Unbalanced ecosystem imperils rich web of life


		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	The Muckleshoot Tribe operates a successful salmon fishery in the heavily industrialized lower Duwamish River. Cleanup of pollutants there -- PCBs, mercury, lead and other heavy metals and pesticides -- is to begin in fall 2003.

Poisoned crab, it would turn out.

Laced with heavy metals and toxic chemicals, the meat was stunting the octopuses' growth. As soon as Anderson switched to healthier food, the creatures began living up to their name -- giant Pacific octopus.

Most creatures in Puget Sound aren't so fortunate. They are on their own, trying to survive in a damaged environment.

Some 92,000 acres of mud and sand at the bottom of the Sound are contaminated. It is the unwelcome legacy of human activity -- from paper mills releasing dioxin and smelters coughing deadly metals to the military dumping of PCBs.

Miles of shoreline are mangled by the expansion of constructed bulkheads that starve beaches, causing sandy fish "nurseries" to disappear. Generations of fishermen -- with the blessings of state government -- have gutted native fish stocks, bringing some species to the brink of local extinction.

And the greatest threat is growing: The region's human population, with its motor vehicles, pesticides and sewage.


	A five-part special report about the effects of pollution on the waters of Puget Sound. - Part 1: Polluted waters - Part 2: Extinction or bust - Part 3: Ruinous runoff - Part 4: Maritime mess - Part 5: Turning things around - Further developments - More stories - Join the forum Read the transcript of a live chat with reporters Robert McClure and Lisa Stiffler.

There are glimmers of hope. Fewer known contaminants are being dumped into our waters than in the past, and old underwater waste is slowly being buried under cleaner sediments.

Populations of harbor seals, eagles and some ducks are rebounding.

But when scientists look at the big picture, they say the Sound's web of life is in peril.

Chinook salmon -- dubbed "the lifeblood" of the Pacific Northwest -- require protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. Orcas, poisoned by industrial chemicals, are in decline.

Certain herring stocks, a key food source for many creatures, are disappearing. Fifteen out of 18 seabird species are dwindling.

"The marine resources here are in deep trouble. We've reached the bottom," said Tom Cowan, director of the federally funded Northwest Straits Commission, which supports efforts to undo the damage.

To recall the Sound's historic bounty, one must go back decades, if not a century.

Terry Williams, 54, a Tulalip Tribe commissioner, said his father and grandfather used to tow a second canoe when they went fishing.

"Because some of those fish were so big . . . you'd fill the other canoe with fish," Williams said.

For the most part, the big fish are gone.

The natural balance is out of whack. Today's ecosystem more closely resembles the remains of a depleted Christmas tree farm than a wilderness. Foresters know the silence of a human-planted stand of Douglas fir. The sameness is less hospitable to wildlife. Infestations and disease can be devastating, spreading unchecked.

"If people had any idea, I don't think they'd be so complacent," said Mike Censi, a fisheries inspector and investigator for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

"They can see a dump site. They can see a clearcut. So they react. But they can't see what's going on underneath the surface.

"They look at the Sound, and it looks to them like it always has. So they think there is no problem."

Scuba divers, though, know better.


		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	Brothers Kevin and Robert Blacketer of the Skokomish Tribe pull in a net full of chum salmon near Hoodsport. Salmon runs vary greatly from year to year.

Mysteries of the deep

Divers exploring a popular spot on Hood Canal were recently confronted by a grim sight.

A cobwebby film shrouded dead sea cucumbers. Dungeness crabs were black and lifeless. And there were carcasses of octopuses -- some so familiar that the divers had given them names.

"That's a devastating hit," said Waynne Fowler, a diving instructor from Olympia. "There was speculation there was a dump or a spill."

The real cause is more insidious.

Surface algae in the 60-mile-long canal multiplied by the millions last summer. They died off in early fall and sank to the bottom, where they decomposed and were eaten by bacteria. The bacteria, in turn, sucked life-giving oxygen from the water.

Fish in the canal became so stressed that the state declared an emergency fishing ban last month on all finfish except salmon.

Human activity around Hood Canal, particularly stormwater runoff fouled by septic tanks, logging and fertilizer, is suspected of boosting phosphorus and nitrogen levels, effectively overfeeding the algae. A lack of rainfall probably contributed.


	Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
A sport fisherman takes home chum salmon, caught near the hatchery on the Hood Canal.

