Canada: RCMP descend on indigenous population

“The Canadian government has already destroyed the scientific research archives on Fisheries. The Canadian Minister of Fisheries has ignored the advice of her own scientists and now they are opposing native communities all in the interest of supporting commercial fishing interests. 

Gail Shea the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is committing crimes against nature and humanity with her ignorance of ecological reality and her arrogance in wielding power unrestricted by reason or compassion. 

The native communities of British Columbia are the only guardians left to defend the fish from greed and destruction and Harper's government is intent upon crushing their spirit and their opposition.”

Capt. Paul Watson, via Facebook

RCMP descend on native community on central coast of British Columbia in herring fishery conflict

Vancouver Sun,

30 March, 2014

The federal government has chosen a remote stretch of B.C. coastline to square off against aboriginals in a fight over an imminent commercial roe-herring fishery.

Federal fisheries minister Gail Shea is being blamed for an escalating conflict over a forthcoming commercial gillnet fishery that has resulted in RCMP descending on B.C.’s central coast to guard against potential interference by Heiltsuk natives.

The Heiltsuk have issued a statement saying, “We will exercise our authority to stop any commercial herring activity in our territories. We will protect our aboriginal rights to the fullest extent possible should commercial fishers not abide by the ban.”

In an interview Thursday, Heiltsuk councillor Reg Moody said he appreciates that the police have a job to do and that no one wants to see anyone get hurt. But natives are also committed to protecting herring stocks in their traditional waters.

“It’s real,” he said of the prospect for confrontation. “If a gillnetter is going to put his net in the water, it’s gonna be easy for me to drop a tree in the water in its place. We could make it difficult ... put trees in the areas where they plan to fish.”

Moody placed the responsibility for events squarely on the minister’s shoulders. “Our position has always been that we’re not unreasonable, but there has to be some fundamental changes made. It could have been avoided. We could work collectively.”

Shea, a P.E.I. MP, declined The Vancouver Sun’s request for an interview.

Federal fisheries spokesman Tom Robbins insisted that “the herring fishery is a legitimate fishery backed by solid fisheries science” and aboriginals have been consulted.

“We stand strongly against violence on the water,” Robbins said. “The department is monitoring the situation and will take appropriate enforcement action if there are any Fisheries Act violations.”

There are 50 participants licensed to fish for roe in the central coast gillnet fishery, he added. Due to pooling up, only about 20 vessels, including punts and packers, are expected to participate.

Ian McAllister of the environmental group Pacific Wild estimated more than 20 RCMP and up to six patrol vessels are now based in Shearwater on Denny Island near Bella Bella. “If you add up the daily police presence, overtime, boat fuel, planes going back and forth, it’s just ridiculous.”

RCMP Cpl. Dave Tireman would not confirm how many police are in the Bella Bella due to “operational reasons,” but noted police are there to keep the peace.

“We’re sitting in the back row of the bus,” he said. “We have to remain neutral. We’re there to make sure everything is safe and everything is peaceful.”

Three aboriginal groups along the B.C. coast have protested commercial herring-roe fisheries this season.

The Nuu-chah-nulth obtained a federal court injunction Feb. 21 blocking a commercial fishery on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The decision came after an internal memo revealed Shea overruled recommendations of scientists in her own department. Shea recommended opening the fishery in three disputed areas and in a hand-printed note alongside her signature wrote, “The minister agrees to an opening at a conservative 10-per-cent harvest rate for the 2014 fishing season.”

For every region on the coast, a “commercial cutoff” is established based on the health of herring stocks in that region. When stocks exceed the cutoff, commercial fishing is allowed at rates as high as 20 per cent of the biomass.

The Heiltsuk are asking the minister to add an 18,000-tonne “cushion” to that cutoff to help ensure sufficient stocks for aboriginals.

Natives plan to proceed with a 108-tonne spawn-on-kelp fishery this year on the central coast. Said McAllister: “It is a truly sustainable alternative to the industrial model that has killed herring stocks across the province.”

The federal government is appealing the federal court decision in the Nuu-chah-nulth case.

