Salish Sea News Week in Review July 26 2024

 

Aloha Tofu Friday!

World Tofu Day was created by the Society for the Protection of Animals (SPA) Canada and the first World Tofu Day was marked in 2014. In Montreal, at least 12,000 people attended a vegan barbecue on the inaugural celebration. Tofu is made from soybeans that are curdled and then pressed into blocks. It is high in protein, relatively low in calories, and low in carbohydrates. It is low in saturated fat but higher in heart-healthy fats. Tofu contains iron, magnesium, manganese, selenium, and calcium, and is sometimes fortified with other minerals and vitamins.

Environmental groups push for toughening of salmon farm rule change
New federal rules for fish farms have cut the amount of allowable sea lice in farmed salmon but environmental groups say it doesn’t amount to much.

Washington State Has Been Sitting on a Secret Weapon Against Climate Change
Wetlands are carbon-storage powerhouses — and many are unmapped.

Project 2025’s extreme vision for the West
The demolition of public lands, water and wildlife protections are part of conservatives’ plan for a second Trump term.

Coastal B.C. First Nations take the lead on many marine search-and-rescue missions
New formalized role and funding helps First Nations become integral part of coastal search and rescue.

Intalco Aluminum agrees to $5.25 million penalty for hazardous pollution violations at Ferndale
Intalco Aluminum, the company that operated the shuttered aluminum smelter in Ferndale, has agreed to pay $5.25 million as part of a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The settlement stems from Clean Air Act violations discovered during a 2019 EPA inspection of the site.

Planet Sets Record for Hottest Day Twice in a Row
Researchers with the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Sunday was Earth’s hottest day. Then it happened again on Monday.

WA nears a plan to remove key culverts for salmon — after spending $4B
As the Washington State Department of Transportation spends billions of dollars removing concrete and metal pipes that block spawning salmon, another state agency is finally finishing a strategy to fix all the state’s fish migration barriers.

Voters to decide on pace of Washington’s transition off natural gas
State election officials on Wednesday certified an initiative for the November ballot that seeks to reverse Washington’s controversial tactics to phase out natural gas use in homes and other buildings.

Hakai Magazine to close down
Founding editor Jude Isabella wrote yesterday to readers: "The only way to deliver this bad news is bluntly: Hakai Magazine will cease to publish at the end of 2024. For nearly a decade, we’ve made our cozy berth within the Tula Foundation, voyaging alongside its core missions that conduct long-term ecological research in British Columbia and deliver essential healthcare of Guatemalan mothers and babes. It has been a privilege beyond measure.... We’re actively looking for new funding sources—if you have ideas, please get in touch, because we’re open to suggestions. Over the next six months, we will keep you informed of our progress in finding a new haven for our next chapter."

These news clips are a selection of weekday clips collected in Salish Sea News and Weather which is compiled as a community service by Mike Sato. To subscribe at no cost to the weekday news clips, send your name and email to mikesato772 at gmail.com. Your email information is never shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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Salish Sea News Week in Review July 19 2024

Aloha Beekeeping Friday!
 On December 3, 2019, Detroit Hives, a non-profit organization, declared July 19 of every year as National Urban Beekeeping Day. The holiday was created to raise awareness about supporting urban beekeepers, inform the public on the role of urban beekeeping, and also to discuss the importance of bees in our environment.

Tacomans struggle with high temperatures, heat and access to cooling varies across the city
Shade is a problem for Tacomans.  The city is dense and in the Puget Sound region, it has the lowest amount of tree canopy cover for cities. 

Butterfly sightings in Metro Vancouver plummet
Fewer butterflies are flying around Metro Vancouver this year, and their scarcity is leaving scientists and community members with more questions than answers. Extreme swings in weather may be to blame, but planting more native trees in cities could help.

Single-use plastic bags banned as next round of B.C. plastic regulations kicks in
Plastic shopping bags and other single-use products are no longer available at British Columbia stores as the government implements the latest step in its plan to phase out certain plastic items and keep harmful chemicals out of landfills.

Bringing Salmon Home to Kus-kus-sum
In 2020, the Comox Valley Project Watershed Society finally raised enough funds to purchase the eight-acre site from lumber producer Interfor, and in 2021, the land was transferred to the society. Since then, it has removed more than 12,000 cubic metres of concrete from the industrial site and revegetated five acres of it.

