Fl. dead oysters

[ensho]

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php


State scientists will head to the Florida Panhandle this week to check on East Bay oyster beds where oystermen are reporting a die-off. Oyster season opened Oct. 1. Oystermen have reported pulling up dead oysters from beds that had been filled with large, healthy oysters at the end of the last harvest season on June 30. "We're finding very few alive," Pasco Gibson, a main supplier of the East Bay oysters, told the Pensacola News Journal. "This time of the year, we should be catching 500 to 1,000 pounds per boat a day. We're not even catching a hundred pounds." Gibson's six oyster boats are mostly idle, and some of his freelance oystermen are heading to Apalachicola to look for work. He said the meager harvests have cost him 40 percent of his income. Depending on what's killing the oysters, once they start growing back, it could take up to three years to grow them large enough to harvest, he said. "Something happened in August, and it had
to be massive because some of these beds are 10 miles apart," Gibson said of the beds scattered near the shorelines of East Bay. Scientists from the Department of Agriculture's Division of Aquaculture will check the oyster beds this week. Oyster die-offs are not unusual, said Leslie Palmer, director of the Aquaculture Division in Tallahassee.

A variety of causes could potentially be responsible, including drought, extreme heat, warmer-than-normal water temperatures, or high salinity and low oxygen in the water, she said. Diseases and parasites also can wipe out an oyster bed. Storm water runoff from Tropical Storm Lee, which hit the area Labor Day weekend, could have pushed silt over the beds, smothering the oysters, said Robert Turpin, Escambia County's marine resources manager. "That could be easily confirmed by jumping into the water and checking out the beds to see if it is silt or something else," he said. Palmer and Turpin hesitated to blame the die-off on the 2010 BP oil spill. The massive oil slick washed up on Pensacola's beaches, and pockets of submerged oil remain in Pensacola Pass. BP's Florida District spokesman Craig Savage said the oil company is working with state and federal agencies, as part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process, to collect hundreds of field observations and thousands of oyster samples with a goal of further understanding all the potential factors that can affect oyster production. "These results will help to guide the agencies and public in order to make informed decisions for future oyster management," he said. "We understand from federal, state, and academic scientists and fisheries experts that many factors can affect the population of oysters, which are independent of any potential impacts related to the Deepwater Horizon accident."
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not good

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[CountAllVotes]

2. BP Kills

BP = the gift that keeps on giving! :mad:

:kick:

[Hotler]

3. k&r n/t

[AikidoSoul]

4. And Florida DEP is working hard to devaste more of Florida's water by socializing more polltion from

big corporate polluters who operate here.

This is a letter from my good friend who is director of the Clean Water Network of Florida. An opportunity for us all to make our voices heard.

AS
********************

From: Linda Young
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2011 6:27 PM
To: Linda Young; brynna Hoggard
Subject: Weekly update 10-27-11

Dear Friends of Florida waters:

Here is a short update today to let you know that our comment letters (3 of them) on the proposed Numeric Nutrient Criteria was sent to the members of the Environmental Regulation Commission (ERC) this week with approximately 100 groups, businesses and individual citizens signed on to it. Thank you to everyone who signed on to our comments and/or sent your own emails and letters to Eric Shaw at DEP.

The ERC will get a briefing from DEP next week on Thursday regarding the state’s proposed nutrient criteria. On December 1st the ERC is scheduled to vote on the criteria. We have more than a month to keep gathering support and letting the ERC, the Legislature and the general public know why they should be concerned about the state proposal. As stated in our comment letters, if the state wants to make the federal numeric nutrient rule better there are a couple of fairly simple things that could be done. I am enclosing the most recent comment letter in case you want to refresh your memory - - OR sign on. No it is not too late. I will continue to update the sign-ons right up until the December 1st meeting.

