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Puget Sound fish
Marine Pollution Bulletin
circumstances surrounding the two incidents were being investigated.
Falkland Islands Penguin Kill The 1982 conflict helped direct public attention in Britain to the fact that East Europeans have been happily fishing off the coast of Argentina for a number of decades in waters lying within 200 miles of the Falkland Islands. This has led to a growing demand that Britain should declare an Exclusive Economic Zone in the area, which has been reinforced following a sudden influx of comparable numbers of Oriental squid fishermen. For some time this campaign made little progress, until in March 1986 Rockhopper Penguins, Eudyptes chrysocome, began to wash up dead on the local beaches, leading to claims that they had starved to death as the result of overfishing. It has been an unusually dry summer in the Falklands, which has resulted in (among other things) widespread fires lasting for months inland, one of which has already devastated at least 6000 acres in West Falkland. It seems possible that this has also affected conditions at sea. The mortality appears to have started among the young penguins when they became due to fledge, and has also occurred among the older immatures and adults as they subsequently became due to return to the shore to moult, when they normally put on much fat but are now thin. The level of mortality apparently compares with that now regularly found at intervals among seabirds in western Europe, amounting to some tens of bodies per kilometre along exposed beaches, while small numbers can also be seen drifting at sea. It seems questionable whether the mortality can be due to overfishing when it appears to involve mainly species of lllex and Loligo, whereas the birds take Teuthowenia. W. R. P. BOURNE
North American News Unique San Francisco Bay-Delta Institute The San Francisco Bay-Delta Aquatic Habitat Institute (AHI) is an independent non-profit corporation designed to assess, protect, and enhance water quality in the San Francisco Bay-Delta. The Bay-Delta is a vital economic and environmental resource, not only for the immediately surrounding area, but also for the agricultural and urban communities of central and southern California. The Bay is also an international shipping centre and an indispensable link in north-south bird migrations. Despite its integral role in the economic and environmental status of the region, the San Francisco Bay-Delta suffers from a paucity of available appropriate research data and from the lack of a comprehensive monitoring and research program to coordinate the disparate pollution efforts conducted around the Bay. AHI has been formed to meet these needs with an independence and strength engendered by a Board of Directors composed of three members from the federal, state, and local regulatory agencies, three members from the discharging communities (municipal, industrial, and 240
non-point source), three members from public interest groups, and one member from the Academic community. This diverse composition ensures the impartiality of the Institute in its role as a fact-finding, not a policymaking, entity. This approach ensures that all interested groups have a voice in the design and development of pollution research and monitoring programs and creates an effective mechanism whereby each group can participate in the technical dialogue when the results of these studies are interpreted. The Institute will function as a permanent coordination focus for use of Bay research and monitoring resources by developing a master plan for these activities. The goal of the plan will be to determine a cause-and-effect relationship between pollutants and their impacts on the Bay-Delta aquatic habitat. As one effort toward achieving this goal, AHI will establish a permanent, Bay-wide data base that will be accessible for general use and for use by regulatory agencies to guide management decisions. Dr Douglas A. Segar, formerly of SEAMOcean, Inc., in Wheaton, Maryland, has been named as Executive Director of the Institute, which has its headquarters in Richmond, California. Although past funding has been primarily from the discharger and government sectors, AHI intends to expand its funding base to include a broader cross-section of industry, government and private sources.
Water Quality Programmes to be Financed by Tobacco Usage The State of Washington has passed a law whereby taxes levied on tobacco products will be used to support water quality programmes. Funds produced by an SO.08/pack cigarette tax and a 16.75% tax on wholesale tobacco products will be placed into the water quality account, which will also receive funds from sales taxes levied on new or existing water pollution control projects and state and local funds. The account, which is guaranteed at $40 million/year through 1989 and $45 million after 1989, will fund the Washington State Department of Ecology to study needs for water quality protection (including groundwater protection, non-point source control, and industrial discharge standards) for state waters not covered by the pre-existing Puget Sound Water Quality Authority. Recommendations from the new study and a proposed water quality management plan for Puget Sound from the Sound Authority are to be submitted to the State Legislature by 1 January 1987. After submission of its report and through to the year 1995, the Department of Ecology .will use the new account to fund water quality efforts according to the following distribution: a maximum of 50% for pollution control facilities discharging into marine waters; 20% or less, for aquifer protection from single pollution sources; 10% or less for freshwater lakes and rivers; and a maximum of 10% for non-point source controls.
