’ll eat anything they can get in their mouths, to the demise of so many of our other game fish.”
So that’s the economic side of the story. But what if we told you there’s more at stake here than dollars and cents.
“In terms of environmental impact, the Asian carp have the potential to seriously disrupt the Great Lakes ecosystem.”
That’s Marc Gaden with the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission. He says there are already a lot of pests in the Lakes.
“There are 180 non-native species in the Great Lakes, many of which came in accidentally. Precisely two of them can be controlled. That’s it. So that’s why biologists and others are very, very concerned about the Asian carp. Once they get in, the cat’s out of the bag.”
Asian Carp were first brought to the states by Southern catfish farmers. The carp escaped the South in the 1990s because of flooding and have been making their way north ever since. These fish are huge. They can grow to four feet and weigh up to 100 pounds, and they reproduce like crazy. In some areas, they reproduce so much that by weight they account for more than 90 percent of the fish in the Mississippi River system.
So you can see why people around the Great Lakes don’t want them.
That’s why Gaden and a lot of other scientists say we should somehow block the man-made canal that connects the big rivers to the Great Lakes for barges carrying cargo.
“We need to be open to saying, just because we’ve been moving goods on the canal by barge for decades and decades, doesn’t mean we need to continue to do it that way. Is there a better way to do it? Can we shift it to rail?”
Gaden and others have been arguing for 15 years to get some kind of permanent barrier built in order to stop invasive species from moving from one ecosystem to another.
“The government agencies that are responsible for doing things on that canal are not moving at the speed of carp, they’re moving at the speed of government. And we don’t have a minute to spare.”
That’s because new DNA tests suggest that Asian carp have moved well beyond the electric barrier meant to keep them out of Lake Michigan.
Researchers at the Census for Marine Life have spent the past decade counting fish.
(Photo courtesy of NOAA)
You’ve heard there are lots
of fish in the sea, but nobody
knows exactly how many. That’s
what a project has been trying
to find out. Samara Freemark reports the results
will be out soon:
Transcript
You’ve heard there are lots
of fish in the sea, but nobody
knows exactly how many. That’s
what a project has been trying
to find out. Samara Freemark reports the results
will be out soon:
Researchers at the Census for Marine Life have spent the past decade counting fish. They want to get as accurate a count as possible of how many animals are in the sea.
The project is based at the University of Rhode Island, but 2000 scientists around the world are collaborating.
Darlene Crist works with the Marine Census. She says the project used a huge range of tools to sample fish populations: electronic tags, robots, cameras– as well as some pretty unconventional research methods.
“We’ve used old tax records, ship logs, even restaurant menus.”
Now Crist say they’re done counting and they’re starting to crunch numbers.
Researchers say the data will serve as the first baseline measure of life in the ocean. They hope it will help policymakers better manage the fish stocks that remain.
Right now, there are no federal laws regulating offshore fish farming.
(Photo by Randolph Fermer, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)
Proposed legislation would put
in place the most sweeping
regulations yet on ocean
aquaculture – or offshore fish
farming. Samara Freemark tells us why people
think regulations matter:
Transcript
Proposed legislation would put
in place the most sweeping
regulations yet on ocean
aquaculture – or offshore fish
farming. Samara Freemark tells us why people
think regulations matter:
Critics of aquaculture say the practice can spread disease, introduce invasive species, and pollute the environment.
The Ocean Conservancy’s George Leonard says that’s a problem.
“In the absence of an overarching framework, aquaculture continues to move forward kind of in fits and starts here in the US. And we think if it proceeds that way, many of the environmental concerns will kind of fall through the cracks.”
Legislation introduced last week in Congress could change that. The bill would require fish farmers to apply for federal permits before setting up shop. Those permits would set standards to protect ocean ecosystems.
The bill would also provide money to research how aquaculture is impacting the environment.
Peter Baranyai directs Wastewater Operations for the
Sanitary District of East Chicago, Indiana. The plant's
effluent channel looks like a natural stream and has
apparently fooled wilflide into thinking so, too.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Chinook salmon and lake trout find their way from
Lake Michigan through shipping channels, past steel
mills and chemical factories to make their way to East
Chicago's waste water effluent channel. Then, they have
to flitter through a long pipe into this concrete channel.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
The salmon's last hurdle into East Chicago's water
treatment plant is seen through this grate. It's a
ledge that leads into a 'contact chamber' where ultraviolet
lamps disinfect treated and filtered waste water. It's
a jump of nearly four feet.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
You might not expect much good
environmental news to come from
sewage plants, but, believe it or
not, there is some on occasion.
