A new federal study could lead to new fossil fuel development in the Atlantic off the Southeast coast.

Impacts of seismic surveying to marine mammals a major concern

By Bob Berwyn

FRISCO — Conservation groups say a draft federal plan authorizing oil exploration off the Eastern Seaboard doesn’t do enough to protect marine mammals — and they have support from a bipartisan group of Florida lawmakers concerned about impacts to the economies of coastal communities.

At this stage, the issue is seismic testing with airguns to explore the ocean floor for potential oil deposits. The legislators from the U.S. House and Senate sent President Obama a letter urging him to reject the use of airguns.

According to a recent report from Oceana, an international ocean conservation group, the use of airguns for seismic surveying has widespread impacts on marine mammals, even at great distances.

“We are understanding more and more that the noise can disrupt entire populations,” said Oceana biologist Matthew Huelsenbeck, adding that the operations appear to planned in areas used by endangered northern right whales.

“With only about 500 northern right whales left in the world, you have to be seriously concerned,” Huelsenbeck said, adding that the only place in the world where they give birth is off the coast of Georgia and Florida — right in the heart of the planning area covered by the draft programmatic environmental study.

“Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are concerned about this devastating and unnecessary proposal that will injure more than 100,000 marine mammals, according to the Obama administration,” said Jacqueline Savitz, Oceana’s deputy vice president for U.S. campaigns. “Airgun use can deafen marine mammals temporarily or permanently, and in the ocean, where sound is used for a host of critical life activities, a deaf whale is likely to be a dead whale,” she said.

Huelsenbeck said there is mounting evidence that the use of airguns triggers behavioral changes. Some whales stop singing and move great distances to avoid the sonic disturbance, he said, explaining that the use of airguns should be completely banned in some sensitive areas.

“The science is starting to show some of the cumulative sub-lethal impacts … it interrupts behavior, that’s well established,” he said, adding that the draft federal study doesn’t include some of the best available scientific information, as required by law. There may also be some viable alternatives for surveying that could be phased in over the next three to five years — a reasonable time frame, considering there probably won’t be any leases going on the table until 2017, he said.

More broadly, conservation advocates believe that oil exploration in the region is a big step in the wrong direction that would risk new oil spills. Instead, the administration should focus on developing renewable energy resources.

“Seismic airgun testing on the East Coast is also the first step towards dangerous and dirty offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic … President Obama must reject this dangerous proposal and instead help support the development of clean energy, like offshore wind,” said Savitz.

Oceana has launched a petition to stop seismic testing, led by actor Ted Danson, which can be found on the website of the White House at http://wh.gov/e8hu.

To access Oceana’s full report, as well as an animation about how seismic airgun testing works, photos and other materials, please visit www.oceana.org/seismicreport.

Boaters and beachgoers are reminded to keep their eyes open for sea turtles and marine mammals while enjoying the outdoors this spring. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources asks anyone who sees a dead, visibly injured, entangled or stranded sea animal to call 1-800-628-9944 immediately. The hotline is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

This time of year, residents on the water are likely to see bottlenose dolphins, loggerhead sea turtles and maybe even a manatee. Most animals seen in Maryland waters are free swimming, naturally feeding and healthy. Spectators should watch and enjoy the animals at a distance, of at least 150 feet, to keep from disturbing their normal activity. Boaters should turn off their engines if a sea turtle or dolphin swims nearby. Those who would like to report

Loggerhead Turtle

a healthy animal or group of animals may also call the hotline.

In the event someone comes across the remains of a dead sea mammal, DNR reminds them not to touch it. These animals can transfer diseases to not only people, but their pets.

Maryland’s Marine Mammal & Sea Turtle Stranding Program has been responding to stranded marine animals for more than 20 years. DNR works with the Marine Animal Rescue Program at The National Aquarium as well as numerous other organizations throughout the State to aid in the recovery of, and response to, stranded marine animals.