The Herring Industry Advisory Board supports the minister’s decision to allow the openings, but announced in a news release March 17 that the fishing industry, federal government and Haida had reached an agreement to forego both a commercial fishery and an aboriginal spawn-on-kelp fishery. “It was deemed more appropriate to stand down for this year to limit conflict with the Haida and work toward ensuring the science is good for next year,” said board chair Greg Thomas.

He noted that herring stocks are “near historic highs” in the Strait of Georgia, with seiners catching just over 6,800 tonnes and gillnetters just over 5,400 tonnes this season. That may help to explain the presence of herring spawning locally, including Boundary Bay, where they have reportedly not been seen in years.

A coast-wide herring harvest was set at 30,932 tonnes this year for all types of fisheries, including 9,829 tonnes for commercial seine boats, 8,865 tonnes for commercial gillnetters, and 3,383 tonnes for two spawn-on-kelp categories.

The roe-herring fishery had an allocation of 17,871 tonnes in 2014, compared with 13,703 tonnes in 2013, 11,793 tonnes in 2012, and 14,375 tonnes in 2011.

Pacific eco collapse

West Coast sardine crash could radiate throughout ecosystem

If sardine populations don't recover soon, experts warn, the West Coast's marine mammals, seabirds and fishermen could suffer for years

LA Times,

6 January, 2014

The sardine fishing boat Eileen motored slowly through moonlit waters from San Pedro to Santa Catalina Island, its weary-eyed captain growing more desperate as the night wore on. After 12 hours and $1,000 worth of fuel, Corbin Hanson and his crew returned to port without a single fish.

"Tonight's pretty reflective of how things have been going," Hanson said. "Not very well."

To blame is the biggest sardine crash in generations, which has made schools of the small, silvery fish a rarity on the West Coast. The decline has prompted steep cuts in the amount fishermen are allowed to catch, and scientists say the effects are probably radiating throughout the ecosystem, starving brown pelicans, sea lions and other predators that rely on the oily, energy-rich fish for food.

If sardines don't recover soon, experts warn, the West Coast's marine mammals, seabirds and fishermen could suffer for years.

The reason for the drop is unclear. Sardine populations are famously volatile, but the decline is the steepest since the collapse of the sardine fishery in the mid-20th century. And their numbers are projected to keep sliding.

One factor is a naturally occurring climate cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which in recent years has brought cold, nutrient-rich water to the West Coast. While those conditions have brought a boom in some species, such as market squid, they have repelled sardines.

If nature is responsible for the decline, history shows the fish will bounce back when ocean conditions improve. But without a full understanding of the causes, the crash is raising alarm.

An assessment last fall found the population had dropped 72% since its last peak in 2006. Spawning has taken a dive too.

In November, federal fishery managers slashed harvest limits by more than two-thirds, but some environmental groups have argued the catch should be halted outright.

"We shouldn't be harvesting sardines any time the population is this low," said Geoff Shester, California program director for the conservation group Oceana, which contends that continuing to fish for them could speed their decline and arrest any recovery.

The Pacific sardine is the ocean's quintessential boom-bust fish. It is short-lived and prolific, and its numbers are wildly unpredictable, surging up and down in decades-long cycles in response to natural shifts in the ocean environment. When conditions are poor, sardine populations plunge. When seas are favorable, they flourish in massive schools.

It was one of those seemingly inexhaustible swells that propelled California's sardine fishery to a zenith in the 1940s. Aggressive pursuit of the species transformed Monterey into one of the world's top fishing ports.

And then it collapsed.

By mid-century sardines had practically vanished, and in the 1960s California established a moratorium on sardine fishing that lasted 18 years. The population rebounded in the 1980s and fishing resumed, but never at the level of its heyday.

Since the 1940s scientists have debated how much of the collapse was caused by ocean conditions and how much by overfishing. Now, researchers are posing the same question.