At new Marysville water treatment facility, plants filter out pollutants
The city’s new stormwater treatment plant isn’t landmarked by large tanks and pipes — or any buildings for that matter. Near the shore of Ebey Slough, the plant — charged with treating 460 acres of urban runoff — looks like a park, with paved walkways and rows of native grasses.

Seagrass and Plastic Are Not Friends
In 2021, what sounded like a good news story hit the media: in the Mediterranean, seagrasses were trapping plastic waste, capturing fragments in their leaves and locking microplastics in seafloor sediments...But that hopeful narrative is, unfortunately, too optimistic and only tells part of the story.

Seattle Aquarium’s Ocean Pavilion to open in August
Seattle Aquarium’s new, $160 million Ocean Pavilion will open Aug. 29. The 50,000-square-foot exhibit space is already transforming the city’s central waterfront, and will feature the region’s largest tropical reef ecosystem, with sharks, rays, other animals and plants.

WA awards $52 million from carbon auctions for tribal climate adaptation
More than $50 million in revenue from the state’s carbon market auctions is going to 32 tribal nations across the Northwest for clean-energy projects and efforts to better safeguard communities from the effects of climate change.

Birthing the Blob
In 2013, a huge marine heatwave known as the Blob hit the northeast Pacific Ocean.

These news clips are a selection of weekday clips collected in Salish Sea News and Weather which is compiled as a community service by Mike Sato. To subscribe at no cost to the weekday news clips, send your name and email to mikesato772 at gmail.com. Your email information is never shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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Salish Sea News Week in Review July 12 2024

Aloha Kebab Friday!
The first kebabs may have been cooked when soldiers grilled meat of recently-killed animals on their swords. Kebabs emerged from Turkish cuisine and were first mentioned in a Turkish text in the fourteenth century. The dishes spread around the world along with Muslim culture, and now are common in restaurants that serve Turkish, Indian, and Mughlai cuisines.

Southern resident orca numbers decline during census year; Bigg’s orcas continue to expand
Preliminary results are now available from the annual orca census from the Center for Whale Research. At least two southern resident killer whales have died over the past year, with one of them being a little more than a month old. Meanwhile, sightings of Bigg’s killer whales have increased to record numbers. 

Environmental group buys Fraser River island to protect salmon
The Nature Conservancy of Canada says Carey Island is one of the Fraser's last salmon habitat strongholds.

Over half of Clayoquot Sound’s iconic forests are now protected — here’s how First Nations and B.C. did it
The Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations will now manage 760 square kilometres of old-growth conservancies with the help of philanthropic funding.

The Pacific Northwest is littered with ‘deadbeat dams’
Aging structures dubbed 'deadbeat dams' choke off habitat and threaten human life in some instances. Native nations are at the forefront of the effort to address these lingering dams.

Baker sockeye tribal fishery returns after banner year
Upper Skagit Indian Tribe fishers celebrated the return of the Baker River sockeye fishery this week. A record number of sockeye salmon swam through the Baker River last year, with about 65,000 returning. This year, Upper Skagit tribal fishers are hoping for more of the same.

PNW data center boom could imperil power supply within 5 years
The Pacific Northwest’s power grid could be pushed beyond its limits in just five years by the staggering electricity demands of the booming data center industry, regional power planners recently reported. The forecast cautioned that data centers could consume as much as 4,000 average megawatts of electricity by 2029 — enough to power the entire city of Seattle five times over. Lulu Ramadan reports. (Seattle Times)

Record sockeye salmon run on Columbia now threatened by hot water
Smashing records, sockeye salmon are booming up the Columbia River, in a run expected to top 700,000 fish before it’s over. But a punishing heat wave has made river temperatures so hot many may never make it their last miles home. With water temperatures above 80 degrees in the Okanogan River, sockeye are stacking up at its mouth and waiting rather than entering the tributary to get to their spawning grounds across the U.S.-Canada border. 

Washington issues burn ban on state lands
A burn ban is in effect for all state lands in Washington. The state Department of Natural Resources on Wednesday issued the statewide ban on outdoor burning, campfires, the use of charcoal briquettes and prescribed burns on its lands. The ban started at 1 p.m. on Wednesday and will go until at least Sept. 30, 2024.

