Everybody into the ocean: The race is on to turn waves, tides and currents into electrical energy
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 6, 2008 at 6:09 amFrom the Wall Street Journal:
Surfers aren’t the only ones itching to jump in the water and catch some big waves.
Dozens of companies, from oil giant Chevron Corp. to smaller firms like Ocean Power Technologies Inc., have invested in or are evaluating the potential of technology designed to harness electrical energy from waves, tides and currents.
Ocean Power, of Pennington, N.J., and Verdant Power Inc., of New York, are among the firms that already have built or plan to build wave- and tidal-power stations in oceans or adjacent waters. Others, such as Chevron, are seeking government approval to study the feasibility of such projects. All are in a race to harness what some scientists contend is among the nation’s largest unexploited sources of renewable energy.
“Chevron is monitoring ocean-energy technology and considering how it might be integrated into our operations,” says Kim Copelin, a spokeswoman for the San Ramon, Calif., company, which is seeking a permit from the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission to start researching a possible tidal-power project in Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
These projects represent a rebirth of interest in the ocean and other waters as a source of energy, which intensified during the 1970s oil crises but fizzled in the 1980s when the price of oil dropped. Now, with concerns growing about global climate change, foreign-oil dependency and rising commodity prices, companies and governments are taking another look.
Read more from the Wall Street Journal by clicking here.
Despite lifting of U.S. ban, new drilling unlikely off California’s coast
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 28, 2008 at 6:00 amFrom the San Jose Mercury News:
It was largely overlooked amid Wall Street’s meltdown, but Congress made a major environmental shift last week when lawmakers dropped a 26-year ban on new offshore oil drilling off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.
The vote Wednesday in the House of Representatives — and in the Senate on Saturday — dismayed environmentalists and delighted oil companies. Yet experts on all sides of the debate say it will be years — if ever — before any new drilling comes to California. A buzz saw of political opposition, certain lawsuits and existing marine protections all combine to make California perhaps the most difficult place in America to build new offshore oil platforms.
Meanwhile, a new president and new Congress will take office in four months, and Democrats already are vowing to try to reinstate the ban. “The decision will ultimately get made in 2009. And there’s no guarantee that new leasing would ever be approved off the coast of California,” said Warner Chabot, vice president of the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group in San Francisco.
Industry groups say they hope to expand in California, but understand the challenges. “We now have, at least for the moment, the opportunity to tap huge amounts of oil and gas that weren’t available,” said Joe Sparano, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry group in Sacramento.
Read more from the San Jose Mercury News by clicking here.
Monterey Bay marine sanctuary to soon include large undersea mountain
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 27, 2008 at 8:51 am
From the Los Angeles Times:
The Monterey Bay marine sanctuary off California’s Central Coast will expand its borders to include one of the largest undersea mountains in U.S. waters, President Bush announced Friday.
Speaking at the Smithsonian’s new Ocean Hall exhibit in Washington, D.C., Bush vowed to proceed with the long-awaited expansion of the sanctuary to include the Davidson Seamount, a dormant undersea volcano, and its coral forests. “This 585-square-nautical mile addition will safeguard one of the largest seamounts in the U.S. waters and will protect an extraordinary array of ocean creatures,” Bush said to the applause of ocean regulators and activists.
Once it becomes part of the sanctuary, the seamount will be permanently off limits to offshore oil drilling and mining, and protected from dumping.
This would be the first significant boundary expansion of an existing national marine sanctuary under the Bush administration.
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
New Tijuana Sewage treatment plant praised; Flow to river channel to drop; irrigation uses seen
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 26, 2008 at 6:29 amFrom the San Diego Union Tribune:
It sits on a hillside miles from San Diego, rising above tightly packed colonias in Tijuana’s fast-growing eastern end. Despite its distance from the border, the new Monte de Los Olivos sewage treatment plant has been drawing applause in California.
Expected to begin operation within a month, the $9 million plant will at full capacity treat the waste of some 265,000 residents to a tertiary level, clean enough for irrigation. Together with a smaller but similar plant, La Morita, set to open this year, Monte de Los Olivos will dramatically decrease the flow of untreated sewage down the Tijuana River channel that leads to the border.
