If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Eat ‘Em

  • Every march, the Cownose Stingrays migrate into the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic. They come to give birth, mate, and eat. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

We like seafood – a lot. Many
species are disappearing. That’s
causing a ripple effect that’s
changing the patterns of sea creatures.
In the Cheseapeake Bay, it’s an invasion
of stingrays. The cownose stingray
is eating oysters that are commercially
raised there. Some people say: if
you can’t beat them, eat them. Sabri
Ben-Achour has the story:

Transcript

We like seafood – a lot. Many
species are disappearing. That’s
causing a ripple effect that’s
changing the patterns of sea creatures.
In the Cheseapeake Bay, it’s an invasion
of stingrays. The cownose stingray
is eating oysters that are commercially
raised there. Some people say: if
you can’t beat them, eat them. Sabri
Ben-Achour has the story:

In a little boat just off shore of Virginia’s Cone River, AJ Erskine leans overboard. He is using 20-foot poles with gaping jaws full of long needle like teeth to scrape the bottom of the emerald colored river.

“These things are called hand tongs.”

Up comes a pile of oysters. They’re only about a year old.

“We don’t feel comfortable giving them more than one year of a chance.”

That’s because Erskine is worried about stingrays, specifically Cownose Rays. Every march, the winged sea creatures migrate into the bay from the Atlantic. They come to give birth, mate, and eat.

“What they do is flap their wings, put the oysters in a pile, and crunch the shells, and they go through a seed bed of oysters in a weekend.”

Erskine says it’s become a huge problem for oyster farmers.

The rays also damage the underwater environment. They uproot aquatic grasses, destroying nurseries for fish and blue crabs.

Some biologists believe there are more rays because a main predator – the shark – has been overfished out in the Atlantic. Tiger Sharks in this area have declined 99% over the past 30 years.

Other biologists say it’s that strict limits on fishing in the Chesapeake Bay have meant fewer rays caught accidentally in giant nets. Whatever the reason, oyster farmers are looking for a way to control the rays.

A hundred miles inland, in Richmond, Mead Amery thinks he has a solution.

“Depending on how you prepare it, it’s delicious.”

Avery is a seafood distributor. He and officials with the State of Virginia want you to try stingray.

“The texture is wonderful, it has a veal pork type of texture.”

It’s been a tough sell so far.

“People hear ray and think, ‘I don’t wanna eat that!’”

Marketers are trying hard though. They don’t call it Cownose Ray but rather Chesapeake Ray. They’re pushing the ray in restaurants from Virginia to Japan. And it may take off – after all, lobsters used to be considered insects of the sea and only the poor ate them. The popular Chilean Sea Bass used to be a nuisance by-catch.

But, while those cases offer hope for marketers, they carry warnings for environmentalists. Both Sea Bass and Maine lobsters were dangerously overfished because of their popularity. Bob fisher is a biologist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He knows full well there are risks involved in going after stingrays.

“You remove a top predator like that from the food chain, we don’t know what the repercussions would be.”

He says stingrays are slow to mature and give birth to only one offspring at a time. And no one even knows how many there are. But Fisher is still very much open to the idea of harvesting the rays given the problems they seem to be causing for oyster growers.

“I look at things that are in our oceans as resources, it’s our responsibility to take care of our resources, but it’s also a resource that’s there that can be, and I believe should be, utilized for humans.”

Fisher is working with the Marine Products Board, and the Department of Agriculture to come up with a plan to strictly limit fishing of the ray to what’s sustainable.

So, if the whole thing is successful, you might find Chesapeake Ray on a plate near you.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sabri Ben-Achour.

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Low in the Vitamin D Department

  • How much sun you need to get enough Vitamin D depends on where you live, the time of year, how much skin you're exposing - and even the color of your skin. (Photo source: Kallerna at Wikimedia Commons)

According to two recent studies,
most kids in this country aren’t
getting enough Vitamin D. Scientists
say a lot of adults are low in the
vitamin, too. Ann Dornfeld looks
at whether the solution is as simple
as spending more time in the sun:

Transcript

According to two recent studies, most kids in this country
aren’t getting enough Vitamin D. Scientists say a lot of
adults are low in the vitamin, too. Ann Dornfeld looks at
whether the solution is as simple as spending more time in
the sun:

(sound of kids building sandcastles on the beach)

If you’ve been to the beach this summer, or anywhere
outdoors, you probably slathered on the obligatory
sunblock. If you were extra-careful, you wore a wide-
brimmed hat, or made sure your kids wore t-shirts in the
water instead of a skimpy suit.