"It's a terribly difficult scientific problem," said Russ Vetter, director of the Fisheries Resources Division at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

Separate sardine populations off Japan, Peru and Chile fluctuate in the same 50- to 70-year climate cycle but have been more heavily exploited, Vetter said. West Coast sardines are considered one of the most cautiously fished stocks in the world, a practice that could explain why their latest rebound lasted as long as it did. The West Coast's last sardine decline began in 1999, but the population shot back up by the mid-2000s.

In recent years scientists have gained a deeper understanding of sardines' value as "forage fish," small but nutrition-packed species such as herring and market squid that form the core of the ocean food web, funneling energy upward by eating tiny plankton and being preyed on by big fish, seabirds, seals and whales.

Now, they say, there is evidence some ocean predators are starving without sardines. Scarcity of prey is the leading theory behind the 1,600 malnourished sea lion pups that washed up along beaches from Santa Barbara to San Diego in early 2013, said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Melin's research indicates that nursing sea lion mothers could not find fatty sardines, so they fed on less nutritious market squid, rockfish and hake and produced less milk for their young in 2012. The following year their pups showed up on the coast in overwhelming numbers, stranded and emaciated.

"We are likely to see more local events like this if sardines disappear or redistribute along the coast and into deeper water," said Selina Heppell, a fisheries ecologist at Oregon State University.

Biologists also suspect the drop is hurting brown pelicans that breed on California's northern Channel Islands. The seabirds, which scoop up sardines close to the ocean surface, have shown signs of starvation and have largely failed to breed or rear chicks there since 2010.

Brown pelicans were listed as endangered in 1970 after they were pushed nearly to extinction by DDT, which thinned their eggshells. They were taken off the list in 2009 and now number about 150,000 along the West Coast.

Though pelicans have had more success recently in Mexico, where about 90% of the population breeds, environmental groups think the lack of food at the northern end of their range could threaten the species' recovery.

Normally, pelicans and sea lions would adapt by instead gobbling up anchovies. But aside from an unusual boom in Monterey Bay, anchovy numbers are depressed too.

"That does not bode well for everything in the ocean that relies on sardines to get big and fat and healthy," said Steve Marx, policy analyst for the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit that advocates for ecosystem-based management of fisheries.

Fishermen also attest to the scarcity.

The West Coast sardine catch oscillates with the market and was valued at about $14.5 million in 2013, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. But California fishermen pulled in just $1.5 million worth of sardines last year, preliminary data from state Department of Fish and Wildlife show.

Just a few years ago, Hanson, the sardine captain, didn't have to travel far from port to pull in nets bulging with sardines.

Not anymore. If his crew catches sardines these days, they are larger, older fish that are mostly shipped overseas and ground up for pet or fish food. Largely absent are the small and valuable young fish that can be sold for bait or canned and eaten.

Still, when he embarked for Catalina Island on a December evening, Hanson tried to stay optimistic. "We're going to get a lot of fish tonight," he told a fellow sardine boat over the radio.

After hours of cruising the island's shallow waters, the voice of another boat captain lamented over the radio, "I haven't seen a scratch." So the Eileen and other boats made an about-face for the Orange County coast, hoping to net sardines in their usual hideouts.

No such luck.

By daybreak, Hanson was piloting the hulking boat back to the docks with nothing in its holds.

Fukushima fish

Gone Fission: Fish caught near Fukushima may swim in food chain

Japan's seafood industry says it's blighted by contaminated catches - nearly three years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster polluted surrounding land and waterways. They can't convince customers their fish is safe - even though the authorities insist they're doing their level best to show they've got a grip on the problem. Alexey Yaroshevsky reports.

Canada - Radioactive contamination

Cancer risk linked to radiation levels in fish species after Fukushima

Straight.com,

2 October, 2013

TWO-AND-A-HALF YEARS AFTER Fukushima, many fish species still have highly elevated amounts of radioactive cesium from the stricken plant, including species that Japan exports to Canada, according to the Japanese Fisheries Agency’s tests on fish catches.

And Japanese fish and seafood exports to Canada have grown significantly since Fukushima, with $24 million in exports in 2012, up 20 percent from $20 million in 2010, according to Statistics Canada data.