Puget Sound Fish Contaminated fish in Puget Sound were featured in the Annual Meeting of the North Pacific International Chapter of the American Fisheries Society held by Canadian and US scientists on 24 March 1986, in Bel-
V o l u m e 1 7 / N u m b e r 6 / J u n e 1986
lingham. The causitive pollutants are dispersed in Hot Spots of which the Tacoma harbour, Commencement Bay, is the best known. The hot spots are not uniformly hot, and particular contaminants are arrayed around particular sources. Introduced contaminants do not disperse widely due to the silled-fjord oceanography of Puget Sound causing rapid deposition of discharged particulates with bound organics. Perceptions of risk are such that unofficial warnings against eating tumourbearing groundfish have been made, but Washington State public health officials are uncertain if there is a risk which justifies fish product standards for the Sound. There appears to be no section of the Puget Sound population at high risk, and contaminated areas support abundant fish. Monitoring data show declines in some sediment toxins such as Pb and PAHs in recent years. Some traditional non-toxic pollutant problems due to bacteria, BOD and nutrients continue to require resolution in places. DEREK ELLIS
Juan de Fuca Ridge System Exploration and mapping of the Juan de Fuca Ridge system proceeds as US, Canadian, and other scientists deploy modern instruments at this ridge which extends from nearshore in the Canadian E E Z into international waters. The nearshore location renders the ridge accessible for fundamental studies of ridge structures and processes, and exploration of polymetallic sulphide beds, but also complicates matters due to the presence of coastal turbidities. At a symposium held at Sidney, British Columbia in March 1986, and attended by scientists from many west coast agencies the latest mapping results from Seabeam, SeaMARC and GLORIA acoustic imaging were demonstrated. Results from recent seismic profiling, magnetic and electrical soundings, basalt and sediment geochemistry were also presented. Some polymetallic sulphide deposits have been found in groups along the axial trough of southern sections of the Ridge. DEREK ELLIS
Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 17, No. 6, pp. 241-246, 1986. Primed in Great Britain.
Round-the-World News United Kingdom The UK Social Democrat Party (SDP) has called for a major reform of fisheries policy. In its Green paper, Harvest of the Sea, the Party calls for a change from the present quota system of controls over fish catches to a system which would control the amount of fishing effort. The SDP is also proposing the complete removal of all disused offshore structures, or that compensation be made by the oil industry.
Indonesia In an investigation recently carried out in villages around Djakarta Bay, Indonesia has found children displaying symptoms similar to those of'Minamata disease', which is caused by the ingestion of organic mercurycontaining compounds. Minamata disease was first recognized in the 1960s when it caused 1000 deaths and over 10,000 casualties in West Kyushu on the Minamata River in Japan. According to a recent report in Earthscan Bulletin 9 (1986), Dr Meizar Syafei from the Secretariat for Volunteers against Pollution in Djakarta has found that 30,000 small businesses dump contaminated wastes into streams and rivers flowing into the bay and that some of the marine life of the bay contained over the official 5 ppb limit of mercury. The Indonesian government acknowledges that pollution levels are high but claims that they are acceptable and that people are not at risk. Nevertheless child and infant deaths from convulsions, a symptom of Minamata disease, and environmental groups such as the Indonesian Environmental Forum are anxious that more studies should be carded out and pollution reduced before the situation becomes as serious as it was in Japan.
0025-326X/86 S3.00~1.00 @ 1986 PergamonJournah Ltd.
Viewpoint is a column which allows authors to express their own opinions about currem events.
Protection of the North Sea: Balance and Prospects K. R. SPERLING Dr. Sperling is an analytical chemist at the Biologische Anstalt Heigoland which is an Institution under the Federal German Ministry of Science and Technology. He is an original member of several national and international expert groups concerning the matter of marine dumping; mainly SACSA (Oslo Convention) and LDC-WG (London Convention). 241
circumstances surrounding the two incidents were being investigated.
