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Alaska: Largest Chinook salmon disappearing from West Coast - The largest and oldest Chinook salmon - fish also known as “kings” and prized for their exceptional size — have mostly disappeared along the West Coast.

That’s the main finding of a new University of Washington-led study published Feb. 27 in the Journal Fish and Fisheries. The researchers analyzed nearly 40 years of data from hatchery and wild Chinook populations from California to Alaska, looking broadly at patterns that emerged over the course of four decades and across thousands of miles of coastline. In general, Chinook salmon populations from Alaska showed the biggest reductions in age and size, with Washington salmon a close second.

“Chinook are known for being the largest Pacific salmon and they are highly valued because they are so large,” said lead author Jan Ohlberger, a research scientist in the UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “The largest fish are disappearing, and that affects subsistence and recreational fisheries that target these individuals.”

Chinook salmon are born in freshwater rivers and streams, then migrate to the ocean where they spend most of their lives feeding and growing to their spectacular body size. Each population’s lifestyle in the ocean varies, mainly depending on where they can find food. California Chinook salmon tend to stay in the marine waters off the coast, while Oregon and Washington fish often migrate thousands of miles northward along the west coast to the Gulf of Alaska where they feed. Western Alaska populations tend to travel to the Bering Sea.

After one to five years in the ocean, the fish return to their home streams, where they spawn and then die.

Despite these differences in life history, most populations analyzed saw a clear reduction in the average size of the returning fish over the last four decades — up to 10 percent shorter in length, in the most extreme cases.

These broad similarities point to a cause that transcends regional fishing practices, ecosystems, or animal behaviors, the authors said. - More...
Friday PM - March 03, 2018

Alaska: Alaska reconfirms that election was unsuccessfully targeted in a Russian Cyber Scan in 2016 - In response to a NBC TV story that Russia ‘compromised’ seven states prior to 2016 election, Alaska Division of Elections Director Josie Bahnke said, “In September 2017, representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officially informed our division that Russian cyber actors made a failed attempt to access the division’s public information website prior to the 2016 General Election."

Bahnke said, “At that time, DHS officials stated that Alaska was one of 21 states that possibly were the target of an unsuccessful Russian-affiliated cyber incident in October 2016. We have not received any additional information from the federal government to dispute this statement."

“DHS reported, and we confirmed, that Russian actors scanned our public information website in 2016.  The division immediately informed the public of the issue in a press release on September 22, 2017," said Bahnke.

In the 09/17 press release, the division said internet security protocols followed by the State of Alaska successfully protected the election system and the attempted probe had no effect on Alaska’s Voter Registration and Election Management Database or outcome of the election. - More...
Friday PM - March 03, 2018

Alaska: Alaskans try to combat death by marine toxins By PAULA DOBBYN - Mass mortality of seabirds. Marine mammal deaths. Alaskans sickened by shellfish. What’s the common theme? Seawater contaminated by toxic algae. Call it death by phytoplankton.

A group of Alaskans - including state officials, tribes, nonprofit organizations and researchers - have recently come together to try to combat these marine toxins. The goal is to keep Alaskans who collect and eat shellfish from the beach as safe as possible with up-to-date information.

Given Alaska’s sweeping coastline - nearly 34,000 miles - that’s a tall order. But members of the newly formed Alaska Harmful Algal Bloom Network hope that through information sharing and technology, they can make a dent.

The job of keeping Alaskans safe from toxic shellfish starts with phytoplankton, tiny algae found in fresh and salt water. Scientists consider phytoplankton the building blocks of the aquatic food web. But phytoplankton can become deadly if sunlight, water temperature and ocean nutrients line up in a certain way. In those cases, phytoplankton rapidly multiply, or “bloom,” and may become poisonous, creating a toxic soup that can spread for miles. Animals that ingest the soup can become sick or die, or they can hold onto a toxin for years. When humans eat an animal that contains a toxin, they can develop symptoms of paralytic shellfish poisoning, a notorious illness that can be fatal.

Some of these naturally occurring toxins can be more powerful than cyanide.

These poisonous stretches of water are called “harmful algal blooms.” They are becoming more common and showing up in parts of Alaska where they were never prevalent before, a trend scientists say may be associated with climate change.

“It seems to bloom more often in warmer water. The jury is still out but all indications are that with warmer waters in Alaska, we are likely to see more harmful algal bloom events,” said Ginny Eckert, a University of Alaska Fairbanks professor.

A public health threat

Shellfish harvesting is common in Alaska. Many people do it for fun and food. Others harvest for cultural reasons. With much of the state’s population living along the coast, harmful algal blooms pose a serious and growing health threat.

“People have become scared and some have quit harvesting,” said Kim Wickman.