The operation of the two plants also will relieve Tijuana’s main sewage treatment plant, the over-burdened Punta Bandera facility south of Playas de Tijuana. By the middle of next year, officials hope the operation of the new plants will largely eliminate the coastal discharges of untreated sewage at Punta Bandera.
“This project puts Baja California at the vanguard of sewage treatment in Mexico,” Baja California Gov. José Guadalupe Osuna Millán told a crowd of more than 300 gathered for yesterday’s inauguration ceremony at Monte de los Olivos.
Read the rest of this story from the San Diego Union Tribune by clicking here.
California beaches again rate high in water quality, but budget cuts slash funding for coastal water testing
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 26, 2008 at 6:13 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
California beaches received high marks for water quality for a second consecutive year, according to a report released today by an environmental group. At the same time, public health officials and environmentalists learned that nearly $1 million in state funding for water-quality monitoring programs was cut this week in a line-item veto by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“It would have been a good news story,” said Heal the Bay President Mark Gold, whose organization released the annual report. “Here we have arguably the most successful water-quality monitoring program in the entire state of California, and Gov. Schwarzenegger, with his blue pencil, decided to eliminate funding.”
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state Finance Department, said the cuts were among many the governor was forced to make to balance the budget and ensure that there was enough money in reserve to fight fires during a particularly dry fire season.
“This was one of literally dozens of very difficult but necessary decisions the governor had to make,” Palmer said today. He said the water-monitoring program would be evaluated next year to determine if funding could be restored.
Of the state’s 514 beaches, 91% received A or B grades, which mean excellent or very good water quality, according to the California Summer Beach Report Card.
The Santa Monica-based group reported water quality grades from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Environmentalists attributed the higher marks primarily to a second consecutive year of drought, which reduced urban runoff into waterways. Runoff is the biggest source of ocean pollution.
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
From the California Progress Report:
California environmental group Heal the Bay today released its 10th annual End of Summer Beach Report Card . This year marked another great summer at the beach, with excellent water quality at nearly every beach in the state. Some 92% of the beaches got A’s and B’s with every county other than L.A. County above the 95% level for A’s and B’s.
Sounds like a great reason to celebrate, no? Unfortunately, to the shock of the State Department of Public Health and the State Water Board, Gov. Schwarzenegger in his just-signed budget unilaterally eliminated all state funding for beach monitoring in a line-item veto. That’s right. The Bush Administration now gives California more money for beach monitoring (about $500K annually) than the state. Without beach monitoring, the governor may as well put “Swim at Your Own Risk” signs up along California’s coast.
Why would the governor eliminate California’s most successful water quality monitoring program? I don’t think the million dollar savings will help our 11-digit budget problems much, yet the budget crisis was the stated reason for the cuts.
Read more from the California Progress Report by clicking here.
Drought leads to cleaner beach waters while Governor slashes funds for coastal water tests
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 25, 2008 at 6:29 amFrom the San Jose Mercury News:
Continued dry weather this year has given California beachgoers another record summer of clean water, according to an annual report released Thursday.
Heal the Bay, a clean water group based in Santa Monica, found that about 91 percent of the beaches tracked statewide had very good to excellent water quality. The state’s most popular beaches in Southern California, however, continued to have uneven water quality.
San Diego, Orange and Santa Barbara counties all boasted very good water quality, the report said. Most of Ventura County’s beaches also scored high marks.
Long Beach made a slight improvement from last year but still had the worst water quality in the state “by far” because the Los Angeles River pours into the city’s waters, the report said. Other beaches with poor water quality included Malibu’s Surfrider Beach, Paradise Cove, Solstice Canyon at Dan Blocker Beach and Marie Canyon at Puerco Beach.
Read more from the San Jose Mercury News by clicking here.