Falkland Islands Penguin Kill The 1982 conflict helped direct public attention in Britain to the fact that East Europeans have been happily fishing off the coast of Argentina for a number of decades in waters lying within 200 miles of the Falkland Islands. This has led to a growing demand that Britain should declare an Exclusive Economic Zone in the area, which has been reinforced following a sudden influx of comparable numbers of Oriental squid fishermen. For some time this campaign made little progress, until in March 1986 Rockhopper Penguins, Eudyptes chrysocome, began to wash up dead on the local beaches, leading to claims that they had starved to death as the result of overfishing. It has been an unusually dry summer in the Falklands, which has resulted in (among other things) widespread fires lasting for months inland, one of which has already devastated at least 6000 acres in West Falkland. It seems possible that this has also affected conditions at sea. The mortality appears to have started among the young penguins when they became due to fledge, and has also occurred among the older immatures and adults as they subsequently became due to return to the shore to moult, when they normally put on much fat but are now thin. The level of mortality apparently compares with that now regularly found at intervals among seabirds in western Europe, amounting to some tens of bodies per kilometre along exposed beaches, while small numbers can also be seen drifting at sea. It seems questionable whether the mortality can be due to overfishing when it appears to involve mainly species of lllex and Loligo, whereas the birds take Teuthowenia. W. R. P. BOURNE
North American News Unique San Francisco Bay-Delta Institute The San Francisco Bay-Delta Aquatic Habitat Institute (AHI) is an independent non-profit corporation designed to assess, protect, and enhance water quality in the San Francisco Bay-Delta. The Bay-Delta is a vital economic and environmental resource, not only for the immediately surrounding area, but also for the agricultural and urban communities of central and southern California. The Bay is also an international shipping centre and an indispensable link in north-south bird migrations. Despite its integral role in the economic and environmental status of the region, the San Francisco Bay-Delta suffers from a paucity of available appropriate research data and from the lack of a comprehensive monitoring and research program to coordinate the disparate pollution efforts conducted around the Bay. AHI has been formed to meet these needs with an independence and strength engendered by a Board of Directors composed of three members from the federal, state, and local regulatory agencies, three members from the discharging communities (municipal, industrial, and 240
non-point source), three members from public interest groups, and one member from the Academic community. This diverse composition ensures the impartiality of the Institute in its role as a fact-finding, not a policymaking, entity. This approach ensures that all interested groups have a voice in the design and development of pollution research and monitoring programs and creates an effective mechanism whereby each group can participate in the technical dialogue when the results of these studies are interpreted. The Institute will function as a permanent coordination focus for use of Bay research and monitoring resources by developing a master plan for these activities. The goal of the plan will be to determine a cause-and-effect relationship between pollutants and their impacts on the Bay-Delta aquatic habitat. As one effort toward achieving this goal, AHI will establish a permanent, Bay-wide data base that will be accessible for general use and for use by regulatory agencies to guide management decisions. Dr Douglas A. Segar, formerly of SEAMOcean, Inc., in Wheaton, Maryland, has been named as Executive Director of the Institute, which has its headquarters in Richmond, California. Although past funding has been primarily from the discharger and government sectors, AHI intends to expand its funding base to include a broader cross-section of industry, government and private sources.
Water Quality Programmes to be Financed by Tobacco Usage The State of Washington has passed a law whereby taxes levied on tobacco products will be used to support water quality programmes. Funds produced by an SO.08/pack cigarette tax and a 16.75% tax on wholesale tobacco products will be placed into the water quality account, which will also receive funds from sales taxes levied on new or existing water pollution control projects and state and local funds. The account, which is guaranteed at $40 million/year through 1989 and $45 million after 1989, will fund the Washington State Department of Ecology to study needs for water quality protection (including groundwater protection, non-point source control, and industrial discharge standards) for state waters not covered by the pre-existing Puget Sound Water Quality Authority. Recommendations from the new study and a proposed water quality management plan for Puget Sound from the Sound Authority are to be submitted to the State Legislature by 1 January 1987. After submission of its report and through to the year 1995, the Department of Ecology .will use the new account to fund water quality efforts according to the following distribution: a maximum of 50% for pollution control facilities discharging into marine waters; 20% or less, for aquifer protection from single pollution sources; 10% or less for freshwater lakes and rivers; and a maximum of 10% for non-point source controls.
