http://healthygulf.org/201108041709/blog/healthy-waters-/-dead-zone/epa-denies-petition-to-curb-river-pollution-while-gulf-dead-zone-rages#.Tjxv1kDXo2c.facebook

Blog – Healthy Waters / Dead Zone
Thursday, 04 August 2011 14:35
New Orleans, LA—EPA has denied a petition to implement a clean-up plan for an aquatic Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, despite heavy economic losses to the U.S. fishing industry and continued research that shows the Dead Zone has doubled in size since 1985. This week, scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium completed their annual measurement of the Gulf Dead Zone, which measured 6,765 square miles and is larger than the state of Connecticut. Members of The Mississippi River Collaborative had petitioned the EPA to set numeric limits on the discharge of pollutants that feed the Dead Zone. However, last week EPA declined to take responsibility for setting regulations that would address the problem of lackluster and hodge-podge individual states’ water pollution regulation.

The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is an area where there is not enough oxygen in the water to support marine life. It forms every summer, caused by high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution draining from the Mississippi River watershed. The pollution stimulates excessive growth of algae, or blooms. When the dying algae decays it uses up most of the oxygen in the water, which chokes marine life. The pollution comes from chemical fertilizer escaping farm fields, sewage treatment plant discharges, and polluted runoff from cities. These sources of pollution are along the entire length of the Mississippi River.

“Just days before the announcement that the measured size of the Dead Zone is larger-than-average, the EPA declined to take actions to limit Dead Zone-causing pollution and to implement a clean-up plan,” said Matt Rota, Science and Water Policy Director for the Gulf Restoration Network. “The Dead Zone is detrimental to Gulf sea life and the coastal residents’ way of life, and yet EPA continues to rely on the states to do things they have failed to do for well over a decade.”

Despite the fact that the Dead Zone has ballooned over the past thirty years, EPA denied the petition, filed in 2008 by members of the Mississippi River Collaborative, which asked for immediate action to set numeric limits on Dead Zone-causing pollution in the Mississippi River and Gulf, as well as create an enforceable clean-up plan for the Dead Zone.

The petition showed that EPA has neglected its responsibility under the federal Clean Water Act to limit pollution in the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Through the petition, the Mississippi River Collaborative also showed that the Dead Zone will continue to grow unless EPA sets numeric standards for nitrogen and phosphorus pollution and requires all states in the river basin to meet those standards. Efforts now in Congress to cut funds for Farm Bill conservation programs—designed to prevent both cropland erosion and fertilizer run-off pollution—will exacerbate the pollution in the river and the Dead Zone.

Not only does the Dead Zone threaten the $2.8 billion Gulf fishing industry, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution cause environmental problems throughout the entire Mississippi River Basin. For example, toxic algae blooms result in fish kills, the death of livestock and pets, and damage to drinking water supplies. The Mississippi River Collaborative believes that because of the basin-wide implications of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, it is the EPA’s responsibility to take a leadership role in preventing further pollution.

“It’s distressing that the EPA will allow the decade of delay by the states along the Mississippi River to continue,” said Kris Sigford, Water Quality Director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “So there is effectively no one to tackle the pollution that causes green, gunky lakes, toxic algae blooms, unsafe drinking water supplies and the wipeout of marine life in the Gulf.”

The EPA called on states in 1998 to adopt specific limits on nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, threatening to enact its own limits if states had not complied by 2003. Every state along the Mississippi River has ignored that and other deadlines set by EPA, but so far, the federal government has failed to supply urgently needed protections. As a result, inland water pollution problems have multiplied while the Dead Zone makes its annual appearance—each time bringing with it damage to the coastal residents and their livelihood.

Special thanks to Gulf Restoration Network.

Just a note that /A. palmata/ (i.e. Elkhorn coral) colonies were observed to spawn Tuesday night July 19th.(Looe Key- Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Special Protected Area), at about 2 hours after sunset. This is one month earlier than usual (3-4 days after full moon in August). Could this be a new trend with warmer seawater temperatures? It seams that corals may have spawned earlier these past two years as well. It seams apparent that some corals think its August or September.

