Where Nothing Can Survive

  • Shrimpers have seen their catches dwindle down from thousands of pounds of shrimp a day to very little due to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Samara Freemark)

Every summer, thousands of
square miles of the Gulf of
Mexico die. The Dead Zone is
caused by pollution that flows
down the Mississippi River. It’s
runoff from factories, sewer
plants, and farms. And it causes
a lot of problems for fishermen
in the area. This year, the Dead
Zone is projected to be huge –
maybe the largest ever. Samara Freemark explains:

Transcript

Every summer, thousands of
square miles of the Gulf of
Mexico die. The Dead Zone is
caused by pollution that flows
down the Mississippi River. It’s
runoff from factories, sewer
plants, and farms. And it causes
a lot of problems for fishermen
in the area. This year, the Dead
Zone is projected to be huge –
maybe the largest ever. Samara Freemark explains:

Imagine for a moment you’re a shrimp fisherman. Every day you send out your fleet to the same waters you’ve fished for decades. And your boats pull in a lot of shrimp- thousands of pounds a day, millions a year. And then one day, a normal summer day, you send the boats out, and they come back empty.

“You go from about 5000 pounds to nothing. It’s dead. That’s why they call it the dead zone.”

That’s Dean Blanchard. He runs the largest shrimp company in America- Dean Blanchard Seafood. 


Blanchard started seeing the dead zone about five years ago, but it’s not a new phenomenon. For a long time, nutrient fertilizer from upstream has run into the Mississippi River and from there, into the Gulf. It fertilizes big algae blooms– and when the algae decays, it sucks oxygen out of the water, making it impossible for fish to live there.

What’s new is how much fertilizer there is now.

“It’s not natural.”

Nancy Rabalais is a marine biologist at LUMCON. That’s Louisiana’s center for marine research. She says that over the past several decades there’s been a surge in fertilizer use in the Corn Belt states. That eventually ends up in the Gulf.

“We’re having 300 times more than we did in the 1950s. And it’s just over loaded the system.”

Rabalais predicts this year’s dead zone will be almost three times as big as it was twenty years ago – more than 8000 square miles.

Of course, the bigger the zone, the further out shrimpers like Dean Blanchard have to send their boats. That means a lot of wasted time, fuel, and wages.

And the zones might mean even bigger problems. Don Scavia is a professor at the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan.

“There’s a half a billion dollar shrimp industry in the gulf. And the shrimp depend on that habitat. And what we’re concerned about is that if the dead zone continues or even grows, that fishery may collapse.”

Congress is taking some measures to address the problem. Conservation programs in the Farm Bill work to reduce how much fertilizer farmers use, and how they apply it.

But there’s something else in the Farm Bill too – a lot of subsidy programs. Those pay for ethanol production. Which means more corn. Which means a lot more fertilizer.

“And what is debated every 5 years is how much funding will go into those conservation programs, relative to funding going into subsidy programs. And, by far, the subsidies win.” (laughs)

Scavia says for every $1 spent on conservation programs in the Corn Belt, $500 go to subsidizing crops.


Shrimper Dean Blanchard says he’s not sure how long he can live with that balance, especially as he watches the dead zone grow.

“How big is this thing going to get? If we kill the oceans we have problems. We have serious problems.”

But Don Scavia is hopeful. He says we know exactly how to reduce nutrient runoff – in fact, the basic programs are already in place. It’s just a matter of Congress choosing the right funding priorities.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Great Lakes Fish Linked to Diabetes

  • DDT was banned in 1972, but traces of it are still all over the place - including in Great Lakes fish. (Photo courtesy of Tony Arnold)

Scientists have known for a long time
that a lot of wild-caught fish have
dangerous contaminants. People
who eat fish have to weigh the health
benefits against the risks of consuming
those pollutants. Now, some research
could make that balancing act even
trickier. Gabriel Spitzer has more on
the link between diabetes… and an
infamous old chemical many assumed
was long gone:

Transcript

Scientists have known for a long time
that a lot of wild-caught fish have
dangerous contaminants. People
who eat fish have to weigh the health
benefits against the risks of consuming
those pollutants. Now, some research
could make that balancing act even
trickier. Gabriel Spitzer has more on
the link between diabetes… and an
infamous old chemical many assumed
was long gone:

In the early morning hours, anglers gather on Navy Pier in downtown Chicago.

Ray Penn is practically within casting distance of the city’s skyscrapers.

He dips his line in the waters of Lake Michigan, hoping to pull out something tasty.

