CO2 Eats at Ocean Creatures

  • Healthy Reef Systems May Be a Thing of The Past(Photo courtesy of Mikael Häggström)

Some scientists think we might be headed for a mass extinction event
in the oceans. When carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere,
a lot of that CO2 soaks into the oceans. That makes the water more
acidic. When the pH gets too low, it dissolves the skeletons of
animals like coral and mussels. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Transcript

** The story as originally broadcast incorrectly referred to the publication as “Natural Geoscience.” It should be “Nature Geoscience.”

Some scientists think we might be headed for a mass extinction event
in the oceans. When carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere,
a lot of that CO2 soaks into the oceans. That makes the water more
acidic. It can dissolve the skeletons of
animals like coral and mussels. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Fifty-five million years ago, a mass extinction happened when the
oceans became too acidic.

Richard Feely is a chemical oceanographer for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration. He says that today’s ocean acidification
is happening too quickly for many species to adjust.

“Over the last 200 years we’ve seen a 30-percent increase in acidity
of the oceans, and about six percent of that increase of acidity of
the oceans has been in the last 15 years.”

Researchers at the University of Bristol in England ran simulations of
the acidification processes 55 million years ago and today. They found
that acidification is happening ten times faster these days than it
did before the prehistoric mass extinction.

That could mean that if we don’t slow our release of CO2 into the
atmosphere, life in our oceans could crash within a century or two.
The study is published in the journal of Nature Geoscience.

For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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

Noisier Oceans Bad for Whales

  • Beluga whale (Delphinaptherus leucas) with its mouth wide open, White Sea, Russia, Kareliya. (© Andrey Nekrasov / WWF-Canon)

Scientists say the oceans are
getting noisier. The racket threatens
whales and other marine mammals that
communicate through sound. Nancy
Greenleese reports:

Transcript

Scientists say the oceans are
getting noisier. The racket threatens
whales and other marine mammals that
communicate through sound. Nancy
Greenleese reports:


The oceans are already noisy from military sonars and oil and gas exploration. Scientists say it could get worse. Some of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is getting soaked up by the oceans and seas. The carbon dioxide makes the water more acidic. Sound travels through that acidic water more easily. A UN climate change panel recently issued a report raising concerns about the chemistry change. Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conversation Society says already there’s an “acoustic fog” in the world’s waters.

“The ambient noise levels in the oceans because of pH are likely to rise. This is a very unexpected finding. They’re anticipating that marine mammals will have further problems communicating.”

The noise confuses marine mammals. So, they’re beaching themselves and running into ships more often.

For The Environment Report, I’m Nancy Greenleese.

Related Links

Oceans Getting More Acidic

  • The research team collects several samples from each stop along the route to measure the chemical composition of the ocean water. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)

We hear a lot about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But half of all man-made CO2 is stored in the world’s oceans. When CO2 mixes with water, it increases the oceans’ acidity. As Ann Dornfeld reports, that acidification is moving closer toward the oceans’ fragile coastal areas:

Transcript

We hear a lot about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But half of all man-made CO2 is stored in the world’s oceans. When CO2 mixes with water, it increases the oceans’ acidity. As Ann Dornfeld reports, that acidification is moving closer toward the oceans’ fragile coastal areas:


If you’ve ever wondered why sparkling water tastes tangy, instead of just bubbly – it’s because of carbonic acid. That’s what’s produced when carbon dioxide is added to water. Some of the CO2 in the world’s oceans is natural, from things like decaying algae. But the oceans also soak up CO2 produced by cars and factories. Once CO2 is absorbed into the ocean, it sinks to the coldest, deepest water for long-term storage.

Chemical oceanographers at Oregon State University are monitoring the chemical composition of the Pacific Ocean to see where the carbon is being stored. On a research vessel several miles off the coast, they lower a series of bottles down to the ocean floor on a winch.


(sound of winches)


Scientists have expected that upwellings would eventually bring some of that CO2 to the coastal zones that are home to a huge array of marine life. They thought it would take a century or more. But a recent study, published in the journal Science, found acidic water fewer than 20 miles off the Pacific Coast.