Most problems occur in the winter, when rains wash trash & pollutants into the coastal waters. The good news about the beaches was tempered with news that funding for water testing has fallen victim to the state’s budget deficit:
From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has eliminated funding for a statewide beach monitoring program, an action that will severely curtail shoreline water testing in San Diego and Orange counties. Using his line-item veto power Tuesday, the governor cut $984,000 for coastal water monitoring under a program established by state legislation in 1997.
Environmental health officials for San Diego County said the governor’s action deletes their entire $302,000 annual budget for beach water monitoring. Orange County will lose about $200,000.
“The governor has essentially placed a ‘Swim at Your Own Risk’ sign along the entire California coastline,” said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, a Santa Monica-based environmental group that focuses on water quality.
“I can’t imagine the governor eliminating this program in light of how successful it has been,” Gold said. “It has kept the public informed about which beaches have pollution problems and has led to tremendous cleanup successes.”
With a large budget deficit to deal with, the cuts had to come from somewhere:
A spokesman for the state Department of Finance said Schwarzenegger made line-item cuts totaling $510 million to boost the state’s budget reserve. “This was one of dozens of difficult decisions the governor had to make to build that reserve back up to pay for costs that we know are going to come from such things as emergency fire response,” said H.D. Palmer, deputy finance director.
Read more from the San Diego Union-Tribune by clicking here.
Acidification harming sea, expert says; Scientists say impact on oceans could be extensive
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 23, 2008 at 6:14 amFrom the Ventura County Star:
Scientists first believed that because the ocean absorbs about a quarter of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it was a good way to soften the blow from global warming. But science is now showing that just like the air, the ocean can be greatly affected by global warming, and perhaps even more in the Santa Barbara Channel than other places around the globe.
“We now realize it has serious consequences for our ocean,” said Richard Feely, a chemical oceanographer who was part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which along with Al Gore, won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. “It certainly is a problem that has come up quickly over time, but people are beginning to make the connection now.”
Feely spoke Friday in Santa Barbara to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council, which voted to start researching, monitoring and educating on the impacts of ocean acidification.
Data show that over the last 50 years, as the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide increased, so did the level of acidity in the oceans, Feely said. The highest concentrations of the acidic water are in the upper level of the water columns, where the majority of the ocean’s species live. If nothing is done to curb the amount of carbon dioxide that humans produce — by burning fossil fuels for energy — the impact on the ocean could be vast, he said.
Read more from the Ventura County Star by clicking here.
Power from the restless sea stirs the imagination
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 23, 2008 at 5:46 amFrom the New York Times:
For years, technological visionaries have painted a seductive vision of using ocean tides and waves to produce power. They foresee large installations off the coast and in tidal estuaries that could provide as much as 10 percent of the nation’s electricity. But the technical difficulties of making such systems work are proving formidable. Last year, a wave-power machine sank off the Oregon coast. Blades have broken off experimental tidal turbines in New York’s turbulent East River. Problems with offshore moorings have slowed the deployment of snakelike generating machines in the ocean off Portugal.
Years of such problems have discouraged ocean-power visionaries, but have not stopped them. Lately, spurred by rising costs for electricity and for the coal and other fossil fuels used to produce it, they are making a new push to overcome the barriers blocking this type of renewable energy.
The Scottish company Pelamis Wave Power plans to turn on a small wave-energy farm — the world’s first — off the coast of Portugal by year’s end, after fixing the broken moorings. Finavera Renewables, a Canadian company that recently salvaged its sunken, $2.5 million Oregon wave-power machine, has signed an agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric to produce power off the California coast by 2012. And in the East River, just off Manhattan, two newly placed turbines with tougher blades and rotors are feeding electricity into a grocery store and parking garage on Roosevelt Island.
“It’s frustrating sometimes as an ocean energy company to say, yeah, your device sank,” said Jason Bak, chief executive of Finavera. “But that is technology development.”
Read more from the New York Times by clicking here.
Our Ocean Backyard: Sea otters’ fate mirrors our own
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 21, 2008 at 3:40 pmFrom columnist Dan Haifley at the San Jose Mercury News:
She could have had an idly comfortable life in Big Sur, but instead Margaret Owings devoted herself to the preservation of wildlife. In 1968, she helped to start Friends of the Sea Otter to advocate for a species returning from the brink of collapse.