“I filet ‘em, and I fry ‘em, yeah. They got a little bit of bones in ‘em, but – oh yeah. Oh, yeah, baby! I felt that!”

It’s looking like a good morning for rock bass.

“See, there’s a bass on the end of this. This is a small bass, now this guy here, he’s edible.”

Penn says he eats fish a couple of times a week, without giving it a second thought.

Down the pier, Patrick Duhan has the same attitude.

“This is the Great Lakes! It’s such a big body of water. It’s almost like the ocean. They throw tons of crap in the ocean, and there’s just too much of it to screw up.”

But, scientists say, people have managed to screw up the Lakes a fair amount.

Epidemiologists have been studying a group of sport fishers, like these guys, and charter boat captains, who eat a lot of Great Lakes fish.

Mary Turyk of the University of Illinois at Chicago measured the contaminants in their blood, and tracked their health over the years.

“We found we had 36 cases of new diabetes. And what we found was that DDE, the metabolite of DDT, was related to diabetes incidence.”

DDT.

That’s the pesticide made famous by Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring.”

The chemical was banned in 1972, but traces of it are still all over the place – including in fish.

And like mercury or PCBs, it concentrates as it moves up the food chain.

So you don’t have to eat much.

“The captains were eating, I think, on average, a meal a week. One meal a week? Yeah. That doesn’t seem outlandish or anything. No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t at all. In fact, recommendations from the FDA for eating fish, based on mercury levels, are two meals per week, for pregnant women.”

So just half that much fish was linked to about a 33% increase in diabetes cases.

Turyk says it’s not clear how DDE or DDT might contribute to diabetes.

It may have to do with effects on hormones or the immune system.

“We really need more basic science to determine mechanisms that might be responsible for this.”

Another unknown is just how dangerous might this be, and when does it start to outweigh the advantages of an otherwise healthy food?

Tamara Duperval is a family doctor at a West Side Chicago clinic.

She says she still tells people to eat more fish.

“In our population, it’s really a wonder and a challenge to try to present fish as an option, when primarily the staple of diet is either chicken or beef.”

That population is mostly low-income and minority.

She says about half are overweight or obese.

From a nutrition point of view, those are exactly the people you’d want to be eating a lean, healthy protein like fish.

So Duperval is concerned about sending mixed messages.

“I do think it is confusing. And, it’s in part, I think, how we communicate crisis in this country, especially when it comes to food safety. They miss the overall preventative message, that fish is good food, and it actually provides a lot of important nutrients that are lacking in their diets.”

Health authorities often issue advisories about certain fish that have a lot of pollution.

Duperval says understanding those warnings can help people avoid some of the hazards.

But the diabetes research shows we may still have a lot to learn about these chemicals, so what’s safe to eat is getting harder to know.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gabriel Spitzer.

Related Links

Tuna Farming in the Ocean

  • They call the cages Oceanspheres. They’d have the diameter of half a football field. (Photo courtesy of Hawaii Oceanic Technology)

A company in Hawaii wants to build the world’s first commercial bigeye tuna farm. Bigeye tuna is also known as ahi and it’s a popular fish for sushi. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

A company in Hawaii wants to build the world’s first commercial bigeye tuna farm. Bigeye tuna is also known as ahi and it’s a popular fish for sushi. Rebecca Williams has more:

Bigeye tuna are getting overfished in the wild.

So a company called Hawaii Oceanic Technology wants to raise tuna in giant underwater cages off the coast of Hawaii.

They call the cages Oceanspheres. They’d have the diameter of half a football field.

Bill Spencer is president and CEO of the company. He says they’ll raise 20,000 fish in each cage. The tuna will get up to 100 pounds each.

“They’re typically a schooling type fish so they’d be able to swim around in the Oceansphere so we think that would give them the ability to get the kind of muscle tone that would be appreciated by the consumers.”

There are real concerns about pollution and that fish will escape and spread disease to wild fish.

Spencer says ocean currents will sweep away fish feces so they won’t concentrate, and he says the cages are built so tuna can’t escape.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Coral Conservation in the Caribbean

  • The island of Bonaire is somewhat of an anomaly in the Caribbean due to its remarkably preserved coral reefs (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)

Scientists say nearly half of the coral reefs in the US are in bad shape.
Many are dead. The situation is similar in much of the world. But not
everywhere, as Ann Dornfeld found on the Caribbean island of Bonaire:

Transcript

Scientists say nearly half of the coral reefs in the US are in bad shape.
Many are dead. The situation is similar in much of the world. But not
everywhere, as Ann Dornfeld found on the Caribbean island of Bonaire:

(sound of waves on shore)

Jerry Ligon was working as the on-board naturalist on a small Caribbean
cruise ship when he first saw Bonaire.