Thing is, the solar radiation you work so hard to avoid is
also kind of healthy. That’s because it creates Vitamin D
through a chemical reaction in your skin.

“Vitamin D is essential.”

Susan Ott is a professor of medicine at the University of
Washington.

“It’s actually a steroid hormone that helps you absorb
calcium from your diet. And it works in your intestines so
the calcium can get into your system and become
available to the bones.”

Ott specializes in bone diseases like osteoporosis and
osteomalacia – both diseases that Vitamin D helps
prevent.

When you slather on sunblock, you’re also blocking the
creation of Vitamin D.

Before you run outside to soak up the last few rays of
summer unprotected, there’s a catch. Ott says no one
knows how much sun you need to get enough Vitamin D.
It depends on where you live, the time of year, how much
skin you’re exposing – and even the color of your skin.

“People with dark skin do not make as much Vitamin D
with the same amount of sunlight exposure – they need to
be out in the sunlight longer to get the same amount of
Vitamin D as a fair person.”

Scientists don’t have a way to recommend how much sun
you need to get enough D.

Kim Nowak-Cooperman is a nutritionist at Seattle
Children’s Hospital. She says a recent study looked at
people who live in Honolulu.

“They looked at 93 people who got three or more hours of
sun every day for five days a week. And they actually
found that half of those people were Vitamin D insufficient,
when you would think that they would be very, very high in
Vitamin D.”

Getting your Vitamin D from food can also be hard. It’s
naturally abundant only in oily fish like sardines, salmon
and mackerel. Since the 1930s, Vitamin D has been
added to milk to prevent the bone-softening disease
rickets in children. Now rickets is making a comeback.

Nowak-Cooperman says that’s because most kids don’t
drink enough milk to get the recommended daily
allowance of Vitamin D. And even that recommendation
might not even be enough.

“Originally that number was derived from the amount of
Vitamin D that would prevent rickets. We are now seeing
that Vitamin D has a more important role and that the
insufficiency of Vitamin D can be implicated in other
disease processes.”

Studies show Vitamin D might prevent everything from
rheumatoid arthritis to diabetes to tuberculosis. So the
American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends kids
get twice the US RDA for Vitamin D. That means 400 IU from either four glasses of milk or a
supplement.

Professor Susan Ott says adults should take a
supplement, too. She recommends 800 to 1000 IU. Any more than that, she says, and you risk
absorbing too much calcium.

“I think right now there’s a fad and people are taking too
much. I just went to the drugstore the other day and I saw
pills that were 5000 units. That’s enough to last you a
week! And I have patients that are taking that every day.
I’m worried they’re gonna get kidney stones.”

Ott says there’s also a trend for people to get blood tests
to determine whether they’re getting enough Vitamin D.
She says unless you’re elderly or have other serious
health problems, it probably isn’t necessary.

So what should you do? Ott says just pop that daily
supplement – 400 IU for kids, 800 for adults – and
keep slathering on the sunblock.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Not All Sunscreens Created Equal

  • The Environmental Working Group is critical of the Food and Drug Administration for not requiring sunscreens to filter out UVA rays (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

Labor Day weekend means backyard
grilling, maybe some time at the
beach. The last holiday of summer
usually includes a lot of time outside.
Lester Graham reports sunscreen
seems like a good idea, but there’s
some controversy about what works:

Transcript

Labor Day weekend means backyard
grilling, maybe some time at the
beach. The last holiday of summer
usually includes a lot of time outside.
Lester Graham reports sunscreen
seems like a good idea, but there’s
some controversy about what works:

The Environmental Working Group issued a report saying not all sunscreens are equal. The group is critical of the Food and Drug Administration for not requiring sunscreens to filter out one kind of solar radiation.

“There currently are no requirements for UVA filters in sunscreens. And they’ve been working on sunscreen standards since 1978.”

David Andrews is a senior scientist with the group. He’s says with a gap in FDA regulation, the industry is making unverified statements about how well sunscreens protect.

“So these are claims that are very misleading to the consumer and it makes it hard for everyone to get adequate protection.”

The Personal Care Products Council is a trade group for sunscreen makers. It says the Environmental Working Group’s report is – quote – “unscientific and unsubstantiated.”

