7/17 Gnats, Marysville stormwater, Bellingham Bay, 'chemically altered water, Stanley Park GBH, seagrass and plastics

 

Gnat

Gnats
Gnats are a group of tiny, winged flies. They belong to the fly order Diptera, which includes mosquitoes, flies, and maggots. You may also hear them called biting midges or blackflies, among other names. There are, among many other types, fungus gnats and biting gnats. (WebMD)

Today's top story in Salish Current: Where San Juan County District 2 candidates stand

At new Marysville water treatment facility, plants filter out pollutants
The city’s new stormwater treatment plant isn’t landmarked by large tanks and pipes — or any buildings for that matter. Near the shore of Ebey Slough, the plant — charged with treating 460 acres of urban runoff — looks like a park, with paved walkways and rows of native grasses. Ta'Leah Van Sistine reports. (Everett Herald)

Just how filthy is Bellingham Bay — and who is cleaning it up?
People are fighting two main sources of pollution in Bellingham Bay: legacy contamination from old industrial and manufacturing sites, and new and ongoing pollution from sewage and trash. Ben Long reports. (CDN)

City probing whether polluted water ended up in creek
The city of Victoria and others are probing allegations that an operation in the Burnside-Gorge area dumped close to one million litres of “chemically altered water” into a storm drain. Roxanne Egan-Elliott reports. (Times Colonist)

Stanley Park's great blue herons are back for another nesting season
 The return of spring in Vancouver also brings the return of great blue herons to Stanley Park, and the return of the park board's live camera monitoring their nests. "Heron cam" is now in its ninth year, but the colony itself has been around considerably longer. According to the Vancouver Park Board, records of herons nesting in Stanley Park stretch back to 1921. (CTV News)

Seagrass and Plastic Are Not Friends
In 2021, what sounded like a good news story hit the media: in the Mediterranean, seagrasses were trapping plastic waste, capturing fragments in their leaves and locking microplastics in seafloor sediments. The news cycle was spurred by a study of Neptune grass, which showed that when this seagrass species sheds its leaves each autumn some of that plastic debris is jettisoned back to shore, slightly cleaning the marine environment. At the time, scientists and reporters billed the Mediterranean seagrass as a potent ally in the fight against marine plastic pollution. But that hopeful narrative is, unfortunately, too optimistic and only tells part of the story. Sean Mowbray reports. (Hakai Magazine)

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Here's your tug weather—
West Entrance U.S. Waters Strait Of Juan De Fuca-  235 AM PDT Wed Jul 17 2024    
TODAY  NW wind 5 to 10 kt, rising to 15 to 20 kt. Seas 3 to  4 ft. Wave Detail: W 3 ft at 10 seconds.  
TONIGHT  NW wind 15 to 20 kt, becoming N 5 to 10 kt after  midnight. Seas 3 to 4 ft. Wave Detail: W 3 ft at 10 seconds.

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