Editor’s Note:  The debate about the safety of seismic airgun blasts for research purposes along America’s coastlines, has moved from Central California to the Atlantic coast, ranging from Delaware to Florida.  The following assesment  is from Oceana:

Overview

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) is currently deciding if seismic airgun testing should be allowed to search for oil and gas in the Atlantic Ocean. While the proposed area for seismic airgun testing spans along the coasts of seven states from Delaware to Florida, the impacts it will have on shared marine resources could be felt along the entire East Coast.

 Seismic testing involves the use of airguns, which are towed behind ships and shoot loud blasts of compressed air at 250 decibels through the water and miles into the seabed to search for oil and gas deposits. These airguns make intense pulses of sound, almost as loud as explosives, every ten seconds,24 hours a day, for days to weeks on end. The blasts are so loud and constant that they can injure or disturb vital behaviors in fish, dolphins, whales and sea turtles. If approved, seismic airguns will threaten marine life, fisheries and coastal economies throughout the Atlantic.

Severe Impacts Predicted for Atlantic Marine Life

Seismic airguns can harm whales, dolphins and other marine animals that are found in the Atlantic Ocean. Their impacts can include temporary and permanent hearing loss, abandonment of habitat, the disruption of vital behaviors such as mating and feeding, and even beach strandings and deaths. According to DOI’s own assessment, which is likely an underestimate of the impacts, the proposal to open up a large area of the Atlantic Ocean to seismic airgun testing would:

•Injure 138,500 dolphins and whales

•Cause 13.5 million disruptions to the vital behaviors of marine mammals such as feeding, calving and breeding

•Injure nine critically endangered North Atlantic right whales and disturb the vital behaviors of each remaining individual five times

•Interrupt threatened loggerhead sea turtles as they travel to nesting beaches

There are only 361 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, making it the rarest among large whale species. Seismic airgun testing threatens this endangered species along its migratory route and within its only known breeding and calving grounds in Georgia and Florida.

 Seismic Airguns Threaten Fisheries

 The proposed use of seismic airguns in the Atlantic Ocean also threatens fisheries and local communities. Airgun noise has been shown to displace commercially valuable species of fish across vast areas as well as decrease catch rates for coastal fisheries.

•Fisheries for cod and haddock showed decreased catch rates of 40 to 80 percent surrounding the use of a single airgun array

•Fishermen in Norway requested compensation for losses to their catch rates following seismic testing

•Commercial and recreational fishing off the mid- and southeast Atlantic, where seismic airgun testing is being proposed, generates $11.8 billion annually and supports 222,000 jobs

•Several ports within the proposed area for seismicairgun testing have among the highest commercial fishing revenues in the U.S.

•Seismic airgun testing could impact 108 fishing communities along the coast from Delaware to Florida

Timeline of Marine Wildlife Impacts Following Seismic Testing

1994

Sperm whales displaced in the Gulf of Mexico

1997-2000

Sightings of dolphins and whales reduced in the United Kingdom and adjacent waters

2001

Critically endangered western gray whales abandoneda primary feeding area off Sakhalin Island, Russia

2002

Two beaked whales stranded in the Gulf of California, Mexico

2003

Two separate strandings of giant squid that had damaged ears and lesions never before seen in the species occurred off the coast of Spain in 2001 and 2003

2004

More than 30 endangered sea turtles washed up on the beaches of Yucatan, Mexico

2008

Dozens of melon-headed whales stranded and died in Madagascar

2012

About 900 long-beaked common dolphins and black porpoises washed up dead along a desolate stretch of beach in Peru. Although the cause of death is unclear, necropsies of the dolphins showed blood coming from their ears and fractures in their periotic ear bones, which could have been caused by seismic testing

—————————————————————–

Take Action:

http://act.oceana.org/letter/l-seismic/

Until recently, my concept of a ‘garbage patch’ was of an area of ocean with large pieces of floating debris, the kind of stray fishing gear and trash from ships and shorelines that collect where currents form eddies far from view of most people.