Grad student Rachel Holzer says that’s alarming.


“The ocean is normally at a very stable pH. It is a buffered system, which means it is not very easy for the pH to change. But recently there’s been evidence that ocean acidification is happening, meaning that the pH is dropping. And that can be very harmful to biological life of all different types.”


Corrosive water can dissolve the calcium carbonate shells of barnacles, mussels, oysters and clams. Coral reefs are also calcium carbonate. So are a lot of planktonic species, including terrapods. Those make up about half of the diet of young salmon.

Burke Hales co-authored the latest study. He’s an Associate Professor of Chemical Oceanography at Oregon State.


“The question is how are these organisms going to respond, you know? Do their shells dissolve, do they just not grow as quickly? If their shells are negatively impacted, are the organisms themselves negatively impacted? And if the organisms are negatively impacted, how does that cascade through the food web?”

Hales says stopping ocean acidification would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.


“There are people who have talked about going out in the ocean and spraying sodium carbonate pellets into the water, which would dissolve and neutralize some of the carbonic acid. Sort of like when you take a Tums, that’s the active ingredient in Tums is calcium carbonate. That’s one idea that’s been proposed. It’s really, really speculative that that would work.”


What’s more, Hales says the process of hauling all of that ocean antacid out to sea and dispersing it could produce as much CO2 as it would neutralize.


“It is depressing. We wish things weren’t this way and moving sort of irreversibly towards worse conditions. But we also know that the oceans do have a lot of ability to adapt. And what we don’t know yet is exactly how this is gonna play out.”


One thing scientists do know is that the acidification has just begun. The corrosive water they found right off the Pacific Coast was from carbon dioxide released about 50 years ago. And over the last half century, CO2 production has only increased.


For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

Related Links

Interview: Wind Power on the Water

  • Some people find wind turbines unsightly, and would prefer them off-shore (Photo courtesy of the EPA)

There’s a lot of wind along coastal
areas… perfect for wind turbines. But a lot
of people don’t like the idea of windmills
ruining the view. So, why not put them out
in the water, just out of view from the beach?
Projects have been planned or proposed or just
rumored off the coast of places such as southern
Georgia, Delaware, Cape Cod, and Michigan out
in Lake Michigan. There are already some off-
shore wind turbines operating in Europe. Thijs
Westerbeek is the sustainable
development expert with Radio Netherlands. He
says off the coast turbines are more popular
than wind mills on the land:

Transcript

There’s a lot of wind along coastal
areas… perfect for wind turbines. But a lot
of people don’t like the idea of windmills
ruining the view. So, why not put them out
in the water, just out of view from the beach?
Projects have been planned or proposed or just
rumored off the coast of places such as southern
Georgia, Delaware, Cape Cod, and Michigan out
in Lake Michigan. There are already some off-
shore wind turbines operating in Europe. Thijs
Westerbeek is the sustainable
development expert with Radio Netherlands. He
says off the coast turbines are more popular
than wind mills on the land:

Thijs Westerbeek: “Actually, the public reaction is excellent, because the whole
‘nimby effect’ doesn’t occur. The thing where you like wind energy, as a
principle. You like this big mill turning around and producing clean electricity.
But you just don’t want it in your backyard. You don’t want the noise, you don’t
want the flickering effect of the sun shining through, you don’t want birds to fly
into this, and you certainly don’t want to see it. Now, if the wind turbines are off-
shore, and far enough off-shore, that problem just doesn’t exist.”

Lester Graham: “One of the concerns is that the windmills will be an eyesore.
Can you see them from shore, and does it disrupt the seascape for either folks
on the beach or boaters?”

Westerbeek: “Well, that just depends. The two small-ish windparks, they are in
front of the coast of the Netherlands, are pretty far-off. You can just see the tips
of the blades. So that isn’t really much of a disturbance. The two gigantic
windparks, off the coast of Denmark, are actually a tourist attraction. People go
to see them.”