I promised to send a new opportunity for you to help with this campaign every week until December 1st, so here is what I would like for you to do next. Please forward our comment letter to your state representative and your state senator with a short note to let them know you are disappointed in the state’s proposed nutrient criteria rule. Use your own words or say something along these lines:

Dear Representative _________:

I am writing to ask for your help. Florida’s waters are sick and some are actually dying from too many nutrients (nitrogen and/or phosphorus). I’m sure that you are aware of this problem, as it has been getting worse for several decades. Recently the US EPA adopted a new regulation that purports to address this issue. Now the state of Florida is proposing its own new regulations that may supersede the federal rule. Unfortunately, neither version will substantially reduce the nutrient loading into our springs, lakes, rivers and estuaries. They are written to protect polluters and to avoid needed changes.

There is one major thing that the Florida DEP could do to make the state rule better than the federal rule, and I am asking for you to consider supporting this major improvement. Both the state and federal rules will never apply at the end of a discharge pipe, whether it comes from a large industry, a sewage plant, a stormwater pipe or an agricultural activity (crops, dairies, etc.). The pollution limits will only be applied when samples are taken throughout a whole year, across a large spatial distance (river, lake, estuary) and then an annual geometric mean will be calculated from all of the samples. The rules say that its fine for the waterbody to exceed the limit for one year but after two years, then the federal rule calls for a deeper look. The state rule doesn’t even consider two years of violations a problem until the DEP determines that the biological health of the waterbody has deteriorated to a dysfunctional level. With both rules, there are then numerous ways for the limits to be ignored, changed or delayed.

We are asking that the state rule be rewritten to apply at the end of all NPDES permitted discharge pipes except for municipal stormwater discharges. This also would not include agriculture, which is exempted by federal and Florida laws. If every other nutrient discharger were required to meet Advanced Wastewater Treatment (AWT) criteria for nutrients at then end of their discharge pipe, then we would start to see improvements in our waters that contain too many nutrients. If the nutrient limits are not applied at the end of the discharge pipes, then we are essentially giving every nutrient discharger an automatic mixing zone that extends the entire length of the designated spatial area, which can and usually will cover many miles of water.

Also, there are many local governments that are implementing projects to reduce stormwater impacts to our waters. If we allow industrial polluters to use our waters for unlimited mixing zones, then many stormwater improvement projects will be for naught. At some point citizens are going to ask their local governments, “why should we spend money to clean up our pollution when the papermill/phosphate plant/chemical plant/electric power plant (pick one or more) up the river from us doesn’t have to do anything?”

Thank you in advance for considering my concerns and I look forward to hearing from you and learning about your position on this important issue for Florida.

YOUR NAME, ADDRESS, ETC.

_________________________

When you send your letters to your state legislators, please send a copy to me as well. Your help with this is extremely important and they need to hear from you. Legislative committees are getting briefed and their opinions will be solidified soon, so let them hear from you ASAP!!! Thank you again for being a part of this effort. It is only through everyone’s participation that we will succeed in getting better protection for our waters.

For all of Florida’s waters,
Linda Young
Director

CLEAN WATER NETWORK of FLORIDA
Post Office Box 5124, Navarre, Florida 32566
Phone: [phone]
[e-mail]
www.cleanwaternetwork.fl.org

[watercolors]

5. We had an abnormally hot summer, waters very warm!

[AikidoSoul]

6. There were many factors. Sea creatures are being exposed to toxic petrochemicals

and the heat is another stressor that pushes them closer to death. They may be able to survive one, but not two stressors. Of course it's impossible to know for sure. What we do know for sure is that pollution is another socialized cost. :( BP and other polluters pass on environmental damage to taxpayers. They pay for some of it, but not... no never do they pay for the full cost. Our oceans, our streams, our ponds, our aquifer, our air, ours and our children's bodies. We are all simply waste disposal plants for the contamination.

[Uncle Joe]

7. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, ensho.

[L0oniX]

8. Bull (BP) in the china room ...but look at everything else first. Stupid fuckers!