“And I saw how clear the water was. And I’d been able to compare, during
my stint on the cruise ship, other islands in the Caribbean, and I realized
how special Bonaire was. So that was at the end of my contract, so I
decided to stay here. And I’ve been here for 15 years!”

It’s wasn’t just the clarity of Bonaire’s water that made Ligon stick around. It
was the remarkably healthy coral reefs that lay beneath the waves.

“I can even talk to divers who come to Bonaire and they say, ‘What
fantastic diving!’ and they remember, ‘This is how the way it was in Cayman
Islands 25 years ago!'”

Ligon says the Cayman Islands might have even had more impressive
reefs than Bonaire’s back in the day. But coral throughout the US and
Caribbean has been in sharp decline for decades.

So how do Bonaire’s reefs remain intact?

Ramón de León is the manager of the Bonaire National Marine Park. He
says the island has an advantage in that it has no industries to pollute the
water.

The island is mostly undeveloped, which means relatively little farm and
lawn fertilizer run-off that can create marine algae blooms. And cool
upwellings in the region help balance the rising ocean temperatures. Warm
oceans can cause coral bleaching, which often kills the coral animal.

But de León says Bonaire really owes its healthy reefs to its history of
conservation laws. They date back to an era when such policies were rare.

“Bonaire start to protect sea turtles and turtle nests in 1961, back when
everybody was promoting sea turtle soups and nailing shells in the walls.”

By the end of the 1970s, Bonaire had banned spear fishing and made it
illegal to damage coral. For years, divers have been required to pay a
sizeable fee and take an orientation course before they’re allowed to dive
on the island. That helps them avoid touching the coral, which can kill it.

De León says the island still allows too much fishing. So several years ago,
he told the island’s fishermen they needed to choose a no-take zone to let
the reefs recover.

“I refuse to decide myself. I give the fishermen some prerequisites that they
have to have to close, and they chose which area. Is not my number-one
option, but is their number-one option. So I have to respect that.”

De León says because the fishermen chose the no-take zone, something
important happened. Compliance is high.

For all of Bonaire’s success in coral conservation, there are still some
problems. De León says its reefs suffer from leaky septic tanks and boat
pollution. And there are few of the large predator fish that used to maintain
population balance on the reefs.

But the island is a haven for researchers like Mark Patterson. He designs
underwater robots at Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.

Last year he led a NOAA expedition to use robots to map Bonaire’s reefs.
He says the island’s reefs are valuable as a baseline by which other reefs
can be judged.

“If you’re an up-and-coming marine scientist and you go to a lot of the coral
reefs on the planet now, you might think that all coral reefs have always
look like this. And they haven’t! So the fact that we’ve got some pristine
reefs left is very important, and we’ve got to work very hard to protect them
because it shows us how the ecosystem should look and used to look
around the planet before things started to go downhill.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

Related Links

Saving Salmon From Sea Lions

  • Bobby Begay has been patrolling the Columbia River below Bonneville Dam for the past three years, hazing sea lions. (Photo by Sadie Babits)

The Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest historically has been a super highway for salmon. But dams, development, and pollution have taken their toll on salmon. The fish have declined to the point that several species are endangered. Now the salmon face another threat, sea lions. As Sadie Babits reports wildlife managers are trying to get rid of the sea lions to protect the salmon:

Transcript

The Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest historically has been a super highway for salmon. But dams, development, and pollution have taken their toll on salmon. The fish have declined to the point that several species are endangered. Now the salmon face another threat, sea lions. As Sadie Babits reports wildlife managers are trying to get rid of the sea lions to protect the salmon:

Bobby Begay steers his small boat up the Columbia River. He knows this river, and he
knows the salmon. His ties to the salmon go back generations.

As a member of the Yakima Tribe, he comes out here to tribal fishing sites to catch
salmon. It’s something Indians along the Columbia River have been doing for thousands
of years. He says the salmon are considered sacred food.

“It’s part of our livelihood. It’s part of our health and well being.”

They use the salmon to feed everyone from the tribal elders to the children. Tribal
fishermen tell stories of seeing so many salmon in the Columbia River that you could
walk across their backs. Those days are gone.

