Pace, style of growth endanger Puget Sound
Humans also in peril, action team report says
As the Puget Sound region's human population booms, the basin's marine-life population declines -- and, as a new report reaffirms, one is a direct cause of the other.
Toxic contaminants are rising in sediments, salmon and harbor seals. Ever-spreading pavement increases storm-water runoff and water pollution. And greenhouse gas buildup is raising water temperatures and reducing mountain snowpacks and summer stream flows, the Puget Sound Action Team said in its biennial State of the Sound report.
The team -- the state agency that monitors the health of the Sound -- noted in announcing today's release of the report that humans are among the creatures imperiled by the degradation of the basin.
"These problems are reflected in the precarious health of orcas, salmon and marine birds and resulted in last year's first-ever consumption advisory for Puget Sound chinook," the team noted in a statement.
Although dramatic change is rarely evident from one biennial report to the next, action team chairman Brad Ack said in an interview Monday that a significant concern is "the issue of flame retardants and how quickly they seem to be building up in harbor seals, which is probably an indicator of how they are building up in other marine life."
In only 20 years, he said, flame-retardant concentrations in harbor seals rose from 50 parts per billion to 1,000 parts per billion. Harbor seals are a good indicator of the health of other species because they eat a variety of marine creatures.
The Legislature is considering, and likely to pass, a bill to make Washington the first state to ban all forms of a potentially toxic flame retardant found in everything from marine animals to bears to women's breast milk. Environmentalists and Gov. Chris Gregoire have given the legislation a high priority.
The action team's report coincides with today's release of another scientific study, dubbed "Sound Science" and generated by state, county, federal, tribal and non-governmental researchers.
That document, prepared for Gregoire, calls for further research into the way humans, animals and the physical world interact in the Puget Sound region.
Scientists who worked on the report say too little is known about the ecology of the Sound as policymakers try to make decisions with major environmental and economic consequences.
"What appears to be a relatively small change can have these huge, cascading effects," said Michelle McClure, one of the authors.
McClure, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said other major concerns are climate change and continued population growth. Rising global temperatures paired with burgeoning human populations are expected to strain the region's damaged ecology in as-yet unknown ways.
"It's going to be a tricky balance," McClure said.
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
Pace, style of growth endanger Puget Sound