In July this year, a sea bass caught in Japan had 1,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium—10 times Japan’s ceiling of 100 becquerels per kilo in food. It was the second-highest amount found in a sea bass since the disaster occurred.

And in February, a greenling in the harbour of the Fukushima plant had a record 740,000 becquerels per kilo of cesium—7,400 times Japan’s ceiling. Two in five fish tested in July had detectable levels of cesium 134 or cesium 137, radioactive isotopes released from Fukushima.

On average, fish in the 33,000 tests since March 2011 had 18 becquerels per kilo of cesium. In March and April 2011, fish also had 65 becquerels per kilo of iodine 131. (The Straight didn’t count in these averages any fish caught in Fukushima prefecture, where most species are banned from the market.)

Fish caught far out in the Pacific had an average of two becquerels of cesium per kilo.

The Straight used these levels to determine how much radiation the public has been exposed to in Japan and elsewhere, based on fishery data from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

The average radiation levels are below Japan’s ceiling and Health Canada’s much higher ceiling of 1,000 becquerels per kilo for cesium and iodine 131.

But the radiation detected can still cause cancer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s cancer-risk formula, a leading international standard for forecasting cancer risks from radiation. The

What’s more, the EPA formula underestimates cancer impacts because it doesn’t fully include all research on radiation impacts, in the estimate of Daniel Hirsch, a UC Santa Cruz nuclear expert.

(Also according to Hirsch, Health Canada uses a less accepted cancer-risk formula that underestimates the dangers even more.)

Hirsch helped preside over a study of nuclear-power workers in the 1990s that found cancer rates at least six to eight times higher than predicted by official formulas.

Important! Canadian Fukushima Radiation Updates

By Susan Duclos

Beforeitsnews,

24 October, 2013

California is pleading for acknowledgment about the radiation hammering the West Coast from the massive pouring of radioactive water into the Pacific and the radiation leak at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant from the 2011 earthquake and tsuani.

Hawaii has reportedly gone radioactive.

Alaska is concerned about one of their most valuable resources, Salmon.

The video below is from yet another geographical area, Canada updates on the Fukushima radiation damage, with a synopsis.

Maybe nothing can be done about the global devastation that will affect nearly every man woman and child in the world, in some way or another. Whether it is a family member or friend getting sick, or someone they know or love affected by the sea life damage, or the ecosystem damage as we have already seen that starfish are turning to goo, everything is connected somehow in nature and whether something can be done or not, isn’t the point.

Our health, our economy, our food and so much more will continue to be affected for decades.

No one is highlighting it more than a story here, a story there, without looking at the big picture.

People across the world have the right know all the facts, whether it can be fixed or not and governments are downplaying those facts and the media is complicit by following along like good little puppies.

It is noteworthy that things may be about to get worse very soon as Fukushima is readying to remove 400 tons of spent fuel.

“The operation to begin removing fuel from such a severely damaged pool has never been attempted before. The rods are unwieldy and very heavy, each one weighing two-thirds of a ton,” fallout researcher Christina Consolo earlier told RT. 

As can be seen by the top comment from the video, shown below, this man is providing information people are desperate for, but no one else is offering.

GOBLIN7770 17 hours ago

The way I see it is! we are living on borrowed time at best 5 years.Then it will be hell on earth.I feel for the children.The horror that they will see. BeautifulGirlByDana I salute you bud for trying to warn people.You Sir are a great help putting this info out.So people can prepare.I hope this will not be your last vid.Chin up bud

Radiation in Pacific fish

Report raises fresh concerns about radiation levels in Japanese fish

Canada am,

7 October, 2013

Two and a half years after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan, concerns are again being raised about radiation levels in fish caught in the Pacific Ocean.

A report by the Vancouver weekly newspaper, The Georgia Straight, suggests at least 800 people worldwide could develop cancer from eating fish caught in Japan's waters – and about half of those cases will be fatal.

