Beluga Whales along the Canadian Atlantic coast developed tumors after they came in contact with chemicals from aluminum smelters. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
A new report in the journal Nature Reviews
Cancer looks at cancer in wildlife. Mark
Brush reports, the disease in animals is
sometimes caused by pollution:
Transcript
A new report in the journal Nature Reviews
Cancer looks at cancer in wildlife. Mark
Brush reports, the disease in animals is
sometimes caused by pollution:
The authors of this paper looked at a lot of research on cancer in wild animals. Some of these studies linked the cancer cases to pollution.
Beluga Whales along the Canadian Atlantic coast developed tumors after they came in contact with chemicals from aluminum smelters. And some fish and clam species have developed cancers after being exposed to pollution.
Denise McAloose is a veterinarian with the Wildlife Conservation Society. She’s the lead author of the paper.
“People should care about cancer in wildlife because, especially in those cancers that are driven by environmental factors, those environmental factors affect not only the animals, but people as well.”
For example, the people who worked in those aluminum smelters also had higher rates of cancer.
She says more research into the link between pollution and cancer in animals needs to be done. Because looking at how the disease affects wildlife might help us treat or prevent cancer in people.
The documentary, The End Of The Line, takes a look at the status of the world's oceans (Photo courtesy of End Of The Line)
Fish is a big part of our diet. We eat everything from fish sticks and fast food fish sandwiches to sushi and swordfish steaks. But Lester Graham reports a new documentary makes the case we’re overfishing the oceans:
Transcript
Fish is a big part of our diet. We eat everything from fish sticks and fast food fish sandwiches to sushi and swordfish steaks. But Lester Graham reports a new documentary makes the case we’re overfishing the oceans:
This new film is called The End of the Line.
“Everybody recognizes that there’s major problems with the world’s fisheries. And at one level it’s a question of ‘how bad is it?’”
That’s Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, one of the scientists in the documentary.
The film is a compelling argument that huge fishing trawlers are pushing the fish stocks to the edge.
The first sign of a problem was the cod fishery off the coast of Newfoundland. It collapsed in the 1970s.
But it seemed, despite problems around the world, the total catch around the globe was going up every year. That is, until researchers realized just a few years ago, Communist officials in China were reporting inflated fish numbers to impress their superiors. The world catch was actually getting smaller.
Scientists were stunned, and worried.
“For the first time in human history, the future of the food the world gets from the sea was in doubt.”
“Send a shiver down my spine because that was the one thing a lot of people were holding on to: well, things may be bad, but at least we’re catching lots and we’re catching more every year, so, it can’t be that bad.”
Boris Worm at Dalhousie University is one of the researchers who confirmed the world catch is getting smaller.
He and others have been studying the fact that boats are catching fewer fish, even though the nets are larger and the long lines put out more hooks.
Claire Lewis produced The End of the Line documentary. She admits, this leaves people who see fish as a good source of low-fat protein in a spot.
“It’s very hard. As a parent, you have conflicting evidence. You want to give your children and you want to feed yourself healthy food. You know that’s what fish is. On the other hand, you cannot possible ignore what we’re doing to the oceans, to the ecosystem in the ocean in eating too many fish.”
“Today in every ocean of the world, high-tech industrial vessels are hunting down every known edible species of fish.”
Ray Hilborn: “The basic problem in most fisheries that are in troube is too many boats.”
Charles Clover: “Too much capacity chasing too few fish.”
That last speaker is Charles Clover. The film documentary is based on a book he wrote by the same title. Like the film’s producers, he wants people to be more aware of the plight of the world’s fisheries.
Producer Claire Lewis says there are examples where fishing is being controlled more carefully.
“The most graphic example, I think, in our film, is that fact that in Alaska – which is a very well managed fishery – they take 10% of the stock only. In the North Sea in the E.U., they take 50% of the stock. Now, it seems to me that’s a really, really big difference.”
Lewis says, if left to the big commercial fishing operations, they’ll just keep fishing until fish stocks collapse. And she believes stricter government regulations and better informed consumers are the only things that will stop them.
“I really do believe that it’s the individual consumers who are going to make a difference to this. I think it’s something we can all individually do.”