Graham: “What kind of problems are they for marine animals and sea birds
when they’re off-shore?”

Westerbeek: “This has been tested by scientists in Denmark. And they counted
1.2 million birds passing through, and not one was hit. The birds just see the
turbines. That’s just not a problem.”

Graham: “What kind of problem do they pose for ship navigation?”

Westerbeek: “Until now, and I’ve checked this with the Maron Research Institute
– that’s the maritime research institute here in the Netherlands – there haven’t
been any accidents yet. And that’s mainly because windparks are typically built
on sandbanks where there can’t be any traffic. However, if they would be built in
sea-going routes, and a ship would bang into it, you have a possible disaster on
hand, because the turbine will collapse – hopefully not onto the ship – but if it
does fall onto the ship, that could be possibly disastrous. So the suggestion of
this scientist at Maron that I called was ‘don’t build any windmills in, for instance,
the North Sea, which is just too busy’.”

Graham: “How do they get the power from the windmills off-shore to shore? You
have to have some kind of cable, I assume.”

Westerbeek: “And that’s a problem. Because the further windparks are off-
shore, the more expensive it’s going to be to get that power on-shore. And with
rising prices for copper, that really is a problem. The cable could ultimately be
more expensive than the park itself. Off-shore windparks are definitely much,
much more expensive than on-shore windparks. That is a fact. But they are a
political solution. People who don’t want on-shore parks for the reasons I named
– unsightly things, noisy things – that is just solved, that problem, if you have an
off-shore park. So, yes, they are costly, and maybe too costly, but it’s a political
choice to have them built.”

Related Links

Mysterious Death for Hawaiian Turtle

  • Kuhina, the largest male of the group, sat for hours at Honey Girl's memorial (Photo by Patrick Doyle, Malama na Honu volunteer)

Officials are investigating the
mutilation and death of a green sea turtle
protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Heidi Chang reports, the death of this
particular turtle is causing uproar in Hawaii:

Transcript

Officials are investigating the
mutilation and death of a green sea turtle
protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Heidi Chang reports, the death of this
particular turtle is causing uproar in Hawaii:

The North Shore of Oahu is a popular gathering place for about 24 Hawaiian
green sea turtles. Residents and visitors from around the world go there
to watch the turtles bask in the sun.

One of the favorites was a 275 pound turtle called ‘Honey Girl’, because
of her honey colored shell.

Joanne Pettigrew is with Malama na Honu. It’s a group of volunteers
that protects the turtles. Pettigrew says the community is outraged over
the killing of Honey Girl earlier this month.

“I was in shock and disbelief, that anyone could remove the breastplate,
cut off the flipper, dismember this beautiful creature, our largest female,
Honey Girl, with a beautiful shell.”

State and federal authorities say they don’t know yet why the turtle was
killed.

For The Environment Report, I¹m Heidi Chang.

Related Links

Sea Squirts Sucking Up Species

  • A colony of tunicates in Guam (Photo by David Burdick, courtesy of NOAA)

Slimy, hungry invaders are moving through
the waters off the Northwest coast of the US.
They’re called invasive tunicates –
or sea squirts. And they’re the same invasive
species that devastated shellfish farms on Canada’s
east coast. If invasive tunicates aren’t controlled,
you could see a lot of seafood options disappear
from markets and menus. Ann Dornfeld has the story:

Transcript

Slimy, hungry invaders are moving through
the waters off the Northwest coast of the US.
They’re called invasive tunicates –
or sea squirts. And they’re the same invasive
species that devastated shellfish farms on Canada’s
east coast. If invasive tunicates aren’t controlled,
you could see a lot of seafood options disappear
from markets and menus. Ann Dornfeld has the story:

It’s a peaceful spring morning at this suburban marina. But beneath the water’s surface, a hunt is
underway.

(water sounds)

Professional divers – like Jesse Schultz with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife – are
combing the docks for invasive tunicates. They don’t have to look far.

