Times of change can be times of worry, particularly after a
presidential election brings change to the White House, in the form of a new
governing party and a president-elect who, in philosophy, experience and style,
is very different from his immediate predecessor.
Opponents of the winning candidate often bewail his victory in
apocalyptic terms. Whether the winner
was Ronald Reagan or Barak Obama, there were those who predicted that the
incoming administration signaled the end of America-as-we-know-it, and foretold
the onset of a world that was dark, sinister and—most threatening of all—different
from what went before.
The 2016 election of Donald J. Trump was certainly no
exception to that rule. Some who opposed
his election claim that the new administration is a
threat to Americans’ civil rights. Others,
who supported the losing candidate, feel that it
will be bad for organized labor. Still
others express concerns
about the new administration’s approach to foreign policy.
We can only wait and watch as things unwind, in order to learn
whether such fears were justified, or merely the sort of sour-grapes musings
typical of those who did not win the race.
Probably no one feared a Trump victory as much as the
various people and organizations that support clean air, clean water and other basic
environmental issues. Now that he has
won, they,
too, are warning of a coming cataclysm.
Their fears are clearly being stoked by the words of the president-elect
himself.
Donald J. Trump’s staff has created a website, www.greatagain.gov , which offers a
foreshadowing for what a Trump administration will look like. The site’s “Energy
Independence” page includes the statements that
“Rather than continuing the current patch to block and
undermine America’s fossil fuel producers, the Trump Administration will
encourage the production of these resources by opening onshore and offshore
leasing on federal lands and waters…We will end the war on coal, and rescind
the coal mining lease moratorium, the excessive Interior Department stream
rule, and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the
Obama administration…”
I’ll leave it to others to decide how such a plan will
impact America’s wilderness areas, the last remaining Appalachian brook trout
streams and the troubled marshes of the Louisiana coast, and concentrate on the sort of things that I’ve always
addressed before, the fish that swim off America’s coast, and particularly
those of our offshore waters, such as the bluefin tuna.
The new administration certainly sounds like bad news for
them.
Although there has
been some recent scientific dissent, most biologists agree that all bluefin
tuna that spawn on the west side of the Atlantic basin do so in a relatively
small area in the Gulf of Mexico, and view the waters that flow over the
outer continental shelf in the northern Gulf as an important nursery ground.
Unfortunately, the sea floor beneath, and up-current from,
that nursery area holds large deposits of petroleum, and the methods used to
extract that petroleum are not immune to mechanical mishap and human error.
That became tragically clear in the spring of 2010, when the
BP’s
Deepwater Horizon well blew out and created the largest accidental oil
spill ever recorded. Such spill coincided
with the peak of the bluefin tuna’s spawning season, which led
scientists from Stanford University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration to study the impacts.
“the timing of the oil spill directly overlapped with the
maximum extent of adult bluefin tuna foraging and spawning activity in the Gulf
of Mexico. At its peak in May 2010, the
spill covered more than 5 percent of the spawning habitat of the Atlantic
bluefin tuna in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone.
“Exposure to oil has previously been shown to have
physiological consequences to the heart, and can cause deformations and death
in eggs and larval fish, making it crucial to understanding the effects in
order to assess the impacts of oil spills.
The effect of oil on spawning adult fish is not well understood but the
crude oil may add stressors to all life history stages in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Stanford professor Barbara
Block, an internationally-recognized expert on Atlantic bluefin tuna and a
member of the research team, noted that
“The bluefin tuna population in the Gulf of Mexico has been
struggling to rebuild to healthy levels for over 30 years. These fish are a genetically unique
population, and thus stressors such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, even if
minor, may have population-level effects…”
Although we will hopefully never again see an oil spill as
large as that created by BP and its Deepwater Horizon operation, an expansion
of offshore drilling will inevitably lead to a host of smaller spills, both
from the wellhead and as a result of transporting crude oil, which could have a
significant cumulative impact on fish populations.
And don’t believe that only bluefins would be affected.
Chemicals found in crude oil can affect a
wide variety of fish and other animals.
As part of the study of the Deepwater Horizon spill, Barbara
Block and her colleagues found that
“Crude oil is a complex mixture of chemicals, some of which
are known to be toxic to marine animals.
Past research has focused in particular on “polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons” (PAHs), which can also be found in coal tar, creosote, air
pollution and stormwater runoff from land.