Are there any other early spawning observations taking place?

Dave Vaughan,
Coral Reef Research Center Director
Mote Tropical Research Lab
Summerland Key, Florida,
DVaughan@Mote.org

http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/57323-mississippi-runoff-expands-gulf-dead-zone
Posted on Jul 19th 2011 by Kate Taylor

The so-called Gulf Dead Zone is looking set to be the biggest ever this year.

It’s currently about 3,300 square miles, or roughly the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, but researchers at Texas A & M University say it’s likely to become much larger.

The dead zone is caused by hypoxia, whereby oxygen levels in seawater drop to dangerously low levels. Severe hypoxia can potentially result in widespread fish kills.

During the past five years, the Gulf dead zone has averaged about 5,800 square miles and has been predicted to exceed 9,400 square miles this year.

More changes are expected because large amounts of water are still flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River.

“This was the first-ever research cruise conducted to specifically target the size of hypoxia in the month of June,” says oceanography professor Steve DiMarco.

“We found three distinct hypoxic areas. One was near the Barataria and Terrebonne region off the Louisiana coast, the second was south of Marsh Island (also Louisiana) and the third was off the Galveston coast. We found no hypoxia in the 10 stations we visited east of the Mississippi delta.”

The largest areas of hypoxia are still around the Louisiana coast, he says, thanks to the huge amounts of fresh water still coming down from the Mississippi River. The hypoxic area extends about 50 miles off the coast.

The Mississippi is the US’ largest river, draining 40 percent of the land area of the country. It also accounts for almost 90 percent of the freshwater runoff into the Gulf of Mexico.

Special thanks to Craig Quirolo

Conservation Letters 4 (2011) 228–233

cetacean carcasses and oil spills 1

Author affiliations:
1Marine Mammal Research Unit, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
2Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
3Centre for Fish and Fisheries Research, Cetacean Research Unit, Murdoch University, Western Australia
4Cascadia Research Collective, Olympia, WA, USA
5New England Aquarium, Boston, MA, USA
6School of Biology, Aberdeen University, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
7Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Beaufort, NC, USA
8Humpback Whale Studies Program, Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, Provincetown, MA, USA

Keywords
Anthropogenic impacts; dolphin; Deepwater
Horizon; Gulf of Mexico; mortality; oil;
strandings.

Correspondence
Rob Williams, Current address: Sea Mammal
Research Unit, Scottish Oceans Institute,
St Andrews Fife KY16 8LB. Tel: +44 (0)1334
462630; Fax: +44 (0)1334 463443.
E-mail: rmcw@st-andrews.ac.uk

Received 23 September 2010
Accepted 15 February 2011
Editor Leah Gerber
doi: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2011.00168.x

Abstract
Evaluating impacts of human activities on marine ecosystems is difficult when effects occur out of plain sight. Oil spill severity is often measured by the number of marine birds and mammals killed, but only a small fraction of carcasses
are recovered. The Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the largest in the U.S. history, but some reports implied modest environmental impacts, in part because of a relatively low number (101) of observed marine mammal mortalities. We estimate historical carcass-detection rates for 14 cetacean species in the northern Gulf of Mexico that have estimates of abundance,
survival rates, and stranding records. This preliminary analysis suggests that carcasses are recovered, on an average, from only 2% (range: 0–6.2%) of cetacean deaths. Thus, the true death toll could be 50 times the number of carcasses recovered, given no additional information. We discuss caveats to this estimate, but present it as a counterpoint to illustrate the magnitude of
misrepresentation implicit in presenting observed carcass counts without similar qualification. We urge methodological development to develop appropriate multipliers. Analytical methods are required to account explicitly for low probability of carcass recovery from cryptic mortality events (e.g., oil spills, ship strikes, bycatch in unmonitored fisheries and acoustic trauma).

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/28-12

Published on Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Documents obtained by Greenpeace show prominent opponent of climate change was funded by ExxonMobil, among others
by John Vidal

One of the world’s most prominent scientific figures to be skeptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies.