Having seen my share of sea trash in 20,000+ miles of lake and ocean sailing and even untangled sheets of plastic and thick ropes from the propeller and rudder of my 37-foot sailboat, I was shocked to learn that the kind of garbage scientists are most concerned about is invisible to the naked eye. They’re finding tiny bits of plastic known as “micro-plastics” floating near the surface of the water in high concentrations. The particles are so small that a microscope is needed to even see them.

The scary news this week was about a garbage patch discovered in the Great Lakes last year. Although scientists have studied plastic pollution in the oceans since NOAA researchers discovered the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in 1988, a team of scientists is conducting the first-of-its-kind research on the open water of the Great Lakes. One of the team members presented preliminary results of a study on the topic at meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Read more here:  http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/12/new-concerns-about-plastic-pollution-in-great-lakes-garbage-patch/

Corporations want to work in secret. It’s what they do, and why they have lawyers. In secret, they can spill, clearcut, burn and otherwise destroy the environment and local communities while telling the world they’re doing just the opposite. Shell Oil’s legal team is currently working overtime to keep the company’s Arctic work secret from advocacy groups like Greenpeace. It’s a battle that will have implications well beyond the Far North. If Shell ultimately wins the legal battle with us this month, corporate secrecy will have the blessing of a federal court—and America’s First Amendment rights will take a devastating hit.

The thought is chilling.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California is currently weighing whether Shell has the right to preemptively stop Greenpeace from protesting Shell’s drilling in the Alaskan Arctic. If the court ultimately rules in Shell’s favor, nothing would stop other corporations from taking the same preemptive action against anyone they saw as likely protesters—from neighborhood groups to Amnesty International. The worst of these suits would eventually be overturned on appeal, but with the precedent set by Shell, anyone who wanted to silence protest outside a convention or a disaster site could do so for the duration of whatever activity they wanted to keep secret.

Advocacy groups like Greenpeace adamantly oppose this type of corporate secrecy. We work to bring attention to corporate destruction so people understand the stakes in fights from the Arctic to the Amazon. Our ability to go wherever the planet and its people are in danger is why Greenpeace strikes fear into corporations like Shell, so much so that they will go to extraordinary lengths to stop us from exposing the work it wants to keep secret.

Read more here:  http://www.nationofchange.org/shell-s-plot-silence-protests-against-arctic-drilling-1365865723

Editor’s Note: Most highlights by N911 staff

The dead sea otters arrived at Melissa Miller’s Santa Cruz, California, lab with bright-yellow eyes and gums, their livers destroyed.

One by one, Miller, a marine-wildlife veterinarian, eliminated the potential causes of death until “the last thing I was left with seemed so implausible that I thought I was going crazy.”

The otters had been poisoned by a “nasty toxin” called microcystin, which is produced by cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. Such toxins can appear when human sewage and fertilizers run into lakes and rivers, adding nutrients that spur the growth of algae “superblooms,” Miller said.

But sea otters stick to the ocean, never entering the polluted lakes and rivers where these blooms occur.

“I said, OK, we have to figure out how the otters are getting into this,” said Miller, of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the University of California, Davis.

Miller’s sleuthing led her to California’s Pinto Lake (map), a water body about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) from the ocean and so prone to superblooms that Miller said “it’ll blow your mind—it looks like fluorescent green paint.”

Sure enough, she found that Pinto Lake eventually drains into the Pacific Ocean—close to where the dead otters were found in 2007.

Later experiments revealed the algae’s toxins can live for long periods of time in shellfish—otters’ main diet. Toxins from the polluted lake were traveling downstream into the ocean, Miller concluded, where they were getting into shellfish and killing otters. (See pictures of threatened marine species.)

Of course, the toll that some types of water pollution take on marine mammals has long been documented. For example, cancer-causing chemicals called PCBs and pesticides like DDT are known to accumulate in marine mammals’ fatty tissues and cause serious harm.