"We're essentially flushing into Puget Sound," said Vera Trainer, a marine biotoxicologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

In recent years, algal blooms around the Sound have lasted longer and spread farther, scientists say. An increase has been seen in the type of algae that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning, which in rare cases kills people. Nobody knows for sure what is causing these changes.

While pollution, overfishing and global warming may be driving much of it, environmental regulators and researchers say the decline of so many species here remains largely a mystery.

Take the plight of the sea pen -- a flamboyant creature whose vibrant orange plumes are showy enough to line a Las Vegas showgirl's headdress.

In the late '60s and early '70s, a University of Washington graduate student mapped the range of sea pens in central Puget Sound with help from volunteer divers. From Richmond Beach to Fauntleroy, they found vast colonies, forming an "almost continuous band."

Years later, one of the divers, Michael Kyte, pulled on his scuba gear to revisit a spot that was lush with 3-foot-high sea pens and a host of other organisms. The marine biologist was paralyzed by what he saw.

"I realized there was something missing," he recalled recently. "I sat for a moment and thought about it and realized there were no sea pens. Not a reduced number, there were zero."

Kyte systematically repeated the old study. He found a sprinkling of small sea pens in some locations, none at others. Much of the seascape was barren.

Nobody knows what caused the sea pens to vanish, but Kyte suspects the biggest culprit may be rising water temperatures -- a concern for all the world's oceans.

If sea pens are canaries in the coal mine, jellyfish may be, too.

Around Friday Harbor in the San Juans, there used to be so many jellyfish that scientists could catch them by the thousands every summer in order to extract a fluorescent protein used in experiments.

This year, "it dropped to virtually zero," said UW researcher Claudia Mills.

It's a phenomenon she can't explain. Many invertebrates are in trouble, she said, but few scientists are looking at the problem.

Said Mills: "It really worries me."

Banned chemical lives on

Ken Balcomb is explaining the family tree of the Puget Sound orcas he has been following since the 1970s, pointing out on a chart the red and pink family lines that are still viable and the blue ones that, because only males have been born, are "a dead end."

Some lines trace down to an individual orca, but many simply end in a little box.

"What are the small ones?" a visitor inquires.

"Tombstones," the scientist answers.

The orca as an icon of the Northwest has become something of a cliche. Still, tourists and residents can't seem to get enough of the splashing black-and-white mammals that cavort like humans in the backyard pool.

Yet, the Sound's orca population has declined by one-fifth over the last seven years. Researchers say that is attributable at least in part to a long-banned class of industrial chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Used for decades in various industrial applications, PCBs were banned in 1979.

But they are still with us. And here, something weird is going on.

"Puget Sound is a PCB hot spot in the regional environment," said Peter Ross, a marine mammal toxicologist with the Canadian government's Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C. "We're trying to figure out where these darn PCBs are coming from."

Scientists know that PCBs mimic estrogen, a human hormone. The chemicals interfere first with the mother's ability to have young, sometimes causing a malformed uterus. Then, if a mother orca can bear a calf, she doses it with the PCBs, which attack the young one's organs just as it is developing.


	Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
Canoes paddled by members of eight Puget Sound tribes approach the historic site of the Duwamish Tribe's longhouse. The Duwamish River, now a Superfund site, was the source of the tribe's sustenance.

The toll increases throughout life as the orca gulps down contaminated fish, especially fatty ones like salmon. People are warned not to eat some fish caught near urban areas around the Sound because of contaminants such as PCBs and mercury.

Scientists are still trying to figure out all the ways PCBs move through the food chain. Generally, they believe that tiny animals that live in the sediment take them in. They are eaten by larger creatures, which in turn are eaten by even larger ones. At each step, the eater takes in flesh contaminated with PCBs. Wastes are excreted, but the toxins remain.

"Once it's incorporated into the food chain, it may be that it's recycling," said Sandie O'Neill, a state Fish and Wildlife researcher.

That may help explain why populations of harbor seals here haven't rebounded as quickly under federal protection as those along the Pacific Coast and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

PCBs aren't the only toxics affecting orcas, just the most long-lived. Researchers believe contaminants contributing to their ill health include dioxins, heavy metals and a class of chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which come mostly from petroleum, including motor vehicle exhaust. Add to that list the overall decline of their favorite food -- salmon.

People caught baby orcas during the '60s and '70s for display in aquariums. Before that, fishermen shot them. The Air Force even used them for target practice.

Balcomb, the orca researcher, looked up at the tombstones on the family tree.

"Considering everything we've done to them -- shooting them, taking their babies, crapping on them, taking their food . . . it's remarkable they're still here."


