4/5 Turkey vulture, whale hunt, BC herring, plastic action, WA wolf pack, Navy ocean testing

Turkey Vulture [Gene Helfman]

Our Turkey Vultures are Back!
Gene Helfman on Lopez Island wrote on Wednesday: "This morning, two vultures and an eagle were circling off our shore.  I went to investigate and found a fairly fresh/very dead deer.  One of the vultures hung out long enough to get a photo so I read up on these fascinating creatures: The Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura), also called turkey buzzard, is the most widespread of the New World vultures, ranging from southern Canada to the southern tip of South America.  Turkey Vultures are scavengers, feeding almost exclusively on carrion. They can find food via their sense of smell --  a rarity among birds -- by detecting gasses produced by decaying carrion. Turkey Vultures cool themselves via evaporation by defecating on their legs and defend themselves and their nests by regurgitating semi-digested meat. Vocalizations are grunts or low hisses. The local subspecies, or Western Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura meridionalis), is one of five known subspecies and migrates as far as South America each autumn. Longevity is at least 16 years in the wild and more than 30 years in captivity.  Turkey Vultures are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (Wikipedia)."

Feds propose allowing Makah tribe to hunt gray whales again
The Makah tribe could soon be hunting gray whales again, under a proposal from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would grant a waiver on federal marine-mammal protections. The tribe on the northwest tip of the continental United States last legally hunted gray whales in 1999, in its first known gray-whale hunt in more than 70 years. The hunt revived a cultural tradition lost after nontribal commercial exploitation of the whales drove them nearly to extinction. Protection under the Endangered Species Act beginning in 1970 allowed gray-whale populations to thunder back, and they were removed from the list of endangered species in 1994. In 2017, an estimated 27,000 gray whales in the northeastern Pacific migrated between calving grounds in Baja and feeding grounds in the Arctic. The grays are migrating north off the Washington state coast now, in one of nature’s longest treks. The hunt on May 17, 1999, was a triumph for the Makah tribe, the only tribe in the United States with an explicit treaty right to whale. Lynda Mapes reports. (Seattle Times)

Jack Knox: Herring ‘party’ turns into a solitary pursuit
“There’s one,” John George says, and starts reeling. He must be a patient man. He has been jigging from the Craigflower Bridge since 11 a.m. — four hours — and this is only the second herring he’s caught. It flashes silver as he drops it in a bucket. George must like his own company, too. Herring fishermen used to stand shoulder to shoulder on the bridge each spring, but today he’s the only one.... Now 65, he has been doing this since he was six, seven years old. He used to be able to fish all the way down to the rapids, even to the Selkirk Water, but the bridge is the only place now, and even then it’s slim pickings.,,,  It has, in fact, been hit and miss for a generation. Millennials have never seen the great masses of herring that used to flood into the Gorge early each year. This season was particularly thin, Jacques Sirois says. “It seems we’ve reached the bottom of the barrel this year. It has been spectacularly low in numbers of herring.” Sirois is chairman of the Friends of the Victoria Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary. If it seems odd that a bird guy is fretting about herring, remember that they’re all interconnected. (Jack Know writes. (Times Colonist)

82% of Canadians urging government action to tackle plastic pollution: CBC poll 
Nine out of 10 respondents to a survey about the impact of plastic waste on the environment say they are concerned or very concerned about the problem, and 82 per cent say they believe that government should be doing more to tackle it. The Angus Reid Forum conducted a representative online survey of 1,500 Canadians from March 14 to 17 for CBC's Marketplace about what they thought about plastic pollution, over-packaged products, and the government's strategy on the issue. (A randomized sample of this size would yield a margin of error of +/- 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.) The results suggest the majority of Canadians are concerned about plastic, believe that individuals and businesses have a responsibility to reduce it, but also feel strongly that not enough is being done by government to address the issue. Luke Denne reports. (CBC)

Wolf pack living west of Cascade Mountains for first time in decades 
Western Washington has its first wolf pack in decades, an indication that wolf recovery is on track and a sign that the canines are expanding their range in a healthier ecosystem, wildlife officials say. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) announced Thursday that biologists had documented a pack of the animals living in Skagit County, west of the Cascade crest. A male wolf, which had been captured in the county and given a radio collar in 2017, was joined this winter by a female wolf, according to according to wildlife officials. Evan Bush reports. (Seattle Times)

Navy ocean testing up for review 
The U.S. Navy is... [planning]... testing and training exercises... off the Northwest coast starting in November 2020....[T]he Navy is required to... assess the effects of the use of underwater acoustic and electromagnetic devices, chemicals released during operations, risks of entanglement for large fish and marine mammals, as well as the use of explosives in the zone that stretches from Puget Sound south to the Mendocino-Humboldt County line. The exercises would occur outside of the 12-mile limit marking California’s state waters, according to the Navy. The current study is an update to a 2015 environmental document that raised controversy over the effects of Navy operations on undersea life, especially testing acoustic devices that may interfere with or injure animals’ ability to navigate and communicate. The assessment comes on the heels of a study by UC Santa Cruz researchers published March 12 in the journal “Aquatic Mammals” that, according to the article’s summary “provid(es) scientific recommendations for noise exposure criteria that could have far-reaching regulatory implications.” Navy Environmental Public Affairs Specialist Julianne Stanford stated in an email Tuesday, “.... Proposed activities conducted in the offshore area are expected to occur primarily in the Study Area off the coast of Washington...."  (Fort Bragg Advocate-News)


Now, your weekend tug weather--
West Entrance U.S. Waters Strait Of Juan De Fuca-  319 AM PDT Fri Apr 5 2019   
TODAY  SE wind 10 to 20 kt becoming S in the afternoon. Wind  waves 1 to 3 ft. SW swell 5 ft at 8 seconds. Rain in the morning  then showers in the afternoon. 
TONIGHT  S wind 10 to 20 kt becoming SE after midnight. Wind  waves 1 to 3 ft. SW swell 8 ft at 8 seconds building to W 10 ft  at 18 seconds after midnight. Showers. 
SAT  SE wind 15 to 25 kt. Wind waves 2 to 4 ft. W swell 13 ft  at 18 seconds. Rain. 
SAT NIGHT  SW wind 20 to 30 kt becoming SE 5 to 15 kt after  midnight. Wind waves 3 to 5 ft subsiding to 1 to 2 ft after  midnight. W swell 16 ft at 15 seconds. 
SUN  SE wind 5 to 15 kt becoming W in the afternoon. Wind waves  2 ft or less. W swell 12 ft at 13 seconds.



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