But scientists are just now beginning to understand how these and other toxins in the water are spurring the resurgence of some diseases and the creation of others, largely by weakening animals’ immune systems. And with more development and pollution in coastal areas, the problem appears to be accelerating.

“Currently there is a general belief that infectious diseases stop where the land and the water meet,” said Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinarian and director of the One Health Medicine and Research Program, which is part of the National Marine Mammal Foundation (NMMF).

But recent research is showing that such diseases don’t discriminate—and the ocean provides “lots of opportunities” for viruses and bacteria to blossom, Venn-Watson said.

Even more worrisome, experts say, is that these organisms could eventually make their way back to land—and to us.

Because people eat shellfish harvested where the land meets the sea, the sea otters may be serving as an “early warning system” for human health risks, Miller said.

Diseased Dolphins

Along Florida’s Indian River Lagoon (map) one day last spring, the water looked smooth and clean, the mangroves lush.

But Gregory Bossart knows otherwise.

Since 2003, the Georgia Aquarium’s chief veterinarian has been monitoring the health of more than 280 bottlenose dolphins that live along this 170-mile (275-kilometer) stretch of eastern Florida near Fort Pierce, about halfway between Orlando and Fort Lauderdale.

A large team helps him collect a suite of samples from the dolphins, which are catalogued by their dorsal fins.

The prognosis is worrisome: Many of the studied dolphins are sick, suffering from newly described and resurgent diseases that could be triggered by human activities—especially pollution.

Though the process isn’t fully understood, pollution and other environmental stressors may be changing the environment here in a way that’s favorable for the growth of such diseases, many of which are opportunistic.

As a heavily used recreation area, the Indian River Lagoon has extremely high levels of mercury, mostly due to vehicle exhaust from boats and cars. Coal-fired power plants as far away as China also contribute to mercury pollution in the state.

This toxic metal has been found in dolphins at 20 times the level permitted in human food by the U.S. government.

That exposure could be linked to new papilloma and herpes viruses that have appeared in Indian River dolphins in the last 30 years. The viruses manifest as grisly tumors, sometimes on the dolphins’ genitals.

During some recent years, another rare fungal disease called lobomycosis—found only in people and dolphins—has arisen in “epidemic proportions” among Indian River dolphins, Bossart said.

While it’s unknown what caused lobomycosis, the diseased animals share a “profoundly” suppressed immune system, he said, likely caused by the dolphins’ constant exposure to environmental stressors like mercury. (Also see “Dolphin-Baby Die-Off in Gulf Puzzles Scientists.”)

Toxic Wake-up Call

Just up the coast, in southern Georgia, marine scientist Lori Schwacke and colleagues have made similar findings in a population of bottlenose dolphins.

Schwacke, of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has found “extreme” chemical concentrations in dolphins living in a coastal area highly contaminated by pollution from a former plastics facility.

The chemical, called PCB, is a chemical byproduct of some industrial processes that can linger in the environment for decades. (Read more about marine pollution.)

In one recent study of the coastal dolphin population, Schwacke and colleagues found that 26 percent of sampled dolphins in the research area had anemia and decreased immunity.

“The severity of the effects suggests that the PCB mixture to which the Georgia dolphins were exposed has substantial toxic potential,” according to a 2011 study led by Schwacke and published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

According to the NMMF’s Venn-Watson, the marine mammal community has already invested millions of dollars in tracking the emergence of new marine mammal diseases, especially viruses, but “now the challenge is becoming which ones we should care about.”

For instance, scientists need to know which viruses are most often fatal, so that they’re able to vaccinate a population of animals before the virus spreads.

A measles-like morbillivirus broke out in bottlenose dolphins in the eastern U.S. in the 1980s, likely wiping out half that population, she said. If a similar virus hit the last population of endangered Hawaiian monk seals, it could be the death knell for the entire species.

