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Species & Habitats
With money from the Red Lobster restaurant chain and the settlement of the 1989 World Prodigy oil spill in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island scientists are seeding 6 carefully sited artificial reefs in the bay with tagged juvenile lobsters. The goal of this possibly replicable project, which Kathleen Castro of the Rhode Island Sea Grant Marine Extension calls the most thorough of its kind ever attempted, is to see how the new cobble and quarry stone reefs affects lobster populations. Tel. (401) 874-5063.
Rhode Island's Woonasquatucket, recently declared an American Heritage River, has been the object of two recent EPA citations of excessive pollution. In January the agency reported that preliminary tests showed dioxin levels in North Providence sediments high enough to cause the agency to warn people not even to walk near the riverbank, let alone row or kayak on the river or eat its fish. That month the EPA also cited Microfin, a metal-finishing company on the river's banks, for "wholesale violations of hazardous waste and clean-air regulations" that further jeopardize the river. The company, said the Providence Journal, faced a $1.15 million fine.
According to the Moncton Times and Transcript, New Brunswick fisheries scientist Wayne Fairchild has produced convincing evidence of links between the region's declining Atlantic salmon population and sprays containing the chemical compound nonylphenol that were used extensively between 1975 and 1985 to counter the spruce budworm. The nonylphenols, Fairchild told the paper, disrupt the reproductive development of the fish. He is based at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Gulf Fisheries Centre in Moncton.
Both the river otter and he were "surprised and uncertain," reported William Schuster, manager of the 4000-acre Black Rock Forest in Cornwall, NY, when they recently encountered each other on this ground only 50 miles from New York City. The current otter population in the forest - two breeding pairs and one single - is the largest in many years. For Schuster it was a signal that the once heavily logged, now protected forest is becoming a "fuller, more complete ecosystem." Tel. (914) 534-4517.
For 23 years commercial netting of striped bass and other fish in the Hudson River has been banned because of chemical contamination stemming from then-legal discharges of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from General Electric plants near Troy. Now, reports the New York Times, state officials have found PCB levels in stripers caught in the lower, saltwater reaches of the river to be only 1.6 parts per million or only about half the federal maximum. Eventual restoration of the commercial fishery, for striped bass at least, is in prospect. Fishermen rejoiced.
A record 66 manatees were killed by boats in Florida in 1998. In one respect, though conditions have improved for the endangered sea cows. Since manatee-sensitive safety devices were installed on steel floodgates on the Miami River and in several other nearby locations, they are no longer crushing the trapped animals to death. The sensors reverse the gates' vertical movement when the manatees touch them. Fatalities from the gates have dropped to zero. |