And in one case, that good news
even involves thriving salmon.
Shawn Allee has the story:
Transcript
You might not expect much good
environmental news to come from
sewage plants, but, believe it or
not, there is some on occasion.
And in one case, that good news
even involves thriving salmon.
Shawn Allee has the story:
Sewage plants are often out of sight, out of mind, and people usually like it that way. But people who work at the water treatment plant in East Chicago, Indiana, want everyone to know about an ecological come-back story there.
I’m game. So I meet the plant director Peter Baranyai.
Allee: “You’ve got this strange mix of some really striking natural areas, rivers and streams, but then everything’s kind of dotted by industry as well, and has been for a long time. What kind of industries are we talking about in this region?”
Baranyai: “Basic steel mills, oil refineries, chemical industries also.”
Allee: “So, when they’re talking ‘heavy industry’, they really mean it here?”
Baranyai: “Yes.”
Allee: “What are we looking at here?”
Baranyai: “We’re trying to look at our discharge channel. That’s the effluent from our treatment plant. This pipe here’s a 60-inch pipe.”
Allee: “You can see the water moving out of it pretty quickly.”
The treated wast water is from nearby homes and factories. And when it leaves the pipe, you’d swear it’s a natural stream. Apparently, it’s fooled plenty of critters, including Chinook salmon.
Each Fall, salmon swim from Lake Michigan, past shipping canals, steel mills and chemical factories – just to spawn in the treated waste water.
Baranyai: “They’re not being too cooperative today because I don’t see too much.”
The salmon spawned earlier than normal this year, so, I only find dead salmon on the banks.
Baranyai: “This was a, oh, almost 4-foot chinook salmon.”
Allee: “Or the evidence of it.”
Baranyai: “And he died.”
Allee: “Again, they’re kind of programmed to die after they spawn.”
Baranyai: “Yeah, he died on the rocks here.”
The government introduced Chinook salmon to Lake Michigan decades ago, but for a long time, salmon wouldn’t spawn here, and birds and nearly everything else shied away, too.
Baranyai says one problem was that they used to disinfect water with chlorine.
Baranyai: “It’s a very effective way of disinfecting, but it continues to disinfect downstream. It’s not selective, usually anyhthing that’s alive, it usually kills. It pretty much sterilizes everything. And that’s how most water treatment plants in our country do that, still.”
Baranyai says in the late 80s, things turned around. His plant added better filters, and now, when they disinfect water, they kill bacteria with ultraviolet light, not chlorine. In just a few years, salmon started spawning – right in the plant. Plus, fresh-water sponges grow in the plant, and herons showed up. Word got around.
Roger Klocek was a biologist at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium at the time. He learned the news from a fellow scientist.
Klocek: “I thought he was nuts, literally. What are you talking about?”
Klocek says you have to understand, for a long time people ignored water treatment plants or they expected them to remove only the worst industrial pollutants.
Klocek: “I had no idea that waste water plants themselves could actually contribute to an improved ecology.”
Allee: “Maybe the opposite, they were putting chlorine in the water or bacteria, if they weren’t disinfecting.”
Klocek: “Absolutely, you know we hear constantly that technology is going to save us and I really don’t believe that. I think we put too much stock in that, but it sure is gratifying to see when there is some technology that makes a remarkable improvement.”
Klocek says, too often, people assume industrial areas like East Chicago will always be ecological basket cases.
He says, sure there’s room for improvement, but having one concrete example of something that works? That can give you hope about what nature can do if you give it a chance.
Mary Yeboa lives new Newmont's mine - an American gold mining company.
(Photo by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)
Newmont's tailings dam - where gold mining waste is stored.
(Photo by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)
After gold is processed, a mixture of sand, water, and cyanide is left over. This fall, some of this wastewater overflowed from Newmont's dam and got into the river.
(Photo by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)
People that live near the river can’t go near the water because of security guards. So Newmont gave the community a well.
(Photo by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)
Some gold and jewelry companies have signed codes of ethical conduct. Newmont is not one of them.
(Photo by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)
Buying a piece of jewelry for
someone is often an emotional
celebration. But some people
are concerned about the damage
caused by mining that gold.
Anna Boiko-Weyrauch takes us from
the jewelry store to the gold mine:
(Research assistance
provided by the Investigative Fund
of the Nation Institute.)
Transcript
Buying a piece of jewelry for
someone is often an emotional
celebration. But some people
are concerned about the damage
caused by mining that gold.