The film tries to get people to start thinking about what they can do: such as, asking about the fish before you buy it, letting politicians know a sustainable fishery is important, and it encourages people to get involved with groups such as Seafoodwatch.org.
The End of the Line is narrated by actor and environmental activist Ted Danson. It’s appearing in theaters across the nation.
A jellyfish under the Ross Sea ice, on October 14, 2005 (Photo by Henry Kaiser, courtesy of the National Science Foundation)
Some scientists are warning
that as overfishing and climate
change affect the world’s oceans,
jellyfish will take over the
ecosystem. That could mean that
eventually, if you cast a net
into the ocean all you’d haul
in would be jelly blobs. But
as Ann Dornfeld reports, such
warnings may be premature:
Transcript
Some scientists are warning
that as overfishing and climate
change affect the world’s oceans,
jellyfish will take over the
ecosystem. That could mean that
eventually, if you cast a net
into the ocean all you’d haul
in would be jelly blobs. But
as Ann Dornfeld reports, such
warnings may be premature:
The theory goes like this. Overfishing is removing the main jellyfish predators from the oceans. And warming oceans could be more hospitable to jellies.
A new report published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution says jellyfish are already taking over. Its authors point to recent big jellyfish blooms as evidence.
But not everyone’s convinced.
“I think there’s a set of people that are sensationalizing the jellyfish bloom issue.”
University of Washington researcher Claudia Mills has been studying jellies for 30 years.
“I do think that probably jellyfish blooms are on the increase. But the problem is, we have so little baseline data that it’s almost impossible to really, honestly know that.”
Mills says there’s hardly any historical data on jellyfish populations, and not even much recent data.
She says it could be that the future of the world’s oceans is gelatinous and tentacled… or the blooms could just be cyclical.
A false killer whale, which is actually a type of tropical dolphin, with calf (Photo by Deron Verbeck, courtesy of iamaquatic.com)
(Photo by Robin Baird, courtesy of cascadiaresearch.org)
Commercial fishing in the oceans of the US has done a lot to reduce
accidentally catching marine mammals such as dolphins. But there are
still problems. Ari Daniel Shapiro reports on concerns about one kind
of tropical dolphin called the false killer whale:
Transcript
Commercial fishing in the oceans of the US has done a lot to reduce
accidentally catching marine mammals such as dolphins. But there are
still problems. Ari Daniel Shapiro reports on concerns about one kind
of tropical dolphin called the false killer whale:
Jim Cook has been a fisherman in Hawaii for 18 years.
“You know, it used to be real simple: catch a fish, sell it, and go
back out and try and catch another one.”
Now he owns a company that operates six fishing vessels. Cook’s
ships catch deep swimming sashimi-grade tuna that ends up in sushi
restaurants across the US. They use a technique called longline fishing.
“We have around 45 miles of mainline to which we attach floaters
and 2200 to 2500 baited hooks.”
“The regulations imposed on the Hawaii longline fishery are
probably the most restrictive regulations on any longline fishery in the
world.”
That’s Bill Robinson. He’s an administrator with the National
Marine Fisheries Service. And these regulations he’s talking about are
meant to reduce bycatch. That means catching marine animals other than
the tuna. As a result of these policies, sea turtle bycatch has dropped
by more than 90-percent and seabird bycatch by 95-percent.
Things are looking up, but now there’s another problem. The numbers of
another kind of animal – the false killer whale – are declining. No one
knows why they’re disappearing. It might be related to longline
fishing, but it’s just not clear.
Robin Baird’s a biologist with Cascadia Research.
“There’s a whole variety of lines of evidence that imply the false
killer whale population around the main Hawaiian islands has declined
dramatically over the last 20 years. And I think it’s clearly the most
serious conservation or management issue for whales and dolphins in
Hawaiian waters today.”
Baird thinks the decline is partly related to fewer numbers of tuna
and other species false killer whales eat. He also suspects that the
false killer whales might be moving farther offshore, where they could
get hooked when trying to eat the tuna caught by the longline fishery.
So the question is: should the National Marine Fisheries Service come up
with even more regulations for the longline fishery in case more false
killer whales move offshore looking for tuna.
Bill Robinson with the Fisheries Service isn’t so sure that they
actually go that far offshore.
“That’s speculation, and it may or may not be true. What we
don’t really know is what the range of each population is.”