		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	The ancient tradition of honoring the season's first salmon was revived by the Tulalip Tribe in 1996. The salmon is greeted, wrapped in ferns and cedar and then shared among the tribe and guests in a feast.

Armored shorelines take their toll

Strolling along a Camano Island beach, Dan Penttila suddenly drops to one knee. The state fish biologist scoops up a handful of fluffy sand, removing his glasses for a better look. In his hand are dozens of tiny, nearly transparent eggs.

With any luck, they'll hatch into surf smelt, a small silver fish that provides sustenance to larger marine critters.

Smelt eggs require sandy, shady beaches. Rocky ones don't hold water, causing eggs to dry out. Beaches devoid of trees and plants are like frying pans.

"The sun beats down on them," Penttila said. "It will literally cook the fish eggs."

For years, the importance of the natural shoreline in this region has been under-appreciated. Only 10 years ago, Penttila discovered that the sand lance, another vital forage fish, also spawned on the region's beaches.

But around the Sound, beaches are in trouble.

Miles of boulder or concrete seawalls have been erected by erosion-minded homeowners. By blocking the movement of dirt from high ground onto the shoreline, scientists say, people are strangling the "river of sand" that feeds healthy beaches. "You shut off the supply of the fine stuff . . . the beach is going to coarsen," Penttila said.

In many places, the soft sand is washed away and only large rocks or underlying clay remain.

Laws passed to protect beaches are out of date and lax, critics say. And the ones on the books aren't always enforced.

One-third of the Sound's shorelines have been armored, according to state studies. Three-quarters of the Snohomish County shoreline has been bulkheaded. In King County, it's two-thirds; in Pierce and Thurston, about half; and in Kitsap, about two-fifths.


	Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
Tony Frantz uses red balloons to mark logs soaked with creosote on a Whidbey Island beach. Creosote, employed to treat wood used in marine structures, is a particular threat to herring eggs.

Half of the armoring stems from construction of expensive view homes -- yet single-family residential development is subject to less-stringent rules than other land uses.

Eight years ago, top Canadian and U.S. scientists met to prioritize the threats to the Puget Sound-Georgia Basin marine environment. They weighed everything from human pollution to oil spills and the proliferation of invasive species.

What alarmed scientists the most?

Destruction of nearshore habitat.

Beach becomes a toxic dump

The scene on a southern Whidbey Island beach looked festive. Little girls in frilled swimsuits clambered over logs. Driftwood was adorned by red balloons.

More than 300 of the balloons bobbed in the breeze, but this was hardly a celebration. They marked every creosote- or chemical-soaked log, piling or railroad tie.

"That's a classic dripper," said Tony Frantz, pointing to a log that looked like it was coated in black honey.

Frantz, a Whidbey inventor and activist, used the balloons to draw attention to the toxic flotsam the currents had hauled in.

"They're just everywhere, everywhere you look," he said scanning the beach. "This is a public place. This is horrible."

Researchers at the University of California-Davis have measured the effects of creosote, which is a mixture of more than 300 known compounds, including PAHs, on herring eggs. They incubated herring eggs in water containing creosote-soaked wood. Half the eggs failed to hatch. Those that did had lethal abnormalities.

Banned for use in new docks in many areas, chemically treated pilings are knocked loose from old piers and sent adrift. Creosote-stained planks are lost from storm-rattled barges. Some of the tainted wood floats down from Canada.

State officials say one source is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, which has abandoned railroad ties near tracks that run for miles along the Sound. Creosote can ooze from the ties, spreading a sheen on the saltwater.

The old ties "are right along the tracks where new ties are being put in," said Barry Wenger, who is leading a state Ecology Department effort to take creosote-treated wood from beaches in Whatcom County.

Wenger is convinced that the railroad is polluting the Sound, perhaps unintentionally. Instead of penalties, he plans to meet with Burlington Northern officials to try to solve the problem. The railroad denies that its ties are being left behind.

"We remove them," said Gus Melonas, a Seattle-based spokesman for Burlington Northern. "Protection of the environment is a top priority."

Creosote is only one source of PAHs. This nasty family of compounds bombards nearshore environments, washing in with urban stormwater or dumped with industrial waste.

Take the plight of the Cherry Point herring, for example. Once the Sound's largest herring stock, the population has dropped from nearly 15,000 tons to 1,330 over the last 30 years.

Their decline has numerous suspects: loss of habitat, climate change, overfishing -- and oil refineries and an aluminum smelter located near the spawning grounds.

