Free: Contests & Raffles.
Yeah, the millions of gallons of raw sewage Seattle dumps in probably don't have any impact. I'm surprised it's not limited to boat trailer tires.The coho never show up in Puget Sound, long before they would be able to get killed by the tires. We would also see a bunch of floating fish and the toxin would be building up in the seals and kill them too.
If you run the math, it's fairly comical. Puget Sound coho return was 670,000 last year. If tires are killing 90%, then 670k/.1= a real return of 6.7 million before the tires killed them all upon entering the sound and rivers. I would think we would be able to see 6 million dead fish floating around somewhere. I would think the ocean fishermen would also notice if 6-7 million coho were returning.You can do the same math for the Columbia, they would need a couple million to enter to kill 90% and still have the returns they do.It’s not 90% of the coho run. It’s specifically the small creeks that are more near roads. They talk about a creek in west Seattle. The bigger rivers have enough fresh clean water from the mountains to not be as effected. But small creeks off the river could be.Sounds like someone had some fun with a chunk of tire and a pet store aquarium and then made a rather big jump to the Pacific Ocean.I'm not saying tires in the rivers and oceans are a good thing, I'm just highly doubtful it's killing 90% of the salmon that return. I think they are off by at least two orders of magnitude which if true is extremely shameful for a published paper.
You can argue timing all you want. To me the real question is, why does this chemical only kill Coho? Why is there not a major fish kill every fall, of every species when the fall rains do come?I will use Lake Washington as an example. That body of water probably recieves about as much roadway runoff as any, probably more. But yet, every fall at the start of the rainy season, we never see a major fish kill. If it were to happen, it would be all you would see on local news. KING, KIRO and KOMO would be showing it to you every night, as an example why we need to submit to climate change. Now do I think this chemical is harmful? No doubt it is, I just wish news like this was not treated as the next dooms day crisis we need to fix right now. Or it is death to all of us. This chemical also absolves all parties of there responsibility in the salmon solution, its now Les Schwab's fault.
I've seen reports over the past few years that indicate coho mysteriously die pre-spawn in PS streams and creeks. The reports had narrowed it down to run off after rains but hadn't pinpointed what was in the runoff that killed them. I would buy that heightened levels of whatever the pollutant is following the first big rain of the year could be the cause. If it's tire dust, it's had a lot of dry months in a row to build up. I could believe a pretty big number. Growing up I used to see salmon regularly in the creeks that fed into the Sammamish Slough. As development occurred they faded away and as far as I know are gone now. That's one small watershed that undoubtedly held quite a few salmon. Extrapolate that basin wide and I'm sure the numbers could be staggering.