Anna Boiko-Weyrauch takes us from
the jewelry store to the gold mine:
“It is a white gold band, with a star sapphire in the middle.”
In New York City, Sarah Lenigan is showing off her engagement ring. She got married this summer in California. Nowadays some people like her are starting to wonder where the stuff they buy comes from, including their wedding rings.
“You know the idea of the blood diamond, and not just the movie but, you do think about these things when you think about real jewelry. And this is the first time we’ve bought real jewelry, so it was a whole new ball game, I guess.”
It’s hard to say exactly where the gold in Sarah’s ring came from. Gold isn’t like other commodities – it’s almost impossible to track. But more and more, gold like Sarah’s is coming out of Ghana, in West Africa.
(driving sounds)
We’re driving over a dam on the Subri river in Ghana. The country used to be called the Gold Coast and today it’s the second largest producer of gold in Africa. Most of the gold comes out of a number of large surface mines. They’re all owned by companies from abroad.
At this dam, the American gold mining company, Newmont, stores water and waste from its gold mine.
Adusah Yakubu is with me. He’s a member of a local advocacy group. One side of the dam is green forest and clear water. But the other side looks like the surface of the moon.
“It looks like there’s cement in the river. It’s very hard, and it’s very gray. (What is that?) It’s a tailings dam.”
A tailings dam is where mining companies put waste from processing gold. After the precious metal is extracted, you get a mixture of sand and water. It also contains cyanide. Now, the chemical is poisonous, but it’s used all the time in gold mining. And miners work to control it.
But there are also accidents. Some of that waste overflowed this fall at Newmont’s mine, and killed fish downstream. The company says it was a minor event.
For the people who live around Newmont’s mine, the operations have really disrupted their lives. This river used to be the main source of drinking water and food for nearby villages. Kwame Kumah and his wife, Mary Yeboa live by the dam. They say they used to rely on the river for a lot of things.
“There are so many different things we got from the river. You could even get food from it, like fish, crab. But nowadays we can’t get anything from it.”
Now they can’t go near the water because of security guards. Newmont gave the community a well to make up for it. But the villagers say the dam has brought more mosquitoes, and with the mosquitos, disease. Although the company sold them discounted mosquito nets, Mary Yeboa says she gets sick much more than before.
“Right now, my body hurts all over. As I’m talking to you I have a headache, it really hurts. I don’t feel well at all.”
The gold mining company, Newmont declined to comment for this story.
The company sells its gold on the world market. Some people might buy it as investments, others for manufacturing. Or, it could end up as jewelry, like Sarah Lenigan’s engagement ring. That’s actually where most new gold goes, to jewelry.
Soon jewelry consumers, who care about their impact might be able to get some guidance. Certification systems such as the Responsible Jewelry Council are looking at gold, from the mine to the store.
Council CEO, Michael Rae says they are trying to clean up the jewelry business.
“It looks at environmental performance, social performance, labor standards, occupational health and safety, child labor issues and also in business ethics.”
The system won’t guarantee that gold or diamonds are from a specific mine, but it will reveal whether retailers and miners are making an effort to play fair.
Many jewelry and mining companies have signed on to the code. Newmont, the owner of the mine in Ghana we visited, is not a current member.
For The Environment Report, I’m Anna Boiko-Weyrauch.
Fish are putting up less of a fight on the line when caught - making them less fun for sport fishing.
(Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
A recent report from the US Geological
Survey confirms past findings that fish
are in trouble. Tanya Ott
reports the hormone estrogen is getting
into rivers and lakes and could reduce
fish populations:
Transcript
A recent report from the US Geological
Survey confirms past findings that fish
are in trouble. Tanya Ott
reports the hormone estrogen is getting
into rivers and lakes and could reduce
fish populations:
The fish have been turning up with lesions and intersexed –
meaning they have both male and female characteristics.
Rob Angus is a fish biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
He wasn’t involved in the USGS research, but has studied the problem for
more than a decade. The culprit?
“You’re a female? You excrete estrogens. Both natural estrogens,
the estrogenst that are in birth control pills, females that are
on estrogen replacement therapy. All of those end up in the
wastewater stream.”
Wastewater treatment plants clean up about 90 percent of the
estrogen, but the remaining ten percent is a problem.
Fish don’t reproduce as easily. And, for sport fishers, the fish
aren’t as much fun to catch. They don’t put up as much of a fight
on the line. That could affect the 75 billion dollars sport fishing industry.
Recent studies show about a third of all sea grasses have disappeared worldwide.(Photo courtesy of NOAA/Heather Dine)