Petroleum routinely gets into the waters around Cherry Point in Whatcom County in the form of industrial discharges and occasional spills. The BP and ConocoPhillips refineries legally dump oil and grease. Monitoring samples taken last summer revealed that the facilities released more than 200 pounds of organic matter containing oil and grease in a single day -- well within the limits of their state permit.

Federal researchers in Alaska recently showed that PAHs in crude oil, when exposed to sunlight, cause mutations or death in herring larvae at less than 1 part per billion.

While Cherry Point's herring have those abnormalities, the riddle of their decline isn't easily solved.

UW scientists have found that even when the fish are raised in a laboratory in an unpolluted environment, the mutations arise.

"Did the population become so small because the larvae are abnormal? Or are the larvae abnormal because the population is so small?" asked Paul Hershberger of the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.

"We might be seeing an inbreeding effect of cousins mating with cousins."


		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	Eric Hall of Taylor Shellfish's North Bay operation in Mason County inspects recently restored oyster beds. Harvest restrictions affect about one-fifth of the Sound's 140,000 acres of commercial shellfish beds.

Migrating seabirds disappear

When the days here get cold and damp, countless Puget Sound residents pack their bags and head for warmer, drier climes.

And seabirds fleeing wintry weather elsewhere move in -- by the thousands.

Every winter, populations of ducks, geese, grebes, loons, gulls and cormorants in this region usually quadruple, state Fish and Wildlife experts say. But the numbers aren't what they used to be.

"You used to see birds coming in almost like cloud formations," said Williams, fisheries/natural resources commissioner for the Tulalips. "You just don't see that anymore."

They come in part to fatten up for spring breeding. But these days, they arrive to a meal that is often skimpy and polluted.

Overall numbers of seabirds are dropping dramatically. Populations of three species of grebes, which are primarily fish eaters, have plummeted by up to 95 percent over the past 20 years, according to government surveys taken along the Strait of Juan de Fuca and in the San Juan Islands.

The numbers of two species of cormorants have dropped by more than half. Marbled murrelets have nearly vanished.

"We're talking hundreds of thousands of birds that are just not here anymore," said Don Norman, a wildlife consultant in Seattle.

Seabirds dependent on forage fish, such as herring, sand lance and surf smelt, have been hardest hit. Species with a more diverse diet, such as bufflehead and harlequin ducks, seem to be doing better. Their dietary diversity could be aiding their survival.

"The declines are so remarkable, and yet we don't really know . . . what exactly is causing this," said Alex Morgan, conservation coordinator with Seattle Audubon Society.

It's difficult to determine causes because most of the birds are migratory and breed elsewhere. Scientists don't know exactly where they are from or what routes they fly.

The loss of the birds can hurt the ecosystem because they help cycle nutrients by eating fish and shellfish and then excreting waste that feeds critters at the bottom of the food chain, closing the loop.

But the loss cuts even deeper than ecosystem impacts.

"People move here and stay here just because of the quality of life, including birding and whale-watching," Morgan said. "It's time for a wakeup call for the region to be looking at some of these issues."


		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	State scientists test fish at Eagle Harbor, once a hot spot for pollution. After a cleanup, there has been a decrease in cancerous tumors in bottomfish.

Invasion of the ratfish

To hear the panic in Wayne Palsson's voice, you have to listen closely.

As he rides through the Tacoma Narrows on the research boat Chasina, the scientist's understated Nordic manner belies the grave worries behind his measured words.

"Most of the huge fish have already been removed," Palsson said. "Since 1989, there hasn't been much commercial fishing down here. So you would expect this to have blossomed, but that isn't necessarily the case."

To gauge fish stocks, Palsson has been towing nets through Puget Sound since the late '80s.

Increasingly, the news is grim. About half of the Sound's fish stocks tracked by state scientists are in trouble. Since 1980, Pacific cod is down by 92 percent. Pacific whiting and walleye pollock were hammered so much in the '80s that the fisheries were closed in the '90s.


	James Johnson / P-I
A lingcod rests on the bottom at the Edmonds Underwater Park. Fishing is not allowed there, and the fish tend to grow larger because of it. Some offshore bottom areas are devoid of life.

There is much scientists don't understand about the web of life in these waters. "Who lives here? How do they depend on each other?" Palsson asked. "We're just starting to learn how that works."

The whiting are physically shrinking. Fishing pressure or perhaps environmental conditions caused them to start reproducing younger -- to avoid local extinction. In a few decades, the size of spawning whiting went from 11 inches to 8. "Seeing a shift like that in such a short time period is alarming," Palsson said.

