by Deborah Bach
Feb 22 2012 in Currents, Environment by Deborah Bach
KUOW’s Ashley Ahern has the story: OLYMPIA, Wash. — There are more than 200 abandoned or sunken ships in Washington waters. These vessels can threaten navigation, human safety and the environment. But state agencies in the Northwest are only equipped to handle part of the problem. We tend to romanticize shipwrecks as water-logged remnants of [...]
by Deborah Bach
Feb 17 2012 in Environment by Deborah Bach
Scientists in Alaska are trying to determine what has killed and sickened more than 130 seals since the summer, but say they don’t think radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is to blame. Since mid-July, more than 60 dead and more than 75 diseased seals, most of them ring seals, have turned up in the [...]
by Deborah Bach
Feb 1 2012 in Boat Show 2012, Business of Boating, Environment by Deborah Bach
Four Washington boatyards recently became the first to be certified under a new program that aims to help protect Puget Sound from water-borne pollutants. Cap Sante Marine in Anacortes, Seaview and Canal boatyards in Seattle and Swantown Marina and Boatworks in Olympia were certified as “clean” under the new Certified Boatyard Program, run by the [...]
by Deborah Bach
Jan 9 2012 in Currents, Environment by Deborah Bach
Extreme tides are blamed for threatening a breach of the South Jetty in La Push, on the coast of Washington. Following a request for assistance from the Quileute Nation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Seattle District sent a flood fight team to the Quillayute River on Saturday to stop an imminent breach of the jetty. [...]
by Deborah Bach
Dec 29 2011 in Currents, Environment by Deborah Bach
Crews are working to contain an oil spill after a vessel sunk in Blind Bay off Shaw Island. The 72-foot wooden boat St. Mary sunk about 200 years off the bay’s southwestern shore and was first reported on Tuesday morning. The boat’s owner reported that the vessel sank with about 50 gallons of diesel fuel [...]
by Deborah Bach
Dec 21 2011 in Environment by Deborah Bach
Extreme tides are starting on the Washington coast and the Strait of Juan de Fuca today, and the state Department of Ecology is inviting people to share photos of this naturally occurring event. The extreme high tides, known as “king tides” in British Columbia and some West Coast states, occur when the sun and moon’s [...]
by Deborah Bach
Dec 15 2011 in Currents, Environment by Deborah Bach
Seattle Times reporter Craig Welch has this story about a sighting of six blue whales off the coast: He spotted the geyserlike spray from its blow hole first. Biologist John Calambokidis was tracking humpback whales about 25 miles off Westport late last week when he saw what he presumed was an exhalation from a much [...]
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