A series of dams on the river make it hard for fish to get from the Pacific Ocean to fresh
water and back again. The salmon have fallen victim to over-fishing, agricultural
pollution, and habitat destruction. Pacific salmon are now listed as endangered. And they
face yet another threat on the Columbia River – sea lions.

“Sea lions have probably always been in the Columbia but not to this extent and have
done damage to salmon populations like it has and all of it is due because of a man-made
structure, which is Bonneville Dam.”

Sea lion numbers have exploded along the Pacific Coast. And more than a thousand of
them travel up the Columbia River looking for food. Some of them have figured out that
if they gather at the base of Bonneville Dam, they can easily catch salmon that are trying
to pass by.

Biologists estimate that every year sea lions eat some 13,000 salmon. This year, the
federal government gave state wildlife agencies in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, the go
ahead to kill up to 85 sea lions.

Begay won’t really talk about whether he thinks this is right. He’s torn.

“Well, ah, sea lion is a spiritual animal not only to us but to coastal tribes and we respect
the animal as it is, but also the salmon is a scared food to us as Columbia River Indians.”

So Begay works to protect the salmon without killing the sea lions. He works for the
Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.

That’s why he’s out here in this boat. He patrols the river most days using fireworks to
scare sea lions away from the salmon.

Crew: “There he is 1 o’clock, 50 yards.”

(sound of gun shots and boat)

Begay’s crew shoots firecrackers over the sea lion.

“And hopefully we’ll get them into the main stem of the river and start hazing them down
stream.”

“The hazing really is not highly effective. The animals are really quick to learn.”

Robin Brown is a marine mammal researcher for the Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife.

Brown says they’ve euthanized seven sea lions this year. He says the decision to kill a sea
lion is made after everything else has failed.

“We have to have observed them killing salmon and steelhead, and they have to have
been exposed to all the non-lethal methods of harassment that you’ve observed here
today and shown that that isn’t detouring them from being here and feeding.”

The Humane Society opposes killing the sea lions. It’s asked the courts to put a stop to it.
While this legal battle plays out, Bobby Begay will keep hazing the sea lions until the end
of May.

That’s when the sea lions leave the dam and head back down the Columbia River to the
Pacific Coast to breed.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

Commercial Fishing Gets Failing Grade

  • Countries are getting bad grades because there’s a lot of over-fishing going on. (Photo by Stephen Ausmus, courtesy of the USDA)

A new study out in the journal Nature grades countries on their ocean
fishing practices. Rebecca Williams reports even the top countries are not
getting a passing grade:

Transcript

A new study out in the journal Nature grades countries on their ocean
fishing practices. Rebecca Williams reports even the top countries are not
getting a passing grade:

The US, Canada, and Norway are some of the countries doing the best job.
That means they’re fishing in a responsible way.

But they all come in at 60%. That’d be a D, maybe a D-plus.

Tony Pitcher is the main author of the study.

“Wasn’t very encouraging actually that even the top scoring countries were
not really that good. So it wasn’t anything to write home about – we were
at the top but it wasn’t a great field. At the bottom end some countries
were just disastrous. More than half the countries didn’t even pass the
40%.”

Countries are getting bad grades because there’s a lot of over-fishing going
on. There’s illegal fishing. And there’s a big problem with nets and traps
getting lost. They can snare marine mammals, birds and fish.

Tony Pitcher says it’s not always easy to know where your fish came from.
But he says you can look for a blue and white label when you’re shopping.
It’ll say Marine Stewardship Council on it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Sushi Sustainability Guide

  • blueocean.org has created a guide that ranks sushi on how sustainable it is (Source: Hatago at Wikimedia Commons)

Some ocean conservation groups have
teamed up to make a color-coded guide that
ranks popular sushi. Lester Graham reports
the rankings are based on whether the fish
are caught or raised in sustainable ways:

Transcript

Some ocean conservation groups have
teamed up to make a color-coded guide that
ranks popular sushi. Lester Graham reports
the rankings are based on whether the fish
are caught or raised in sustainable ways:

You can download this sushi guide, print it out and carry it around with you if you
want, but Kate McLaughlin with the Blue Ocean Institute’s Seafood Program says
you could just look at it on your mobile device next time you go to a sushi bar.

“You can download a PDA formatted copy of the guide to your mobile device. Or
text the word ‘fish’ and then the name of the fish in question. Pretty much
immediately you get a response with the ranking.”

And it will tell you things like popular sushi such as bluefin tuna and farmed salmon
are on the “red” list, which means they’re either over-fished or farmed with
aquaculture methods that pollute the ocean.

You can get the guide at blueocean.org.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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