“Death by a Million Cuts”

As for California’s otters, the situation is looking bleak. Miller, the wildlife vet, has been tracking another deadly otter affliction—Toxoplasma, a common parasite that causes a disease called toxoplasmosis and is usually spread by domestic cats. Toxoplasma eggs are shed in the feces of infected animals.

Due in part to exposure to cat feces, toxoplasmosis infects between a third and a half of the world’s human population, according to the University of Chicago Medicine’s Toxoplasmosis Center.

The parasite is usually dormant, but it can cause health problems if an infected person develops a weak immune system. (Related: “How a Cat-Borne Parasite Infects Humans.”)

Miller first observed Toxoplasma in the brain tissue of a dead otter about 14 years ago. After examining hundreds more specimens, Miller realized that otters living near river mouths were almost three times as likely to be infected compared with otters living in areas with low exposure to polluted freshwater runoff.

How did a parasite found in house cats get into the Pacific?

Mainly, because of us. Wherever there are people, there’s pavement. And the more smooth surfaces there are, the easier it is for rainwater containing Toxoplasma-ridden cat feces—from lawns, parks, backyards, and more—to be carried downstream with water pollution into rivers and streams, and then into oceans.

Coastal wetlands—which Miller calls “environmental kidneys”—would naturally capture some of the parasite-laden water. But widespread development has destroyed much of California’s wetlands, she noted.

Once the Toxoplasma eggs end up in the ocean, they can infect shellfish—such as clams and mussels—for at least three weeks before being eaten by otters.

“These parasites … have come up with good strategies to survive and propagate themselves,” California’s Miller said. “The only way you can kill the egg is with fire.”

Miller now estimates that 60 to 70 percent of California male otters—the most vulnerable population due to their wandering ways—carry the parasite. Between toxoplasmosis, toxic algae, and other parasites such as sarcocystis, she said, “it’s kind of like death by a million cuts.“

Likewise, the Georgia Aquarium’s Bossart recently discovered that endangered Antillean manatees in Puerto Rico carry Toxoplasma—the first evidence of the parasite in any sirenian, the animal group that includes manatees and dugongs.

It’s unknown how the parasite—which has already killed four manatees in Puerto Rico—is getting into the water, but one possibility is that feral-cat feces is ending up in the ocean, said Bossart, who recently published the research in the journal Diseases of Aquatic Organisms.

“Part of what the otters are trying to tell us,” Miller said, is that people need to pay more attention to the health of our coasts, which are usually neglected in both research and regulation.

What Goes Around Comes Around

There’s another benefit to limiting coastal pollution, Miller added—many of the diseases gaining a foothold in the ocean could eventually affect people, too. (Get the facts on human diseases.)

For instance, a virus could mutate in a marine mammal, jump back to people, and mutate again into a more powerful or deadly strain. This hasn’t happened yet, but there have been close calls.

In 2011, a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus infected harbor seals in New England. The flu virus, which was linked to an unusual spate of seal deaths, mutated into another virus that infected mammals even more efficiently—raising concerns that it could jump to people, Venn-Watson said.

And three-fourths of all emerging infectious diseases of humans are zoonotic—meaning the diseases originate in animals-and their incidence is increasing, according to USAID. (See pictures of infectious animals.)

“Each time these changes occur, it provides fodder for pandemics in humans,” Venn-Watson said.

Likewise, many of the places where these diseased marine mammals live are sources of seafood. For instance, people regularly eat fish from the PCB-laden waters sickening the Georgia dolphins, Schwacke noted in her study. (Learn about how to get healthy seafood.)

Bossart’s project to examine Florida’s dolphins has turned into “using dolphins as sentinels for ocean health and human health,” he said.

“Ultimately,” he added, “it’s in our own best interest to investigate all wildlife-health patterns that could potentially affect our own well-being.”