The decline of fish native to Puget Sound has continued for decades, even as conditions in the ocean and local rivers have contributed to volatile fluctuations of salmon stocks. Scientists say the resident fish are a better gauge of the Sound's health.

Palsson is beginning to piece together clues that may yield understanding of our fractured ecosystem. He wonders, for example, whether an increase in the number of Dungeness crabs might result from depressed stocks of cod and dogfish -- crab predators. And he is convinced that the decline of the dogfish shark is ominous.

"Dogfish are essentially the wolves of the sea -- if you don't have them out there weeding out the weak, you have an imbalance," Palsson said.

The orange and green net spreads out behind the Chasina, which continues ahead at 2 knots for 10 minutes.

This kind of fishing used to be routine. Pull a net through the water, scoop up everything, pick out the fish you're after and toss the rest back, leaving most to die. Called seining, this form of fishing has been banned in Puget Sound proper since 1989, except by Native American tribes and scientists such as Palsson.

The first tow of the day is hauled aboard. Crew members start sorting and counting the fish.

This haul has little to tempt a commercial fisherman: deck shrimp; sturgeon poachers; spearnose poachers; red rock crabs; shiner perch; leather starfish; buffalo sculpin.

The biggest catch is ratfish. Their slimy, copper-colored, white-spotted bodies are all over the table. What really stands out are the ratfish's eyes. They are a fluorescent lime-green -- with no discernible pupils.

This devilish-looking fish makes up the largest segment of what scientists call the "biomass" of Puget Sound, meaning that if you took all the fish in the Sound and weighed them, ratfish would come out on top: about three-fifths of the biomass.

"They're good at chomping invertebrates," Palsson said, referring to the crabs, worms and other animals without skeletons that ratfish eat.

"And they're taking over."

'I was part of the problem'

We're famous for seafood. Tourists stand in line to watch our fish fly.

So don't expect to see this fact in any full-color brochure:

The Sound is a "hot spot" for fast-fading fish. Two years ago, the American Fisheries Society put it on that list along with the Gulf of California, the northern Gulf of Mexico and Florida.

Rockfish and other bottom-dwelling species here are among the most depleted. They are victims of overfishing, which was actively encouraged by the state of Washington. The idea was to deflect fishing pressure from flagging salmon stocks.

"I used to go out and give talks to sport groups about how to catch bottomfish," said Mary Lou Mills of Fish and Wildlife. "I was part of the problem. A lot of us were."

In a strange twist, the longevity of rockfish is a key reason behind their sharp decline. They live about as long as humans -- two to three times longer than scientists previously believed. Rockfish don't start producing significant numbers of young until their teens, and fishermen started harvesting large numbers of them before they could bear a sizable number of offspring. The result: a devastated population.

Traditionally, the state didn't restrict fishing until a catch crashed. Fish and Wildlife biologists say they now try err on the side of caution.

In just four years, from 1996 to 2000, the Sound's commercial fish catch was cut in half, records show. The amount caught by recreational anglers dropped by a third. Still, about 3.4 million pounds were taken out of the Sound in 2000, records show.

When it comes to declining fish stocks, overfishing is only part of the problem, experts say.

Scientists are pretty sure that global warming also is affecting the Sound's sea life. Hake and pollock, for instance, are at the southern end of their range here. Maybe one reason they didn't bounce back after the overfishing of the '70s and '80s has to do with climate. Also, a warming planet means rising seas that could shrink beaches already starved by bulkheads.

There is also habitat loss, urban pollution -- and growing competition from invasive species, some that arrive as stowaways in the ballast water of cargo ships.

American shad, for instance, came here from the East Coast. They appear to be stealing food from herring and may be spawning where salmon ought to.

"I've never seen as many shad as I have this year; these are unprecedented numbers," Palsson says. "If they're competing and occupying the same niche as native species do. . . ."

His voice trails off. But clearly, this scientist is worried.

Around the Sound, Palsson and a small cadre of researchers are racing for clues that will help them discover what is causing the natural imbalances before it is too late.

"We don't have the time or funding to waste in going in wrong directions," said Williams, of the Tulalip Tribe.

"We really need to stop and think about the whole environment we live in," he said. "If it's not supporting the wild things, it's not going to support us."

P-I reporter Mike Lewis contributed to this report. P-I reporter Lisa Stiffler can be reached at 206-448-8042 or lisastiffler@seattlepi.com

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