These news clips are a selection of weekday clips collected in Salish Sea News and Weather which is compiled as a community service by Mike Sato. To subscribe at no cost to the weekday news clips, send your name and email to msato at salishseacom.com. Your email information is never shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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Salish Sea News Week in Review July 3 2024

Great Auks extinction day
Great auks were native to the Arctic and sub-Arctic, and became extinct in 1844. On July 3, 1844, fishermen killed the last confirmed pair of great auks (Pinguinus impennis) at Eldey Island, Iceland.  It is believed that the extinction of these birds was caused by human activities and hunting due to the high demand for their feathers. (National Geographic)

All killer whales will remain one species — for now, according to marine mammal committee
A formal proposal to designate resident and Bigg’s killer whales as separate species has been rejected by a committee widely recognized as the authority in naming new marine mammal species.

A warning signal from grey whales: The animals are getting smaller
A population of grey whales that feeds off B.C.'s coast has seen its adult population physically get smaller over the past two decades, a new study has found.

The Owls Who Came From Away
Over the past 80 years, one of the most resilient and hearty owls has practically engulfed a continent. Not everyone is pleased.

Scientists can now rapidly link heat waves to climate change
Canadian scientists can now estimate how much human-induced climate change contributed to an extreme heat wave or flood within a week of the disaster.

Measure to prevent phasing out of natural gas in WA is on track for November ballot

Supporters have submitted 400,000-plus signatures in support of Initiative 2066 to prevent phasing out of natural gas.

These news clips are a selection of weekday clips collected in Salish Sea News and Weather which is compiled as a community service by Mike Sato. To subscribe at no cost to the weekday news clips, send your name and email to msato at salishseacom.com. Your email information is never shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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Salish Sea News Week in Review June 28 2024

Aloha Food Truck Friday!

Food trucks vary in the type of foods they prepare and sell, from ice cream to frozen or prepackaged food, to meals prepared from scratch. A precursor of the food truck can be seen as being the chuckwagon, which was a retrofitted wagon stocked with kitchen and food supplies that gave cowhands sustenance when they were on the trail in the late 1800's. In 1872, Walter Scott, a food vendor, came up with the lunch wagon—he cut windows in a small covered wagon and sold sandwiches, pies, and coffee to workers outside of a newspaper office in Providence, Rhode Island. In the 1880's Thomas H. Buckley was manufacturing different models of these and included in them appliances such as sinks, refrigerators, and stoves.

B.C. launches lawsuit against makers of 'forever chemicals'
The British Columbia government has filed a class-action lawsuit against manufacturers of so-called "forever chemicals" it says are involved in the widespread contamination of drinking water systems.

Mass mortality: A fish scientist follows a tip about die-offs at B.C. salmon farms
DFO and operator attribute mass die-off to low oxygen, but one scientist who visited one far-flung site in a kayak worries the real cause could be more complicated.

The Estuary Smothered by a Thousand Logs
For decades, scientists have known that allowing the timber industry to store logs in estuaries kills marine life. So why does British Columbia still permit it?

Vote nears on ending ‘endangered’ status for WA wolves
The Washington State Fish and Wildlife Commission will decide next month on lowering gray wolves’ status under the state’s endangered species law.

$335M committed to protecting ecosystems off B.C. coast
The federal government has announced a new financing initiative for 17 First Nations in British Columbia to expand protection for marine ecosystems off the coast of the Great Bear Rainforest.

Supreme Court halts enforcement of the EPA’s plan to limit downwind pollution from power plants
The Supreme Court is putting the Environmental Protection Agency’s air pollution-fighting “good neighbor” plan on hold while legal challenges continue, the conservative-led court’s latest blow to federal regulations.

Diesel spill from sunken fishing boat in 2022 off San Juan Island leads to penalty

The state Department of Ecology is seeking $646,259 in damages and penalties for the spilling of diesel fuel into Haro Strait when the commercial fishing boat Aleutian Island sank off San Juan Island in August 2022.

As salmon season kicks off, some Alaska fishermen fear for their futures
A year into the the crisis in Alaska’s $6 billion commercial fishing industry, there are some signs of recovery, but major threats persist, many of which fishermen feel powerless to affect.

WA fines Home Depot $1.6M for selling hydrofluorocarbon products
The state has fined The Home Depot $1.6 million for selling illegal hydrofluorocarbon products after two years of trying to get the corporation to comply with the law, the state Ecology Department announced Thursday.

These news clips are a selection of weekday clips collected in Salish Sea News and Weather which is compiled as a community service by Mike Sato. To subscribe at no cost to the weekday news clips, send your name and email to mikesato772 at gmail.com. Your email information is never shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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Salish Sea News Week in Review June 21 2024

Aloha National Indigenous People's Day

National Aboriginal Day, now National Indigenous Peoples Day, was announced in 1996 by then Governor General of Canada, Roméo LeBlanc, through the Proclamation Declaring June 21 of Each Year as National Aboriginal Day. It is a day recognizing and celebrating the cultures and contributions of the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Indigenous peoples of Canada.