Wickman coordinates environmental work for the Wrangell Cooperative Association, a federally recognized tribe in Southeast Alaska’s Inside Passage. Wickman monitors the water and shellfish at two popular harvesting spots in Wrangell.

“We want people to have the information they need to make a proper decision,” she said.

Producers of commercially harvested shellfish in Alaska are required to have their products screened for toxins. But state officials say they lack enough resources to pay for recreational or subsistence testing. As a result, Alaskans who harvest for themselves or their families were basically on their own until recently, when the Sitka Tribe of Alaska created a testing lab to monitor shellfish and phytoplankton. Anyone in Alaska can send a sample in and have the shellfish tested for $50. - More...
Friday PM - March 03, 2018

Alaska Science: Did plants cause one of Earth’s great extinctions? By NED ROZELL - Several times in the distant past, our home planet has been cleansed of its residents, with the exception of a few plucky survivors.

Perhaps the best known and most spectacular extinction was that of the dinosaurs, caused when a meteorite six miles in diameter crashed into Earth about 65 million years ago.

There was another event that killed most of the life in the world’s oceans. It happened more than 300 million years earlier than the impact that doomed the Tyrannosaurus. Back then, in the age of fish, the 30-foot, armor-plated shark-eater known as Dunkleosteus might have thought its reign would last forever.

Clues are hard to come by when you’re trying to look back to a time when the continents clumped together like a closed fist. But geologists have found evidence that plants, the most gentle of organisms, may have helped kill most of the life in the oceans 374 million years ago.

Mike Whalen is one of those geologists. He works at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and spends his summers picking at ancient sea floors now lifted in high mountain walls, hundreds of miles from salt water. On rocky ridges from China to Belgium to the Rockies in Canada, he and his colleagues have found black rocks that point to a mass extinction in a period they call the Devonian.

Those rocks, layers of shale, are the remains of living things that did not completely decompose, which hints that there was little oxygen to power the tiny creatures that gobble up just about everything.

Developing land plants could have choked out life in the oceans, say Whalen and his coauthors, who wrote a paper that appeared recently in the journal Nature Communications. A more circular orbit of Earth around the sun —leading to years with no great difference between summer and winter — might have also helped doom most of the fish.

When most of Earth’s life was underwater, carbon dioxide flooded the air in much higher concentrations than today. That led to the emergence of organisms that flourish on that gas - plants. Land plants developed deep root systems that tapped into and freed nutrients from rocks. Those compounds ran off into rivers and then to the sea. - More...
Friday PM - March 03, 2018

MICHAEL SHANNON: Parkland School Shooting Is Your Government at Rest  - During his nationwide 'Don't Blame Me' tour, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told the Miami Herald he was unable to arrest the Parkland school shooter prior to the attack because "his deputies were legally 'handcuffed.'"

Sheriff Fife should know, since he personally bought the handcuffs.

It's becoming obvious as the investigation continues that rather than a random killing spree, the death toll is collateral damage resulting from Democrat efforts to introduce protected categories into the criminal justice system by ending the school to prison pipeline.

Instead of the NRA with blood on its hands, we find Broward County School Superintendent Robert Runcie and Sheriff Israel directly responsible for the death of 17 innocents.

Real Clear Investigations reports in 2013 - the year before the shooter entered high school - the Sheriff of Noddingham voluntarily signed a "collaborative agreement on school discipline." This preemptive amnesty listed a series of misdemeanors that would no longer result in arrest.

The freebie offenses included vandalism, disorderly conduct, fighting, trespassing, criminal mischief, harassment, threats, alcohol infractions and possession of drug paraphernalia - all violations common to future valedictorians. - More...
Friday PM - March 02, 2018

MICHAEL REAGAN: Gun Control Starts at Home - President Donald Trump said a bunch of crazy things this week.

Nothing new there.

I'm not referring to the global trade war he may have started on Thursday with his announcement that steep protective tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum could be coming as early as next week.

I'm referring to the tougher gun control laws the president publicly floated on Wednesday during an unscripted discussion with bipartisan lawmakers in the White House.

Sounding more like Nancy Pelosi than a lifelong friend of the National Rifle Association, the president suggested three steps he thinks would help to prevent future mass school shootings like the one in Parkland, Fla.

He proposed raising the age limit to buy assault-type weapons like the AR-15 to 21, making background checks tougher on ?all ?gun buyers and taking guns away from people with mental problems.

In the real world, where there are more than 300 million guns floating around the United States, Trump's first two actions will do nothing but burden law-abiding gun owners.

The president's third idea - taking someone's guns away for mental-health reasons and making them go to court to get them back - is especially outrageous.

Forget the serious constitutional concerns about taking law-abiding citizens' guns and doing the due process ??later. - More....
Friday PM - March 02, 2018