Willie Soon received over $1m from oil companies including ExxonMobil, documents reveal. (Photograph: Donna Williams/AP) Dr Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for his view that global warming and the melting of the arctic sea ice is caused by solar variation rather than human-caused CO2 emissions, and that polar bears are not primarily threatened by climate change.

But according to a Greenpeace US investigation, he has been heavily funded by coal and oil industry interests since 2001, receiving money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world’s largest coal-burning utility companies. Since 2002, it is alleged, every new grant he has received has been from either oil or coal interests.

In addition, freedom of information documents suggest that Soon corresponded in 2003 with other prominent climate skeptics to try to weaken a major assessment of global warming being conducted by the UN’s leading climate science body, the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Soon, who had previously disclosed corporate funding he received in the 1990s, was today reportly unapologetic, telling Reuters that he agreed that he had received money from all of the groups and companies named in the report but denied that any group would have influenced his studies.

“I have never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research,” he said. “I would have accepted money from Greenpeace if they had offered it to do my research.” He did not respond to a request from the Guardian to comment.

Documents provided to Greenpeace by the Smithsonian under the US Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) show that the Charles G Koch Foundation, a leading provider of funds for climate sceptic groups, gave Soon two grants totalling $175,000 (then roughly £102,000) in 2005/6 and again in 2010. In addition the American Petroleum Institute (API), which represents the US petroleum and natural gas industries, gave him multiple grants between 2001 and 2007 totalling $274,000, oil company Exxon Mobil provided $335,000 between 2005 and 2010, and Soon received other grants from coal and oil industry sources including the Mobil Foundation, the Texaco Foundation and the Electric Power Research Institute.

As one of very few scientists to publish in peer-reviewed literature denying climate change, Soon is widely regarded as one of the leading skeptical voices. His scientific position and the vehemence of his views has made him a central figure in a heated political debate that has informed the US right wing and helped to undermine public trust in the science of global warming and UN negotiations.

“A campaign of climate change denial has been waged for over 20 years by big oil and big coal,” said Kert Davies, a research director at Greenpeace US. “Scientists like Dr Soon, who take fossil fuel money and pretend to be independent scientists, are pawns.”

Soon has strongly argued that the 20th century was not a uniquely extreme climatic period. His most famous work challenged the “hockey stick” graph of temperature records published by Michael Mann, which showed a relatively sharp rise in temperatures during the second half of the 20th century. A paper published with Sallie Baliunas in 2003 in the journal Climate Research which attacked the hockey stick on flimsy evidence led to a group of leading climate scientists including Mann deciding to boycott the journal. In a letter to the Guardian in February 2004, Soon wrote that the authors had been open about their sources of funding. “All sources of funding for our research were fully disclosed in our manuscript. Most of our funding came from federal agencies, including the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Nasa,” he wrote.

He has also questioned the health risks of mercury emissions from coal and in 2007 co-wrote a paper that down-played the idea that polar bears are threatened by human-caused climate change

The investigation is likely to embarrass Exxon, the world’s largest oil company, which for many years funded climate sceptics but in 2008 declared it would cut funds to lobby groups that “divert attention” from the need to find new sources of clean energy. According to the documents, Exxon provided $55,000 for Soon to study Arctic climate change in 2007 and 2008, and another $76,106 for research into solar variability between 2008 and 2010.

Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said this week the company did not fund Soon last year, and that it funds hundreds of organisations to do research on climate and the environment.

Southern gave Soon $120,000 starting in 2008 to study the Sun’s relation to climate change, according to the FIA documents. Spokeswoman Stephanie Kirijan said the company has spent about $500m on funding environmental research and development ,and that it did not fund Soon last year.

In one 2003 email released to Greenpeace, that Soon sent, it is believed, to four other leading skeptics, he writes: “Clearly [the fourth assessment report] chapters may be too much for any one of us to tackle them all … But as a team, we may give it our best shot to try to anticipate and counter some of the chapters …” He adds: “I hope we can … see what we can do to weaken the fourth assessment report.”

In 2003 Soon said at a US senate hearing that he had “not knowingly been hired by, nor employed by, nor received grants from any organisation that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”