New research highlights where 'The Big One' earthquake could hit
The study confirms that the northern part of the fault, close to Vancouver Island and Washington, is most likely to produce a major earthquake. Isaac Phan Nay reports.

Railroad owes nearly $400M to WA tribe, judge rules
BNSF Railway Co. must pay the Swinomish tribe $394 million for violating the terms of an agreement that allowed the railroad to run trains across a strip of the tribe’s land in northwest Washington, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Research finds log booms harmful to B.C. salmon and fish habitats
Studies led by First Nations, conservation groups and UBC point to harm caused by storage of logs on rivers.

UVic researchers aim to regrow kelp forests
A kelp nursery in Bamfield could be growing the next Salish Sea kelp forest. Robyn Bell reports.

Metro Vancouver launches independent review of $3.86B plant
Metro Vancouver is launching an independent review of the cost of a new wastewater treatment plant that is four years beyond its original completion date and more than five times over budget.

B.C.'s 'war in the woods' grounds to be permanently protected
Old-growth forests that were environmental and Indigenous rights battlegrounds over clearcut logging in the 1980s and 1990s during British Columbia's "war in the woods" are set to receive permanent protections in a land and forest management agreement.

New bill aims to ensure permanent funding for Northwest Straits Commission
Legislation to permanently reauthorize the Northwest Straits Commission in Puget Sound was introduced by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen on June 18.

Ban on open net fish farms in B.C. delayed to 2029
The Canadian federal government says it will ban open net salmon farms in British Columbia starting in 2029 in a plan that will renew more than 60 licences across the province for another five years.

These news clips are a selection of weekday clips collected in Salish Sea News and Weather which is compiled as a community service by Mike Sato. To subscribe at no cost to the weekday news clips, send your name and email to mikesato772 at gmail.com. Your email information is never shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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Salish Sea News Week in Review June 14 2024

Aloha Cucumber Friday!

Cucumber fruits consist of 95% water. In botanical terms, the cucumber is classified as a pepo, a type of botanical berry with a hard outer rind and no internal divisions. However, much like tomatoes and squashes, it is often perceived, prepared, and eaten as a vegetable. (Wikipedia)

Court rejects bid to review minister's order to B.C. salmon farms
The Federal Court has rejected a bid by two First Nations and salmon farm operators to review Ottawa's decision to not renew licences for 15 open-net Atlantic salmon farms in the waters off British Columbia.

Rare 7-foot fish washed ashore on Oregon’s coast gets worldwide attention
A massive rare fish thought to only live in temperate waters in the southern hemisphere has washed up on Oregon’s northern coast, drawing crowds of curious onlookers intrigued by the unusual sight.

Environment Minister Guilbeault broke the law in stalling potential spotted owl emergency order: court
‘Precedent-setting decision’ finds federal ministers must act with urgency when species face imminent threats to survival or recovery.

NW coast suffers from low oxygen, study finds. It’s becoming the norm
About half of the water near the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest coast experienced low-oxygen conditions in 2021, according to a new study. And those hypoxic conditions, which are expected to become common with global warming, threaten the food web, the study found.

Oil refiners raise quality concerns over TMX pipeline shipments
U.S. oil refiners and West Coast traders are flagging concerns about the quality of crude shipped on the newly completed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX), warning that high vapour pressure and acidity limits could deter purchases of Canadian heavy barrels.

North Shore sewage plant's bombshell budget a 'crossroads' for Metro Vancouver
The $2.83 billion cost overrun at Metro Vancouver’s North Shore wastewater treatment plant project landed like a bombshell that has prompted bigger questions about how the regional district handles such big projects and even how it’s governed.

Can a tiny shorebird stop the massive expansion of a container port?
This is the story of a mud wrestle at the Fraser River delta. On one side, a government proposal for a massive expansion of a container port. On the other, a tiny bird, the sandpiper, which relies on this place as its last stopover on a migration as long as 7,000 miles.

These news clips are a selection of weekday clips collected in Salish Sea News and Weather which is compiled as a community service by Mike Sato. To subscribe at no cost to the weekday news clips, send your name and email to mikesato772 at gmail.com. Your email information is never shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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