A rising tide of chemicals in Puget Sound
Modern chemical is now found at the top of the food chain
PORT RENFREW, Vancouver Island -- Sporting hockey helmets and knee pads, the two researchers squatting in the aluminum skiff looked ready for a roller derby.
Peter Ross' voice broke the static of the marine radio.
"We've got a customer," he said. "We'll be coming up alongside."
On a sunny summer afternoon, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada scientists zipped back to the larger Zodiak-style vessel where research gear was stored. The "customer" was a baby harbor seal swiped from a rocky, seaweed-slippery beach.
Ross opened up his medical tool kit and got to work. Shrouded in a green net, the scientists hoisted up the seal and weighed her. They stretched a measuring tape from whiskers to flippers and around her chubby, speckled belly. The surprisingly docile pup was pierced with a needle and four finger-sized vials of blood filled, plus two small plugs of blubber and fur were taken.
The samples will strengthen a body of research tracking contamination in seals in Puget Sound, around Vancouver Island and along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The scientists are looking for long-lived toxic chemicals that can sicken animals -- including orcas and people. Contamination is one of the bigger threats to local killer whale populations.
"Harbor seals give us a good snapshot, a good overview of these chemicals in our ocean food web," Ross said.
The picture isn't black and white. Contamination levels have remained steady for some of the pollutants, but the amount of chemical flame retardants has skyrocketed, doubling in the Sound's harbor seals every four years dating back to 1984.
Despite years of cleanups, bans on certain chemicals and increasingly stringent regulations, pollution in Puget Sound remains pervasive.
Microscopic bits of plastic are sucked up by sea life of all shapes and sizes. Humans flush their pharmaceuticals and birth control and caffeine into the ecosystem, in some cases making male fish more female. Nutrients in sewage waste are helping stoke algal blooms that then die, rot and suck oxygen from the water, making it lethal to fish, crabs and octopuses.
There are bright points. About 1 million pounds of creosote-soaked logs have been removed from Whidbey Island beaches alone. Across the Sound, efforts continue to recover abandoned fishing nets that catch and drown sea life. Two high-tech sewage treatment plants are being built and state-led plans are in place to reduce the release of dangerous chemicals, including mercury and the flame retardants.
But new man-made threats are always emerging, more waste is always being generated.
All of the marine pollution causes Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer to scoff at the idea of wild seafood honestly being labeled "organic."
"Everything in the ocean is in a giant garbage dump," Ebbesmeyer said. "It's inescapable."
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
A rising tide of chemicals and sewage