Sea Otter Awareness Week, to promote a species whose fate remains uncertain, begins today. That fate depends, in part, on our ability to control the waterborne pollution carried from our neighborhoods through our storm drains and into near-shore ocean waters.
The southern sea otter is called a “keystone species” for its role in controlling the urchin population and thereby maintaining a balance in the kelp beds and supporting a healthy slice of the Central Coast’s ecosystem. You can see them near shore devouring shellfish and nurturing their young. Kayakers in Elkhorn Slough must occasionally contend with otters used to human contact attempting to climb aboard their boats.
According to Steve Shimek of the Marina-based Otter Project, otters once lived around the entire fringe of the north Pacific Rim — from Hokkaido, Japan across to the Aleutian Islands and down the American continent to Baja California. They were hunted for their furs and their numbers dwindled to nearly nothing by 1850.
Read more from the San Jose Mercury News by clicking here.
Thousands volunteer to clean up Bay Area coast
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 21, 2008 at 7:42 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle:
It seems so meaningless at the time. Someone drops a plastic bottle or a disposable lighter on the ground. Just one more piece of litter. But the rains come, and the trash gets swept away. Over days, weeks and months later, the trash makes its way inexorably to low ground. To the beach. Now multiply that by hundreds, thousands, even millions of people, and it adds up to a very dirty coastline.
That was the battle facing thousands of volunteers who turned out for the annual coastal cleanup, sponsored by the California Coastal Commission. People descended on 750 different sites on Saturday, most of them beaches, to pick up trash and try to tidy up the state a bit. “It feels good to do something for your community,” said 13-year-old Jason Kwang of Oakland.
Jason was at Damon Slough with his foster father, Stephen Cunningham, picking up old tires, plastic cups, wood, nails and more. Cunningham said he found a gallon container full of gasoline out in the mudflats.
The cleanup at Damon Slough took place during low tide, which exposed a vast expanse of garbage all along the coastline. The slough is considered one of the dirtiest waterways in the state, and it’s easy to see why. The waterway is encircled by a thick ring of trash and garbage. There were sofa cushions and mattresses, beer bottles, soda cans and millions upon millions of cigarette butts.
Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Strange finds at the beach during cleanups
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 20, 2008 at 4:26 pmFrom the O. C. Register:
Doug Baker got down on his stomach and tried to grab the slightly-inflated soccer ball wedged under a big rock. “Oh, I got it!” he said, holding it up and showing off a bit of green algae that had grown on it.
Thousands of volunteers from around the county headed to the coast today to get their hands dirty during California Coastal Cleanup Day, an effort started 24 years ago. More than 800,000 people from California have removed 12 million pounds of junk from the beach since 1985. The event coincides with the International Coastal Cleanup, which brings together about 75 countries cleaning beaches on the same day.
Baker, of Alhambra, pulled out his goodies to show what gets wedged between and under the big rocks along the San Gabriel River in Seal Beach. There was a big milk carton with orange gunk growing on it, fishing line, tire tread, a ping pong ball, and broken bottles. “It would be easier if they left the whole bottle, instead of breaking them,” he said.
He expected the day to be a breeze on the beach, with maybe a few cans or bottles scattered around. Instead, he was working up a sweat. “It’s definitely not boring. I was actually surprised at how much stuff is between these rocks,” said Baker, a first-time beach cleanup volunteer. “This bag is getting pretty heavy.”
Read more from the O. C. Register by clicking here.
Save the oceans, save ourselves
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 19, 2008 at 5:34 amFrom the San Jose Mercury News, this commentary, written by Steve Sorensen, long time Alameda County resident and avid sea kayaker, among other things:
Since man has inhabited the Earth common thought has been that the oceans are much too big to be affected by human action. The idea that the oceans are indestructible has met its end. Despite their size, the oceans are vulnerable to the same unsustainable trends that are degrading the terrestrial environment.