“That’s one of the tunicates right there – that’s the guy right there.”

Schultz surfaces holding a jelly-like tube. Sea squirts compete with everything from clams to tube
worms for the plankton they all eat. The sea squirts usually win, because they don’t have native
predators. Three species came here from Asia, probably on boat hulls. Today, divers are cleaning
the hulls of local boats to keep the sea squirts from spreading.

Allen Pleus manages invasive species for the state.

“The whole intent right now is a containment action. We want to prevent any of these boats
from leaving this harbor with the tunicates attached to their bottom, going to another
harbor, and infesting that harbor or marina.”

When invasive tunicates get to a new harbor, they quickly become the dominant species. In the
warm part of the year, they spawn every 24 hours. And along with hogging the food supply, one
species of sea squirts forms a slimy mat that smothers mussels and other shellfish.

Pleus says if tunicates get out of hand, they could make a big impact on the seafood industry.

“It can definitely affect especially shellfishing in this area. Puget Sound, Western Washington is one of
the largest producers of shellfish in the nation. It could also affect other populations of
food fish, including salmon, by taking out a lot of the nutrients that juvenile salmon feed
on.”

Nova Scotia learned that lesson the hard way. Pleus says in Eastern Canada, entire shellfish
farms were recently wiped out by invasive tunicates.

“So the rap sheet is clear. They can grow to exponential sizes, quantities and smother
aquaculture facilities. They can’t even lift up their lines it’s so heavy with these critters on
it.”

To prevent the same thing from happening here, the state workers have to move quickly – and
they have to be thorough.

“Here’s another bag, Justin!” (splashing sound)

Back in the water, diving biologist Jesse Schultz has his hands full with a boat that has apparently
been docked for seven years. Its tabs show that’s the last time it was registered.

“This guy’s getting a free boat cleaning, sort of!”

The state is trying to scrape clean every infested boat in Puget Sound before the summer boating
season. But Schultz says because the docks are still covered with invasive tunicates, they’ll grow
back on this boat if the owner doesn’t keep it clean.

“That’s the biggest thing these guys can do to keep these things from spreading is have
their boats maintained.”

The state is still figuring out the best way to clean the docks. So far biologists have cleaned only
one entirely. When they were done, they’d removed ten tons of critters.

Unfortunately, Allen Pleus says only some of those were tunicates. In order to get rid of the
invasive sea squirts, they have to employ a sort of scorched earth policy.

“That is one of the hardest parts of this is that we have to basically take everything out.”

That means the good with the bad. We sift through a bucket of the creatures scraped from the
dock. Along with plenty of invasive tunicates, there are brightly colored sea cucumbers, scallops,
mussels, rock oysters, feather duster worms and chitons – exactly the kinds of animals the state
is trying to protect. They have to destroy the habitat in order to try to save it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

Related Links

Open Water in the Arctic

  • Scientists are reporting vast expanses of open water in polar bear habitat due to thinning and melting ice (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Polar bear researchers off Alaska’s
northern coast found striking differences in
sea ice conditions recently. Lori Townsend
reports:

Transcript

Polar bear researchers off Alaska’s
northern coast found striking differences in
sea ice conditions recently. Lori Townsend
reports:

Dr. Steven Amstrup is a polar bear expert and USGS wildlife biologist.

“This is the first time in my 28 years working up here this time of year that we’ve seen anything like
this.”

Amstrup is conducting yearly research on polar bears in Alaska’s Arctic. He says getting out to pack ice usually means
flying over a narrow expanse of open water called a lead.

“But this year that lead is wide open, we have no idea really how wide it is, but its way too far for us to
fly across. So we’ve been limited to hunting in a fairly narrow band of ice that’s fairly near shore.”

Amstrup says the open water is consistent with warming conditions that result in
thinner ice. Polar bears rely on pack ice for hunting seals and other marine
mammals.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lori Townsend.