    Read Dolphin Consumption Grows As Fisheries Shrink

Hunting dolphins is illegal under Peruvian law. But the law is not enforced. Exposing this ghastly situation in international meetings will bring pressure on Peru, a nation highly dependent on international tourism, to enforce laws already on the books and save the lives of thousands of dolphins.  I worked in Peru as a Peace Corps volunteer and have great empathy for the many poor and hungry people. But the solution to the poverty is not killing and eating dolphins. It is to initiate sound fishing practices and restore one of the world’s most productive fisheries.   Dolphin meat is highly contaminated with heavy metals and organic pollutants such as PCBs. It should not be consumed as food. Villagers who do eat it have an extraordinary level of diabetes, a disease associated with ingestion of high levels of pollutants.   Visit http://www.bluevoice.org for more information

The author, Abah John Abah, is a  sailor/geologist and public interest commentator on energy and environment resides in Lagos, Nigeria.  The Neptune911 editorial staff has highlighted portions of this news that relates to oceans.

Plastics everywhere – Life wasting Wastes

Iya Segun etches her living selling scraps of containers, mostly plastics, in the ever bubbling Agege railway market. For her, business is good making about $4 a day to cater for her four kids. Across Lagos, in Ojota Valley market, Adeniji under bridge, to Panteka in Kaduna, Sabongeri in Kano and other markets across the country thousands like her are living off wares of sorted plastic wastes. They are third in the chain of waste industry that starts at refuse collections from streets and houses, turning out millions of tons of wastes, more than 50% plastics. Refuse management by authorities here in Nigeria stops at the dump sites where lots of poor masses scavenge on these huge dumps for a living. Other dump sites are in waters and seas from where plastics continue their deadly journeys. The scraps picked by these scavengers end up as wares for Iya Segun and thousands like her. From their makeshift warehouses, the plastic wastes find two paths; approximately half go back to homes and the other half to recycling plants. Either of these paths leads to deadly consequences.

Plastics are everywhere, from our wears- shoes, bags, headgears and even women hairs attachments; our automobiles; office and household electronics/computers; storage facilities/containers and sachets/wraps of various products and foods. Let us put them in two broad classes. The ones originally produced for food packaging and storage, which are safe health-wise; and the other class unsafe for our health, originally produced to carry non-consumables and hazardous substances. So plastics are not only priority pollutants, they are threats to our health and ecology because of the ingredients chemical used in producing them or chemicals they absorb from environment of their chemical contents. It is hard to separate the two broad classes because of how they end up after reuse and recycling. If a plastic container of harmful chemical ends up being reused by an uninformed person to contain food you can guess the risk. The safe ones originally meant for consumable may later be used to carry harmful product and come back to being used for food again. Beyond this health risks plastics constitute a lot more environmental hazards.

A few times I have entered Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, through the busy Guanabara Bay. This Port approach boasts of the panoramic view of the famous Statue of Christ the Redeemer situated on the 2,340ft Mount Corcovado in Rio and the exotic shoreline resorts/beaches but alas! The Guanabara Bay is a dish-pot of all kinds of rubbish, mostly plastics pouring into the western Atlantic. The sight takes all the excitement from any tourist hoping to have a great time in Rio. The Coast line of Nigeria is not much better. Imagine a tourist checking out the much hyped elitist Lagos Atlantic City, a sprawling ambitious city development project on recovered strip of land along the coast. He checks into a resort in the new city and decides on a yacht sail off the jetty of the expensive yacht club but, all that greeted him are stinking wastes, full of plastic dumped off the coast by the many water-side slums of Lagos that are even greater eye-sours.

But plastics go beyond this in constituting physical hazards. A few years ago, I was in the famous city of Kano. Like most bustling cities in Nigeria, there are plastics littered everywhere in all forms- bags, food/water sachets and bottles. If this was a bad scene, the real hazard didn’t hit me till an experience I had one evening that week. After being guest to a relative, I was anxious to return to my lodge before the building rain cloud bursts. I was advised to wait out the expected rain but I didn’t get what they meant. For me, I would be okay if I get a taxi before the rain. I was not familiar with the far North of Nigeria and their erratic weather elements. While waiting on the street side for taxi, a big storm preceding the rain started. In matter of seconds I could not see ten feet ahead of me as the huge dusts swells around. Before I could scamper for safety I had big plastic cellophane blown across my face, totally blindfolding me. Since then, the sight of plastic litters annoys me. Yet this is just a tip of the physical hazards associated with plastics wastes.