In the aftermath of an oil spill, PAHs can persist for many years in
marine habitats and cause a variety of adverse environmental effects…
“The researchers found that oil blocks the potassium channels
distributed in heart cell membranes, increasing the time to restart the heart
on every beat. This prolongs the normal
cardiac action potential, and ultimately slows the heartbeat. The potassium ion channel impacted in the
tuna is responsible for restarting the heart muscle cell contraction cycle
after every beat, and is highly conserved throughout vertebrates, raising the
possibility that animals as diverse as tuna, turtles and dolphins might be
affected similarly by crude oil exposure.
Oil also resulted in arrhythmias in some ventricular cells.”
Thus, any increase in drilling on the outer continental
shelf is likely to put not only bluefin tuna, but any other fish that is likely
to have its eggs and larvae come in contact with crude oil (fish such as summer
flounder, menhaden and bluefish, should drilling ultimately be allowed off the
Atlantic coast) into greater jeopardy.
And it’s not hard to imagine that any compound that
adversely impacts the hearts of animals as varied as tuna, turtles and dolphins
is likely to be bad for people, too.
However, to see a more direct connection between the
incoming administration’s proclamations on “Energy Independence,” fish and
human health impacts, we need to take a look at the dirtiest energy source of
all—coal.
The incoming administration clearly supports expanding coal
mining, and that only makes sense if more coal is to be burned, as well. Most opponents of coal object to such
expansion because of the dangers posed by increased soot levels, acid rain and
coal’s contribution to accelerated global warming, but there is another hazard
that often flies under their radar. That
is the fact that coal often contains traces of mercury, and that burning such coal releases
such mercury, a very toxic element, into the environment.
Mercury moves through the food web, and tends to concentrate
in large predatory fish. A
table provided by the United States Food and Drug Administration lists the
mercury content in a number of popular food fish, and discloses that the
highest levels are found in Gulf of Mexico tilefish (average concentration1.45
parts per million), swordfish (0.995 ppm), shark (0.979 ppm), king mackerel
(0.73 ppm) and fresh or frozen bigeye tuna (0.689 ppm).
A CNN
article from March 2016 discusses the importance of the issue, noting that
“The [Environmental Working Group] tested 254 hair samples
from women of childbearing age from 40 states who reported eating as much or
slightly more fish than the government recommendations over a period of two months. The study found that 29% of the women had
more mercury in their bodies than the [Environmental Protection Agency]
considers safe, 1 part per million…
“The study found that mercury levels in women who frequently
eat fish are 11 times higher than in women who rarely eat seafood…
“Mercury exposure during pregnancy can significantly alter
the developing brain and nervous system of the unborn baby and cause lifelong
deficits in learning, memory and reaction times, according to the study. There are also issues for women who are not
pregnant and men: Mercury can have toxic
effects on the nervous, digestive and immune systems, and on lungs, kidneys,
skin and eyes, according to the World Health Organization…”
The good news is that mercury
levels in fish seem to be dropping.
Researchers at Stony Brook University’s (New York) School of
Marine and Atmospheric Science analyzed tissue samples from more than 1,000 Atlantic
bluefin tuna caught between 2004 and 2012, seeking to determine whether the
level of mercury contained in the fish had changed over that time.
It turns out that the average level of mercury had, in fact,
fallen, by an average of 19%.
That reduction tracks a 2.8% decline in the burning of coal
in North American that occurred between 1990 and 2007, which was paralleled by
a 4.3% drop in the amount of mercury found in the waters of the North Atlantic
Ocean. The study also noted that the
amount of mercury in the air over the North Atlantic Ocean dropped by 20%
between 2001 and 2009.
No direct relationship has yet been established between the
reduced mercury levels in bluefin tuna, the reduced use of coal in North
America and the reduced levels of mercury in the air and ocean. However, the correlation is difficult to
ignore.
And if mercury levels are dropping in bluefin because of the
reduced use of coal, there’s also a decent chance that they could be dropping
in bigeye, swordfish and other popular food fish as well.
That would bode well for the health of future generations.
However, it is a change that could be easily undone if the
incoming administration carries through with its “Energy Independence” plan.
For increased offshore drilling and increased use of coal wouldn’t
just be bad for bluefin tuna.
It would be bad for me, you, and for descendants who you haven’t
yet met, for they have not yet been born.
We've made our share of mistakes, and probably deserve the life we now have. But those unborn kids, at least, deserve a fair shake at the start.
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