The impact we have had on ocean ecosystems has been vastly underestimated. Did you know only 10 percent of all large fish — both open ocean species including tuna, swordfish and marlin, and the large bottom fish such as cod, halibut, skates and flounder — are left in the sea, according to research published in the scientific journal Nature? And the state of California warns those big predatory fish are full of the toxins and other pollutants that we cast into the oceans. Plankton in the ocean generates more oxygen than land-based plants and the oceans remove carbon dioxide from our air. Bottom line, we don’t take care of our oceans, we won’t be around.
Millions of Californians enjoy the state’s coast line and waterways every day — nine out of 10 will visit the beach at least once this year. However, many of those people are unaware how their daily activities can impact the plants and animals off our shores.
Read more from the San Jose Mercury News by clicking here.
Coastal Clean Up Day this Saturday: Making sure the coast is clear
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 18, 2008 at 5:57 am
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Ninety percent of the trash swirling in the world’s oceans is plastic, and in some parts of the Pacific Ocean, plastic pellets used by manufacturers outnumber plankton. The trash we leave behind inevitably finds its way to our beaches and oceans.
Perhaps that’s why Saturday’s Coastal Cleanup Day is the biggest annual volunteer event in California. Last year 61,000 people in the state collected 785,000 pounds of trash, including 15,000 plastic bags from San Francisco Bay.
Sixty to 80 percent of ocean litter comes from land sources. Most of it runs off city streets. Cups, six-pack holders and dirty diapers are left on beaches. Some waste is dumped at sea. Sport and commercial fishermen lose lines, hooks and nets, which bring suffering and death to entangled and wounded animals.
Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
From Stockton’s Record:
In three hours, volunteers last year scooped up enough trash from San Joaquin County waterways to counterbalance a couple of male African elephants. This week, they’ll sacrifice another sunny Saturday morning to collect everything from bottle caps to battered refrigerators as part of the statewide Coastal Cleanup Day. And you’re invited.
It can be quite the treasure hunt. A mud-caked bowling ball, a prosthetic leg and even a winning lottery ticket have been found in past years.
No guarantee you’ll win the lottery. But organizers say you’ll have the satisfaction of sprucing up our surroundings.
“We do have such a beautiful city. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to get through a couple of layers of grime to see how it shines,” said Christina Fugazi, a Venture Academy teacher who will pluck trash from Duck Creek with 30 to 40 of her students.
Read more from the Stockton Record, which includes a list of sites around Stockton where you can take part in Coastal Clean up Day, by clicking here. Here’s a site in Berkeley if that is closer to you from IndyBay.org - click here.
There are locations statewide where you can participate in Coastal Clean Up Day, and not just on the coast. Inland waterways are important, too! Find a location near you by visiting the Coastal Commission’s website by clicking here.
California Coastal Clean-Up Day presented by the California Coastal Commission and Whole Foods Market
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 17, 2008 at 5:56 amFrom Web Wire:
The California Coastal Commission and Whole Foods Market are proud to announce that the 24th Annual California Coastal Cleanup Day will take place on Saturday, September 20th, from 9 am to Noon at over 750 locations around the state. Volunteers will clean trash and debris from 1,100 miles of the California coast as well as another 1,000 miles along the inland shorelines of bays, creeks, rivers, and lakes throughout California.
The 2008 Cleanup will look to build on the success of last year’s event, when 61,112 volunteers turned out to remove just under 1 million pounds of debris – the largest Cleanup in California’s history. The 2007 Cleanup not only eclipsed the previous record for volunteer turnout by more than 20 percent, but was also the largest Cleanup in terms of geographic reach. 48 of California’s 58 counties participated in the 2007 Cleanup. The Coastal Commission has been working to steadily expand the effort; data gathered from cleanups in the past few years reveal the need to continue this expansion. 60 to 80 percent of the debris found on California’s beaches originates from inland or urban areas and washes out to the ocean.
