Orcasphere

Fulbright talk on marine conservation in the Pacific Northwest

scottveirs — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:07:14 +0000

Notes from an annual lecture at the University of Washington, March 3, 2010, at 7pm: “Marine conservation in the Pacific Northwest: Whales, Salmon, and Sound” by Rob Williams, 2009-2010 Canada-US Fulbright Visiting Chair “A scientist is someone who asks ‘what if’ questions.” — Margaret Atwood “If you want to study whales, you should put yourself in path of the [...]

Good news for wild orcas, captive orca in distress

LindsayR — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:14:06 +0000

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/02/24/GA2010022405140.html http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2010/feb/23/new-calf-spotted-l-pod/

Humans and salmon compete for CA water

scottveirs — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:51:24 +0000

Feinstein’s Water Bomb (Feb 12 article in the High Country News) indicates that things are really starting to heat up in California. Water stress is manifesting in political lobbying and reversals that may jeopardize the Sacramento River salmon that K and L pod presumably pursue each winter. Up here in the Northwest the water competition [...]

State of the Sound by Bill Ruckelshaus

scottveirs — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:12:03 +0000

Sound Waters 2010 meeting, Coupeville, WA It is possible to make progess! We’ve largely brought point-sources under social control. 40 years ago, 85% of pollution was from big industrial or municipal sources, while 15% was from non-point sources. Now the percentages are reversed. The Clean Air Act helped. Think of the people in Denver that can see [...]

Stormwater, salmon, and the health of Puget Sound

scottveirs — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:55:23 +0000

Keynote speaker at Sound Waters 2010 Dr. Nathaniel ‘Nat’ Scholtz, NOAA/NWFSC Coho salmon are our first choice for a ’sentinel species’ because they: are widely distributed inhabit lowland steams that are important and familiar to humans and areas impacted directly by stormwater runoff (if we can reduce toxics in lowland streams, then we’ll likely keep them out of the [...]

New Tacoma ship terminal & tidal energy permits

scottveirs — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:29:16 +0000

Puget Sound Harbor Safety Committee meeting notes Feb. 3., 2010, 10-12 a.m., South Federal Building New container ship terminal in Tacoma (SSA Marine presention) Puyallup Tribal Terminal 3-4 berths (~850′ spacing, 51′ deep) 200 acres About the scale of Terminal 18 Market demand is too low to proceed Permits should be in place in ~1 year Construction will take at least 2 years Port has [...]

Safina on orcas in LA Times

scottveirs — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:03:04 +0000

Save the salmon — and us Above is a link a nice Op-Ed piece by Carl Safina. Below is my response, submitted today to the L.A. Times. In his 1/24/10 opinion “Save the salmon — and us,” Safina points [...]

Harmful algae & Fraser sockeye – liveblog

scottveirs — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:16:54 +0000

Dr. Jack Rensel, Rensel Associates Aquatic Sciences (works with Puget Sound fish farmers on permitting/etc., but not BC farmers) Harmful Algal Blooms and Possible Effects on Fraser River Sockeye Salmon 11:04 Intro Much of this talk is based on co-author Nicola Haigh’s 10-year sockeye database. Target algae of interest: Heterosigma akashiwo, HAMP database 11:06 Background Heterosigma is a microflagellate that kills [...]

Orca refuge: a gift for endangered killer whales

scottveirs — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:42:51 +0000

This Friday, January 15, 2010, is the deadline for public comment on the proposed orca conservation area along the west side of San Juan Island. All marine conservationists should consider commenting on these precedent-setting rules: comment via email | comment via web form. (Official background and the PDF of proposed rule are on the [...]

New tools for orca sound annotation

scottveirs — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:19:27 +0000

Here’s a glimpse into the future of killer whale sound archives. Steven Ness and collaborators at the University of Victoria have created the Orchive — a suite of open-source, web-based tools for listening to and annotating the recordings of northern resident orcas made by Paul and Helena Spong at OrcaLab. Using Ruby on [...]