Related Links

Thaw and Order

  • Melting glaciers as seen from aboard the Fairweather Express II in Glacier Bay, Alaska (Photo by John Ryan)

A National Park might not be the first place
you’d expect to turn into a crime scene. But John Ryan
found one – of sorts – on a boat touring Alaska’s Glacier
Bay National Park:

Transcript

A National Park might not be the first place
you’d expect to turn into a crime scene. But John Ryan
found one – of sorts – on a boat touring Alaska’s Glacier
Bay National Park:

(music)

Scene of the crime. Glacier Bay National Park. 9 o’clock on a sunny Saturday morning.

The crime: Global warming. You know: ice caps melting. Sea level rising. Deserts and
disease spreading. Scientists say it’s big, very big.

(music)

Intergovernmental investigators have ID’d the perpetrator: it’s us. Emissions from fossil
fuels like coal and oil have started heating the earth.

But here on the Fairweather Express II, you’d never know it. Park ranger Kevin Richards
is at the mic, entertaining passengers as we cruise past mile-wide glaciers
in the sun.

“That snow fell when Thomas Jefferson was signing the Declaration of
Independence.”

Richards tells the crowd how the glaciers have retreated 60 miles in the past 200 years.

But he hasn’t once mentioned global warming.

In the audience, Anchorage pathologist James Tiesinga smells a rat.

“The rangers seem very reluctant to say the words ‘global warming’, they skirt
the issue of why the glaciers are receding. I can’t help but wonder if the Park Service
has communicated the message to its employees, ‘don’t bring this up, it’s a hot topic’.”

And I notice the visitors’ newsletter put out by the park talks in depth about the changing
glaciers, but fails to mention that the climate is being changed by humans.

During a break in the naturalist’s stand-up routine, Tiesinga asks why there has been no
mention of global warming? Are we witnessing a coverup?

(music)

As huge chunks of ancient ice tumble into the bay, the Park Ranger, Kevin Richards, says, no,
there’s no censorship of climate science.

“Until very recently, yeah, if you’re working for the government, you
probably didn’t talk a lot about it. But now it’s okay, it’s an open forum right now.”

He says he’ll get to the connection
between melting glaciers and a warming earth near the end of his talk, but it’s a lot more
complicated than you might think.

“We just can’t talk about tidewater glaciers the same way we do about
terrestrial glaciers. It’s not the same process.”

Here’s why it’s not the same: tidewater glaciers have snouts that stick out into the ocean. Terrestrial glaciers are
land-locked. Richards goes on to say that land-locked glaciers in the mountains above
Glacier Bay are shrinking under a warming climate. But he says the dramatic loss of 60
miles of ice from Glacier Bay itself is not a sign of global warming.

(music)

To fact-check the on-board nature talk, I called up Roman Motycka.
He studies glaciers at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks’ Geophysical
Institute. He confirmed that global warming is hitting most Alaskan
glaciers hard.

“90% of the glaciers in South-Eastern Alaska are wasting away, and that’s
complicated, but primarily due to global warming.”

So why aren’t tourists in Glacier Bay hearing that when they witness fall
ice chunks fall into the ocean?

“It’s really complex there. Here’s what happened when all
that ice got lost.”

Motycka explains that tidewater glaciers have their own cycles of
advance and retreat. In a nutshell, when the snout of a glacier ends up floating in deep water, it becomes inherently prone to calving – that is, dropping icebergs – independent of the climate. And that’s what’s happened in Glacier Bay. So, in other words…

“Your naturalist was right, the terrestrial glaciers are the
ones that are more important to look at in terms of straight climate
change.”

(music)

Back on the Fairweather Express II, Park Ranger Kevin Richards
finishes his day at the mic talking about global energy consumption and
making a plea for people to protect the environment back home,
wherever they come from.

So in the end, park rangers are still the nature lovers in funny green outfits you might
remember from your childhood. And as this episode of Thaw and Glacier comes to a
close, all is well in Glacier Bay. Except for a little thing called…

(music)

…global warming.

For the Environment Report… I’m John Ryan.

Related Links