“California Coastal Cleanup Day is among the largest of many efforts that the state undertakes to safeguard our coast and ocean,” said Eben Schwartz, Statewide Director of the Cleanup. “The key to the success of the Coastal Cleanup Day, though, is the dedication of the volunteers who give their time and effort to this cause. Cleanup volunteers not only help remove debris from our state’s beaches and waterways; they also take away a powerful message of the need to prevent pollution year-round.”
More from Web Wire by clicking here.
How you can participate: There are locations throughout the state, both on the coast and inland. To find a coastal cleanup event near you, click here.
Tide may be turning on Long Beach’s beach pollution
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 16, 2008 at 6:04 amFrom the Long Beach Press-Telegram:
Trash, chemical residue and yard clippings surging down the Los Angeles River and onto local beaches were a problem long before anyone seriously tackled the environmentally detrimental trifecta of dirty trucks, polluting locomotives and soot-spewing cargo ships in the city’s port and harbor. But in spite of the vigor in which regulatory agencies, industry and elected leaders have attacked the latter problems, a consensus on how to deal with the so-called “river problem” seems far from certain.
Solutions range from diverting the river, lowering or completely removing the rock breakwater protecting Long Beach’s harbor to doing nothing, and so far, the leave-the-breakwater-and-river-alone crowd have prevailed.
But the tide may be turning.
Recent decisions by the City of Long Beach to fund a $100,000 breakwater study and newfound support from local Congressional leaders to fund breakwater research indicate that the city may be growing weary of its title as home to one of California’s dirtiest beach fronts - an ignominious designation bestowed upon the community in annual Heal the Bay beach report cards.
Hoping to keep momentum going, Surfrider is hosting a public forum on the river and pollution this evening. Find out more from the Long Beach Press-Telegram by clicking here.
Leaky border: Efforts to stop the flow of pollution from Tijuana have bogged down in a mess
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 13, 2008 at 6:10 amFrom High Country News:
Just beyond the U.S.-Mexico border fence, three black tanks loom over a weedy Tijuana hillside. Each day, they fill with sewage from the stucco and red-tiled townhouses above them. Each night, they empty into the canyon below, a notorious illegal border crossing known as Smuggler’s Gulch.
That sort of dumping is typical throughout Tijuana, says 60-year-old Oscar Romo. When heavy winter rains batter the Pacific coast, the pollution floods into the U.S., choking the Tijuana River Reserve, where Romo works as the coastal training program coordinator. Ultimately, it winds up in the Pacific Ocean, closing San Diego-area beaches for months at a time.
Twenty-five years ago this August, President Ronald Reagan and Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid promised to cooperate on solving cross-border pollution problems like this one. Under the La Paz agreement, the two countries have reduced air pollution in El Paso and Ciudad Ju√°rez. They built — and plan to upgrade — a plant in Nogales, Ariz., that treats sewage from nearby Nogales, Sonora. The U.S. helped finance the removal of hazardous waste from an abandoned Tijuana factory that extracted lead from U.S. car batteries. But when the federal government turned to a private U.S. company to fix the San Diego-Tijuana sewage pollution problem, disaster ensued.
Now, after eight years of missed deadlines and infighting between activists and politicians, the feds have jettisoned the effort, leaving San Diego back at square one. “Lots of money has been spent,” Romo says, “but lots of mistakes have been made.”
Read more from High Country News by clicking here.
USC experts using a variety of new sensors will monitor coastal waters of Southern California
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 12, 2008 at 5:29 amFrom the Imperial Valley News:
Public health officials in Southern California will have a better picture of water quality off the coast with the help of sensors that are being installed or deployed by faculty and graduate students who work with the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies.
The project led by Burt Jones, a research associate professor in the USC College’s Marine Environmental Biology program, covers much of the shoreline of Los Angeles and Orange counties.
Jones and graduate students in his lab have assembled a suite of sensors that include six radar installations to monitor water currents, two underwater “gliders” that carry thermometers and other gauges, and two buoys that will be anchored offshore and fitted with gear to analyze water quality.
“We’re implementing a ‘real time’ observation system for Los Angeles and Orange counties,” Jones said.