At the peak of the rainy season last year, floods sacked many cities and communities across the country. Many have blamed the failure of infrastructure, amongst other things as the main cause of the floods. Some even dubbed it a natural disaster. I don’t know how many see plastic wastes as the number one culprit. Nothing renders drainage infrastructure useless as fast as plastics. Plastic as non biodegradables meant they don’t decay. In rain runoffs, they are washed down to build up in drainages reducing their carrying capacities, if not totally blocking them. The multiple effects of this can be monumental.

It has been established that 78% of hazardous wastes are plastics and as pointed out earlier, many of the harmful chemicals associated with plastics pose serious health risks to man and other living things. The plastic wares of Iya Segun mentioned above, wherever they end up, either in our homes or recycling plants come at a grave risk to our health. Imagine such plastic, externally washed anew, ends in our home as water/food containers. For many years, this container slowly, invisibly, ooze into your water harmful substances that were its ingredient raw materials or absorbed from whatever is earlier contained in it. The result is worse if you heat your food/water in this plastic when the harmful substances get quickly squeezed out. Many of these substances are carcinogenic, that is they have the potential to cause cancers. Others are estrogenic, meaning they negatively affect our reproductive systems. Some causes instant poisoning.

Apart from direct impacts on our lives, hazardous plastic wastes pose far-reaching ecological danger on both land and marine environments. The marine world is a complex ecosystem. As on land, marine animals feed on themselves and other smaller faunas and floras. These lower lives, the preys and the predators all face the dangers from plastics. The harmful chemicals slowly seeping into waters affects their health and puts them at risk of extinction thereby creating ecological imbalance. Some fishes swallow whole plastics mistaking them for food. I’m not claiming fishes are so dumb as not to recognize their foods. As a mariner, after unsuccessfully trying to bait a fish with the wrong food I know you must be adept in fish eating habits before you can fish. This story may explain what I mean: Not far ago my wife visited Vienna, Austria during the winter. Before flying back she went shopping for chocolates and bought these beautifully wrapped chocolates. We had a taste of these chocolates ourselves and soon started feeling tipsy. They were simply alcoholic candies coated with chocolates! We were quite naïve, the sharp taste didn’t warn us. Lots have even been given out to visitors and friends. Many marine mammals feed on zooplanktons. Plastic floating in waters for a long period can have thick deposits of these zooplanktons and fishes can easily be fooled swallowing this zooplanktons encrusted plastics like my wife’s chocolate-coated alcohol. To think that some of these fishes end on our table as food makes the situation grave. I have seen pictures of endangered sea animals like whales and dauphins entangled in discarded fishing nets.

On land, the tale is not better. If the unsightly litters of plastics on streets don’t bother you, the effects on soil fertility and ultimately food supply should. As in marine environment, harmful substances from plastics tilt the ecological balance dangerously. The crops in our orchards draw from these dangerous nutrients and transfer them to us. The all important fauna like an earthworm struggles against plastics. Earthworms bore around the upper layer of the soil, leaving pores and excrements that provide soil vital aeration and fertility. Imagine if earthworms are wiped out by plastics.

In the movie The Graduate, there is this famous line ‘plastics, young man plastics …..Plastic is the future’.  Nobody can discountenance the facts that there is yet great future for plastics. On the flip side, plastics still hold a lot of economic promise. We cannot do away with them but as many environmentalists believe, plastics need a new label. It will take yet some time before evolving technology produce affordable biodegradable plastics but while we are at it, efforts to reduce avoidable use of plastics should be doubled.