Bottom line: look for a sunscreen that does protect you from both UVB and UVA rays, reapply often, and stay out of the sun as much as possible.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Interview: Concentrating Solar Thermal

  • (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Whenever solar power is mentioned,
critics are quick to note – when there’s
no sun, there’s no power. Lester Graham
talked with the author of a report who
says one type of solar power can store
energy:

Transcript

Whenever solar power is mentioned,
critics are quick to note – when there’s
no sun, there’s no power. Lester Graham
talked with the author of a report who
says one type of solar power can store
energy:

Lester Graham: Concentrating solar thermal, or CST, can store power. Basically, mirrors are used to concentrate solar rays, heat up water, generate power. The heated water can be stored as heat in tanks – like coffee in a thermos – and produce electricity when needed. Britt Staley is with the World Resources Institute. She’s the lead author of a new report on concentrating solar thermal. So, you found, if it’s done right, CST could be built instead of coal-burning power plants. How practical is that?

Britt Childs Staley: We think that concentrating solar thermal is a very exciting renewable energy technology precisely because of this potential for storage. If you incorporate thermal energy storage, or fossil fuel backup, with your concentrating solar thermal, you can actually use the power of the sun around the clock.

Graham: Now, the CST plants are expensive – they’re more expensive than building a coal-burning power plant. So, why build them if that’s the case?

Staley: With climate change as a major concern in the US and around the world, we are going to need to reduce our dependency on coal in the power sector. And currently, as you said, concentrating solar thermal power is more expensive than coal, but in this report we’ve identified several policy interventions that could help reduce costs. For example, a price on carbon such as the cap-and-trade mechanism in the current Waxman-Markey Bill, and then some solar-specific policy interventions would help as well.

Graham: Now, when you say ‘policy interventions’, really you’re talking about government subsidies, right?

Staley: Yes. Support for R-and-D, for deployment such as the investment tax credit that’s currently in place.

Graham: Obviously, the most sunny places would be the best location for a concentrating solar thermal plant.

Staley: Mm-hmm.

Graham: And the most sunny places are often in arid places, such as the US Southwest. So, they’re the driest places, and CST relies heavily on water. So, in the long term, what’s the solution?

Staley: There are several alternative cooling technologies that are available and that can cut water by up to 95% to 98% in places where that is a concern.

Graham: Is this completely experimental, or have we seen this done anywhere in the world successfully?

Staley: It’s absolutely been done successfully. Here in the US, we have some of the longest operating CST plants. And Spain is another good example of where CST deployment has been particularly successful to date.

Graham: How long would it take to build one of these, and how soon could they contribute, and how likely is it to happen, given the cost?

Staley: A lot of the plants that we see on the drawing board right now are expected to be in operation in the next 2 to 5 years. With climate change concerns, with climate change legislation working its way through the House and Senate, coal plant investments are not particularly attractive right now. And investors are very wary of putting their money into something that’s going to be significantly more expensive in the coming years. Concentrating solar thermal, on the other hand, is a zero-emissions power resource. Also, it has zero fuel costs.

Graham: Britt Staley is the lead author of a report on concentrating solar thermal power plants. She’s an associate researcher with the World Resources Institute’s Climate Policy Team. Thanks very much for talking with us.

Staley: Thank you.

Graham: I’m Lester Graham.

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Where to Put Solar Power Plants

  • North America's largest solar plant, covering 140 acres, is located near Las Vegas (Photo courtesy of the Nellis Air Force Base)

Environmental groups have pushed for decades to get the federal government solidly behind solar energy. Shawn Allee reports some of them don’t like the government’s most recent effort to promote it:

Transcript

Environmental groups have pushed for decades to get the federal government solidly behind solar energy. Shawn Allee reports some of them don’t like the government’s most recent effort to promote it:

The Federal Bureau of Land Management developed 24 “solar energy study areas” in Western states.

The idea is to identify federal land that might be be good for solar power plants.

Some environmentalists scoured maps of these solar study areas and got concerned.

Jeffrey Morgan is with Tahquitz Sierra Club in California.

Morgan says a solar plant can take up hundreds of acres, and construction could disturb desert tortoise and cactus habitat.

“They have no concept the desert is a vital, living place with a vast diversity of species, unspoiled landscapes and many, many other things. They they just see it as a waste-land. That’s just not true – it’s not a waste-land.”

The Bureau of Land Management says the “solar energy study areas” are just that – they’re for study – and the government would not let solar energy developers disturb critical wildlife habitat.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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