Jones said the data from all these devices will be used by people who monitor coastal waters to protect human health and by scientists who want to know why coastal water conditions change. These devices are particularly valuable in that they are much less expensive than sending people out on ships to collect water samples.
Read more from the Imperial Valley News by clicking here.
EPA to develop stricter standards for ocean water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 11, 2008 at 6:02 amFrom the Associated Press:
Beachgoers will be told more about whether it’s safe to go in the water under a court settlement between environmentalists and the EPA. The settlement requires the Environmental Protection Agency to develop criteria by 2012 to protect the public against a wider range of potential health hazards from ocean swimming than provided by existing standards.
Currently EPA criteria for the safety of ocean water is based on the likelihood of contracting gastrointestinal ailments.
The settlement requires EPA to base its criteria on more illnesses, including hepatitis, skin rashes, ear infections and pink eye. EPA will also have to deliver results of sea-water tests the same day they’re done, so the public can have more timely and accurate information.
“The new studies will have to look at the whole range of how people get sick, which will lead to stricter and more protective criteria,” Aaron Colangelo, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview Wednesday. “People can be more confident when they take their family to the beach that when they say it’s safe, it’s safe.”
Read more from the Associated Press by clicking here.
It’s time to capture power of ocean waves
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 2, 2008 at 6:19 amFrom the Calgary News-Herald:
Imagine that 15 per cent of the world’s energy is just waiting to be harnessed from the constant ebb and flow of the ocean. Entrepreneurs, engineers, physicists, oceanographers and now eager investors are getting behind some truly innovative technologies that are powering homes, factories, universities and hospitals.
Fathom this: wave technology is reducing greenhouse gases and moving society beyond deleterious and expensive fossil fuels. More than 50 wave technology companies around the globe are using almost 60 years of experience with deep-sea oil platforms as they hurry to deploy wave farms. There are currently more than a half a dozen wave farms generating electricity in Europe and Australia. And at least another dozen much larger farms will be operational within 24 months.
As any mariner, deep-sea oil driller, rig-worker or boat enthusiast knows, the ocean and its environment are rugged and unforgiving.
Wave farms are being located between one and a half and five kilometres from the shoreline. Utility companies are examining the sea floor, looking for strong wave climates or big consistent waves, packed with power.
B.C., Washington, Oregon and California have hundreds of such strong wave climates. Already, Pacific Gas & Electric — the largest utility company in the U.S. — has two wave farms in Fort Bragg and Eureka, Calif., under construction.
By 2010, all utility companies in California must source at least 20 per cent of their energy from non-fossil fuel technology, and by 2020 they must increase that stake to 30 per cent.
Find out more about some of the innovative designs being used to harness wave power in the rest of this article from the Calgary News-Herald by clicking here.
Marine Protected Areas are essential to California
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 30, 2008 at 1:39 pmFrom the Contra Costa Times, this commentary by Bob Breen, a ranger-naturalist at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve:
THE CALIFORNIA COAST has been called one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems in the world. Our coast needs the protection that meets standards set by most marine scientists that fully protects recreational and educational opportunities, as well as enhances depleted fisheries.
Marine Protected Areas, areas of the ocean that allow marine animals and plants to flourish undisturbed, will allow our oceans to absorb the shocks of change. And make no mistake; we are living in a time of change.
Climate change has already arrived on the California coast. During my 40 years as a student and ranger-naturalist at Moss Beach, I saw changes to plant and animal life firsthand.
Warm water species of sea anemone, worms, and barnacles have moved in, and the leafy cold-water seaweed has been replaced by algal turf reminiscent of Southern California.
Other researchers have found similar results with fish, abalone and snail populations.
California needs a network of Marine Protected Areas. MPAs are an adaptive ocean management strategy that considers the entire ocean ecosystem and maintains it in a healthy, productive and resilient condition. MPAs are good for fish, but they are also good for people. They provide a place for visitors to study, kayak, dive and surf. Like undersea parks, MPAs allow plants and animals to flourish with minimal disturbance, and allow people to experience nature close at hand.
Read more from the Contra Costa Times by clicking here.