Recessive economy meant that foods and consumables are coming packaged in plastic sachets. These sachets are the environment defacing litters all over our streets. I believe plastic sachets can go for foil-coated paper sachets. The many Chinese and Indian run plastic industries in Nigeria cares more for profit than environmental and human health. Their recycling plants produce food packaging containers from whatever plastics that come their way, with little attention to the type of plastic and the chemicals contained in them.

Shops should sell reusable canvas bags rather than plastics. I know that in shipping, efforts in containment and management of plastic wastes is impressive, perhaps because of the many policing organizations and fear of litigation. Careful segregation and incineration, and even treatment of incinerated residues are common practice in maritime. Such efforts should be emulated in our homes and by environmental collection agencies especially in underdeveloped climes like Nigeria. Agencies and NGOs concerned should do more policing even where big money is not involved. And it can all start from individuals and the home. Make the effort to leave your waste, especially plastics at the designated bins instead flinging it out your car. You can help the authority if you segregate plastics from other wastes in your home. A separate bin can help. If you have affordable alternative, why use plastic at all? Mind your health, mind your environment, and mind the plastics!

Abah John Abah, sailor/geologist and public interest commentator on energy and environment resides in Lagos, Nigeria.

From the Christian Science Monitor  April 10, 2013

Highlighting by Neptune911 editorial staff

California’s sea lions, usually celebrated for their entertaining, prankster ways and doglike barks, are making very different headlines right now. Young pups are washing up dehydrated and dying, from Monterey to San Diego, in record numbers.

“We do not know the cause,” says Sharon Melin, a marine biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA has taken the extraordinary step of declaring an “unusual mortality event,” or UME, which brings with it additional funds for research as well as national collaboration between agencies.

One recipient of that additional UME funding is the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, an hour south of Los Angeles. Development director Melissa Sciacca says they knew as early as January they were facing an unprecedented event.

“We began seeing 10 to 12 animals every day coming into the facility,” she says, noting that this began during a time when even a single young sea lion beaching is unusual. Sea lion pups don’t typically wean until April or May, and while a certain number of pups fail to thrive annually, she adds, it has never been at this rate.

“In our 42 years, we have never seen anything like this,” she says.

At this early stage, scientists are focusing on food shortages and disease as possible causes, says Dr. Melin. While some have raised the possibility of radiation effects from the Fukushima earthquake in Japan, Melin points out that this event is narrowly limited to the young sea lion population.

“There would be a more widespread effect if radiation were the cause,” she says.

Nonetheless, she points out that the federally protected sea lions, perhaps the most adaptable of sea mammals, are an important sentinel species. “The events that impact them tell us important things about what is going on in our oceans,” she adds.

This unusual wave of sea lion beaching comes at the same time as a rash of equally remarkable marine mammal events have caused a sensation over the past few months. Back in mid-February, a mega-pod of feeding dolphins that was estimated to number in the tens of thousands and to cover 35 square miles astonished residents near San Diego, while the largest pods of grey and killer whales ever spotted also delighted tourists at the same time as they perplexed scientists.

Researchers at NOAA are cautious in their proposals as to what is behind the growing number of incapacitated sea lion pups, points out Beth Pratt, California director of the National Wildlife Federation. But, she adds, it’s hard for the average person watching these events not to think they’re connected somehow.

“It seems pretty obvious to the average viewer that there is something going on in our oceans or environments that is driving such extraordinary changes in marine mammal behavior,” she says.

The research funding and major effort to understand the causes of the sea lions’ travails are just beginning – and may not be conclusive, points out David Helvarg, author of “The Golden Shore – California’s Love Affair with the Sea.”

While the research could point to a collapse in food sources such as anchovies or squid, he adds via e-mail, “it could be a mixed result like with the manatee die-off in Florida, where a naturally occurring red tide is being unnaturally fed by nutrients from farm and lawn fertilizers.”