So, really, at this point, it’s anyone’s guess why the false killer whale numbers are declining.
The biologist, Robin Baird, is concerned that nothing’s being done.
“Unless something is done to change the factors that are
influencing the population, it probably will continue to decline.”
The environmental group Earthjustice and a coalition of
conservation groups have sued the National Marine Fisheries Service over
failing to develop a plan to protect the false killer whales.
The agency has not responded officially to the lawsuit yet. But Bill
Robinson says an action plan is in the works.
“Hopefully by the fall, we’ll be able to not only appoint the
team, but have the team begin work on a take recovery plan that will
make recommendations to the agency to reduce the incidental take of
false killer whales in the fishery.”
Such a plan might end up costing the commercial fishers money. But
Jim Cook says he’s willing to pay. That’s because false killer whales
pick fish off his lines. They eat the caught tuna before the fishers
can haul them in. That can mean a lot of lost income.
“We would very much welcome any methodology almost
irrespective of cost because we’re suffering quite a bit economically as
it is.”
But the National Marine Fisheries Service first has to find that
methodology.
For The Environment Report, I’m Ari Daniel Shapiro.
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.
Hoover Dam's backside stretches more than 700 feet from top
to bottom, but the dam's seeing trouble from the tiny aquatic zebra
mussel. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Lake Mead is the reservoir held back by Hoover Dam. Someone first
spotted an adult quagga mussel in early 2007. Now, the mussel's grown
on rocks, fishing lines, boats, and nearly everything else with a hard
surface. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Signs leading out of Lake Mead stress the importance of properly
cleaning any boat leaving the area. Quagga mussels can hitch rides from
one lake or river to the next by attaching to boats' hulls. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Hoover Dam generates some of the power that lights Las Vegas all night long. But there’s something
that’s making that job a bit more difficult. Shawn Allee found out, it’s a tiny aquatic pest:
Transcript
Hoover Dam generates some of the power that lights Las Vegas all night long. But there’s something
that’s making that job a bit more difficult. Shawn Allee found out, it’s a tiny aquatic pest:
The usual tour of Hoover Dam starts at the visitor’s center – way at the top.
Robert Walsh works with the federal agency that runs Hoover.
He shows me a sandal that was in water – and is smothered in them.
They’re like clams the size of your pinky fingernail.
“We went from zero to THAT in seven months.”
And that’s the problem.
Hoover Dam uses water from Lake Mead to spin generators.
The water moves around in pipes – and quagga mussels can attach to them – just like on that sandal.
Allee: “What does that mean in a real practical sense?”
Willet: “Our intake towers would close off. Once you start closing off, you can’t spin the
generators. That’s just kind of the big view of it.”
Zero power generation.
That’s the worst-case scenario. It hasn’t happened – but it’s a fight to prevent it.
“Now, we’re going to go down to the third floor, which is the generator floor.”
The generators are inside broad metal cylinders.
Big water pipes turn the generators. Smaller ones cool them off.
“Well, we circulate cold water from those pipes. If those start to plug up with mussels, then
you can’t keep a generator cool, if those … it shuts down due to overheating.”
Right now, it takes a lot of scraping to keep everything clear.
All this effort’s adding up – Willet says he’ll spend 2 million dollars soon on new equipment.
Even with that, Willet is still a bit jittery about some pipes outside, at the very bottom of the dam.
“The one that’s probably the scariest of all is, we have a fireline that runs around here.
Mussels love it. Then, your firelines, when they’re needed, are plugged with mussels. So
that’s another area you have to really be careful of, safety-wise.”
This didn’t have to happen.
Quagga mussels invaded eastern rivers and the Great Lakes first.
Experts figure the mussels hitched a ride West on someone’s fishing boat.
Apparently – someone didn’t clean their boat properly – and mussels dropped into Lake Mead.
Allee: “When they built this amazing structure during the Depression, do you think they had
any idea that something like this could ever happen?”
Willet: “I think there was a lot of disagreement among professionals that a little mussel the
size of your finger nail could impact a large hydro facility, but we’re quickly learning a bunch
of them can impact water and power delivery.”
Willet says if boaters aren’t careful – they’ll spread quagga mussels to the Pacific Northwest, where
there’re lots of dams and hydro power plants.