About 500 of the cancers will occur in Japan, while 75 will be due to Japanese fish exports to other countries, including Canada, the newspaper estimates. It also quotes several nuclear experts who say that estimate is likely conservative and the real toll could be closer to 80,000 cancers.

South Korea bans fish caught off parts of Japan due to radiation fears

Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant leaks: What you need to know

Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, notes that the estimate is based only on the fish that has been eaten up to now.

"People are going to continue to consume these fish and the toll could rise higher," he told CTV's Canada AM Monday from Montreal.

Radiation in fish in the waters off Japan has been a major issue of concern for many since March 2011, when an earthquake destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, sending tons of highly radioactive water into the ocean. The radioactive elements in the water could take decades to degrade, affecting several generations of fish.

The Japanese Fisheries Agency has been testing the radiation in fish caught in its waters since March 2011. On average, fish in the 33,000 tests had 18 becquerels per kilo of radioactive cesium – well below Health Canada’s ceiling of 1,000 becquerels per kilo for cesium and even Japan's ceiling of 100 becquerels.

But even those radiation levels can still cause cancer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s cancer-risk formula.

And Edwards says Health Canada's own cesium limits are more of a guideline than a clear safety limit.

"It has to be recognized that even Health Canada acknowledges that even those levels correspond to an increased cancer risk of eight cancers per 1,000 people exposed over a 70-year period. So these are not safe levels, even by Health Canada's own standards," he said.

Some fish samples tested to date have had very high levels of radiation: one sea bass sample collected in July, for example, had 1,000 becquerels per kilogram of cesium.

While Canadians are exposed to radiation every day from the sun and the environment, Edwards notes that radioactive cesium doesn't exist in nature at all and it's not known if there is any safe level.

"The background level is zero. So this is all comes from the Fukushima disaster," he said of the fish.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency tested fish exports from Japan for several months, but dropped the testing in June 2011, just three months after the disaster.

Edwards says he does not understand why the CFIA is not taking the issue more seriously.

"Canadian authorities are really doing us all a disservice by not following and monitoring this much more closely. They're treating it as though it's a kind of ho-hum situation, but in fact, it was a major event worldwide," he said.

"And it should be studied very more carefully because that's the only way we're going to learn what the effects of this may be for the future."

To watch broadcast GO HERE

Alarming discovery

Bleeding herring discovery alarms B.C. marine biologist

Scores of bloodied fish found in the water off northeastern Vancouver Island are alarming a B.C. marine biologist, who says Fisheries and Oceans Canada is ignoring the problem.

24 hrs Vancouver,

11 August, 2013

Vancouver Island marine biologist Alexandra Morton first spotted herrings bleeding from their dorsal and pelvic fins in 2011 and began monitoring the phenomenon, which she suspects is a disease or viral infection.

Using a seine net, she dragged up several hundred of the fish this past weekend and found the apparent infection had spread —instead of their usual silver colour the fish had eyes, tails, underbellies, gills and faces plastered with the sickly red colour.

“I have never seen fish that looked this bad,” Morton told 24 hours Sunday. “If you look only in one place, you really can’t say whether it’s happening along the whole coast … the concern is these are migratory fish. They don’t stay in one place.”

In June, the affected fish were only found in eastern Johnstone Strait, but have since spread to Alert Bay and Sointula, she said. Humpback whales, eagles, chinook and coho salmon are known to eat Pacific herring, further adding to the risk should the infection be contagious.

Morton has several theories, including three European-based viruses she’ll be personally testing the fish for. Another theory is it’s caused by the local viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus — a deadly disease transferable between different species.

According to emails from FOC, the federal authority had asked the marine biologist to send in 20 to 30 herring in September 2011, saying that would be “more than sufficient for the lab to look for clinical signs of disease and provide sufficient diagnostics.”

She did, and hasn’t heard back since.

“These are very strong disease symptoms that I’m simply asking (the ministry) to tell us, in a verifiable way, what is wrong with these fish?” Morton said, adding the answer could be found using an existing test that examines the immune systems of fish.

FOC officials did not respond to a request for comment by the 24 hours presstime.