Puget Sound Fish Contaminated fish in Puget Sound were featured in the Annual Meeting of the North Pacific International Chapter of the American Fisheries Society held by Canadian and US scientists on 24 March 1986, in Bel-
V o l u m e 1 7 / N u m b e r 6 / J u n e 1986
lingham. The causitive pollutants are dispersed in Hot Spots of which the Tacoma harbour, Commencement Bay, is the best known. The hot spots are not uniformly hot, and particular contaminants are arrayed around particular sources. Introduced contaminants do not disperse widely due to the silled-fjord oceanography of Puget Sound causing rapid deposition of discharged particulates with bound organics. Perceptions of risk are such that unofficial warnings against eating tumourbearing groundfish have been made, but Washington State public health officials are uncertain if there is a risk which justifies fish product standards for the Sound. There appears to be no section of the Puget Sound population at high risk, and contaminated areas support abundant fish. Monitoring data show declines in some sediment toxins such as Pb and PAHs in recent years. Some traditional non-toxic pollutant problems due to bacteria, BOD and nutrients continue to require resolution in places. DEREK ELLIS
Juan de Fuca Ridge System Exploration and mapping of the Juan de Fuca Ridge system proceeds as US, Canadian, and other scientists deploy modern instruments at this ridge which extends from nearshore in the Canadian E E Z into international waters. The nearshore location renders the ridge accessible for fundamental studies of ridge structures and processes, and exploration of polymetallic sulphide beds, but also complicates matters due to the presence of coastal turbidities. At a symposium held at Sidney, British Columbia in March 1986, and attended by scientists from many west coast agencies the latest mapping results from Seabeam, SeaMARC and GLORIA acoustic imaging were demonstrated. Results from recent seismic profiling, magnetic and electrical soundings, basalt and sediment geochemistry were also presented. Some polymetallic sulphide deposits have been found in groups along the axial trough of southern sections of the Ridge. DEREK ELLIS
Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 17, No. 6, pp. 241-246, 1986. Primed in Great Britain.
Round-the-World News United Kingdom The UK Social Democrat Party (SDP) has called for a major reform of fisheries policy. In its Green paper, Harvest of the Sea, the Party calls for a change from the present quota system of controls over fish catches to a system which would control the amount of fishing effort. The SDP is also proposing the complete removal of all disused offshore structures, or that compensation be made by the oil industry.
Indonesia In an investigation recently carried out in villages around Djakarta Bay, Indonesia has found children displaying symptoms similar to those of'Minamata disease', which is caused by the ingestion of organic mercurycontaining compounds. Minamata disease was first recognized in the 1960s when it caused 1000 deaths and over 10,000 casualties in West Kyushu on the Minamata River in Japan. According to a recent report in Earthscan Bulletin 9 (1986), Dr Meizar Syafei from the Secretariat for Volunteers against Pollution in Djakarta has found that 30,000 small businesses dump contaminated wastes into streams and rivers flowing into the bay and that some of the marine life of the bay contained over the official 5 ppb limit of mercury. The Indonesian government acknowledges that pollution levels are high but claims that they are acceptable and that people are not at risk. Nevertheless child and infant deaths from convulsions, a symptom of Minamata disease, and environmental groups such as the Indonesian Environmental Forum are anxious that more studies should be carded out and pollution reduced before the situation becomes as serious as it was in Japan.
0025-326X/86 S3.00~1.00 @ 1986 PergamonJournah Ltd.
Viewpoint is a column which allows authors to express their own opinions about currem events.
Protection of the North Sea: Balance and Prospects K. R. SPERLING Dr. Sperling is an analytical chemist at the Biologische Anstalt Heigoland which is an Institution under the Federal German Ministry of Science and Technology. He is an original member of several national and international expert groups concerning the matter of marine dumping; mainly SACSA (Oslo Convention) and LDC-WG (London Convention). 241