After all, if it can happen at mighty Hoover Dam – it could happen anywhere.
Bobby Begay has been patrolling the Columbia River below Bonneville Dam for the past three years, hazing sea lions. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
Robin Brown is a marine mammal researcher for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
Bobby Begay and his crew on board the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission boat. (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.
The American Shad became so rare that hatcheries had to help restore depleted populations (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-Achour explains:
Transcript
A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s
capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-
Achour explains:
I bet you can’t recognize this sound.
It is the sound of a female shad – it’s a type of fish – having its eggs squeezed out into a metal
bowl.
“In the bowl, it looks like applesauce.”
That’s biologist Catherine Lim. We are on a boat in the middle of the Potomac, 20 miles south of
Washington DC, harvesting and fertilizing shad eggs. Lim picks up a male shad and gives it a
squeeze.
“Yeah, he sprayed out there.”
She mixes the brew around and adds water.
“We’ll bag them up and send them to the fish hatchery.”
This is all part of an effort to restore the population of the American Shad. For millions of years,
the large silver-iridescent fish have swum in from the Atlantic and up the rivers of the East Coast
every spring to spawn. They return to the same place where their lives began, guided by a
unique geological odor that seeps from the earth and mountains that feed each river.
Once upon a time – only a century ago – these fish were so numerous they turned the water silver
and made rivers move.
At least that’s what Jim Cummins says, he’s a biologist.
“On the Susquehanna, there were so many of them they created a wave as they came up the
river, a standing wave.”
On the Potomac they fueled entire industries. According to newspaper reports, Washington DC
exported 4 million barrels of salted shad every year in the 1840’s.
“The wagons would come into Georgetown were so heavy that they crammed up the city – I think
it’s the first report of gridlock in Washington.”
The fish fed more than just commerce – they nourish everything from crabs to dolphins. Bald
Eagles actually evolved to time their egg laying early, so their chicks would hatch just as the Shad
and their relatives appeared in the river. And then came overfishing, dams, and pollution.
“In the 1960’s, there were times when the migratory fish came up to spawn in the area and met
that pollution, and hundreds of thousands of them died and made a stinking mess.”
The clean water act was passed in 1972, but by 1980, the fish were almost wiped out. A
moratorium on fishing at the time was too little too late. Water quality gradually improved as
waste water treatment plants were upgraded and aquatic grasses returned. But still, no Shad.
So Cummins began the Shad restoration project.
They had to use several nets – each hundreds of feet long – just to catch one fish. They got help
from fisheries and even elementary schools. Dams were fixed to let fish go around them. The
Shad population exploded.
At a boat house just outside of DC, anglers Steve Bocat and Louis Covax are enjoying success
that up until recently, few alive have seen here.
“It was great we had incredible fishing. I mean, between the two of us, we had, what, 50-60 fish
up to the boat?”
Another sign of success, a pair of Bald Eagles recently returned to the area following the fish –
the first in decades.
Beekeepers are continuing to lose their honeybees. About a third of many beekeepers’ colonies have been dying mysteriously each year for the past several years. Rebecca Williams reports researchers think they’re getting closer to an answer:
Transcript
Beekeepers are continuing to lose their honeybees. About a third of many beekeepers’ colonies have been dying mysteriously each year for the past several years. Rebecca Williams reports researchers think they’re getting closer to an answer:
Honeybees have had some bad luck.
Researchers think there are a couple of things hurting the bees all at once.
They think bees’ immune systems are being weakened.
Maybe because of pesticides. And maybe because bees aren’t getting the variety of food sources they need.
Bees normally collect pollen and nectar from many different plants. But when they’re used on farms, they’re just visiting one kind of plant.
And then on top of that, bees appear to be getting hit by a virus.
Maryann Frazier is a honeybee expert at Penn State University.
She says, until researchers can figure out exactly what’s going on, she expects beekeepers to keep losing a lot of their bees.
“I think what we’re at risk of, more so than the bees dying out, is the beekeepers giving up and not continuing to truck their bees all over the country.”
Beekeepers use honeybees to pollinate about a third of our food supply.
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.
Beluga Whales along the Canadian Atlantic coast developed tumors after they came in contact with chemicals from aluminum smelters. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