Japan

Typhoon Guchol is forecast to strike Japan at about 18:00 GMT on 19 June – cutting a path through the heart of Tokyo

Extinction Protocol,

15 June, 2012

June 15, 2012 – JAPAN – Typhoon Guchol is forecast to strike Japan at about 18:00 GMT on 19 June. Data supplied by the US Navy and Air Force Joint Typhoon Warning Center suggest that the point of land fall will benear34.0 N,137.1 E. Guchol is expected to bring 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around120 km/h (74 mph).Wind gusts in the area may be considerably higher. There is also the potential for flooding further inland due to heavy rain. This is an extremely dangerous storm and people in low-lying areas or regions at risk should heed all emergency bulletins.  –Alert Net

10 thousand sardines found dead in South Kanagawa

Fukushima Diary,

15 June 2012

Following up this article..

A few tens of tones sardines washed up on fishing port in Chiba

10 thousand sardines were found dead on the beach in Minami shitaura machi Miura city Kanagawa as well.

Public Interest Incorporated Foundation staff reported it to the city government around at 15:00 6/14/2012.

Probably it’s been a few days since they were washed up.

From the result of simple water quality testing, nothing abnormal was found. Prefectural government is going to investigate more.

Staff talks there is a possibility that the sardines were chased after large predators from offshore, but a farmer near this area talks he hasn’t seen such a thing before.

Radioactive Tuna

Radioactive tuna crosses Pacific to US

Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan's crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 9600 kilometres away - the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.

 

AP RADIOACTIVE FISH: A file photo shows of bluefin tuna caught near Ensenada, Mexico. New research has found increased levels of radiation in Pacific bluefin tuna caught off the coast of California. Scientists believe the radiation found in the fish came from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant that was crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Stuff,

29 May, 2012

"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online overnight (NZ time) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the US and Japanese governments.

Previously, smaller fish and plankton were found with elevated levels of radiation in Japanese waters after a magnitude-9 earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that badly damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.

But scientists did not expect the nuclear fallout to linger in huge fish that sail the world because such fish can metabolise and shed radioactive substances.

One of the largest and speediest fish, Pacific bluefin tuna can grow to three metres and weigh more than 450 kilograms. They spawn off the Japan coast and swim east at breakneck speed to school in waters off California and the tip of Baja California, Mexico.

Five months after the Fukushima disaster, Fisher of Stony Brook University in New York and a team decided to test Pacific bluefin that were caught off the coast of San Diego. To their surprise, tissue samples from all 15 tuna captured contained levels of two radioactive substances - ceisum-134 and cesium-137 - that were higher than in previous catches.

To rule out the possibility that the radiation was carried by ocean currents or deposited in the sea through the atmosphere, the team also analysed yellowfin tuna, found in the eastern Pacific, and bluefin that migrated to Southern California before the nuclear crisis. They found no trace of cesium-134 and only background levels of cesium-137 left over from nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s.

The results "are unequivocal. Fukushima was the source," said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who had no role in the research.

Bluefin tuna absorbed radioactive cesium from swimming in contaminated waters and feeding on contaminated prey such as krill and squid, the scientists said. As the predators made the journey east, they shed some of the radiation through metabolism and as they grew larger. Even so, they weren't able to completely flush out all the contamination from their system.

"That's a big ocean. To swim across it and still retain these radionuclides is pretty amazing," Fisher said.

Pacific bluefin tuna are prized in Japan where a thin slice of the tender red meat prepared as sushi can fetch US$24 per piece at top Tokyo restaurants. Japanese consume 80 per cent of the world's Pacific and Atlantic bluefin tuna.

The real test of how radioactivity affects tuna populations comes this summer when researchers planned to repeat the study with a larger number of samples. Bluefin tuna that journeyed last year were exposed to radiation for about a month. The upcoming travelers have been swimming in radioactive waters for a longer period. How this will affect concentrations of contamination remains to be seen.

Now that scientists know that bluefin tuna can transport radiation, they also want to track the movements of other migratory species including sea turtles, sharks and seabirds.