By WESLEY MARX

ysters on a half shell, steaming O clams, broiled salmon _ steaks, shrimp cccktail — all these cherished sea- foods and many more may dwindle un- less we stop ourselves from destroying their very birthright.

A common miscénception contributes to the rise of such a tragic specter. While the ocean regime may appear to stop at the shore, its vital processes extend into our bays, salt marshes, rivers and even our mountain streams. °

In a magnificent migration, silver- toned salmon rise from cold ocean depths, navigate to river mouths in Europe, Scan- dinavia, Asia and the Americans, swim intently against river currents, hurdle small waterfalls and finally pause in green-shaded mountain streams far from the blue ocean. Here they were born and here they will give birth, their tail fins scratching out cribs in the gravel bot- tom. Many other marine fish use rivers as nurseries: shad, striped bass, alewife and the ugly, caviar-bearing sturgeon.

An even greater spectrum of marine life is nursed and reared in estuaries, those places where the oceans and rivers of the world collide to form bays, salt marshes and fjords. Here, succoured on rich nutrients and sheltered from sharks and other marine predators, young tar- pon, snook, mullet, menhaden, dab, plaice, flounder and smelt prepare themselves to enter the vast ocean.

In the United States, two-thirds of the marine catch is estuary-dependent. Mahy fish which keep to the sea are, in turn, dependent on estuaries for providing for- age fare. Our rivers and our estuaries are thus vital nurseries of marine life, the repository of the birthright of so many fish and shellfish. 2

Much of the world’s population lives on or near coast-lines and we tend-to see estuaries and rivers in man-made roles: harbors, navigation channels, land recla- mation projects, sewage ponds, sand and gravel pits. This narrow vision triggers a tragic collision between human geogra- phy and natural geography, as exempli- fied by one beautiful, world renowned bay.

San Francisco Bay makes the city of San ©

Francisco one of the most charming ur- ban regions in the world, part peninsula and part ocean bay, part green mountains and part blue plains. The bay traditionally serves: as a vast marine nursery and a passageway for salmon and other fish.

At one time, the Pacific coast’s larg- est commercial fishing fleet docked in the bay. Yet today no commercial fisher- men trawl their seine nets in its sunlit shallows. The marine nursery is a ghost nursery. It exists largely as a giant cess- pool, a garbage dump and a real estate reservoir.

As a cesspool, it receives the discharg- es of over 80 sewage outfalls. Daily, some 60 tons of greases and oils cascade into the bay and paralyze the nerves of striped bass. Acid wastes burn salmon gills and disrupt breathing. Papermill effluents disrupt the normal division of eggs and fishermen catch freakish flounder. These wastes have transformed the life-giving bay waters into a toxic broth.

Ninety percent of the bay is closed to shellfish harvest. Keeping it clear as a navigation channel means that fish habi- tat is dredged up and oyster beds interred

Se

FISHING ON A BEACH IN BALI

under silt avalanches. As a garbage dump, marshes that. once nurtured eelgrass and other nutrients now exude only hot, pungent odours of decay. Tideland habitat has been buried to accommodate apart- ments, shopping centres, airport run- ways and athletic stadiums. A third of

- the bay — some 257 square miles — has

been reclaimed.

The bay that once provided 15 million pounds of oysters annually no longer sup- ports oyster production. The bay that once provided 300,000 pounds of clams annually no longer supports clam produc- tion. The bay that once provided six and one-half million pounds of shrimp an- nually now produces only 10,000 pounds. .

_ Such a tragic waste is repeated in

’ other famous estuary and river systems

throughout the world. Dr. Pieter Ker-

ringa, Director of the Netherlands In-

stitute for Fisheries Investigation notes: : “The river Rhine, in season, used

to teem with salmon making their way

to their spawning grounds in Germany, France and Switzerland. Old paintings in art galleries reveal that salmon was on the table of the poorest people in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands today, few people have even seen a salmon which did not come out of a tin, or was on display, smoked, in a fishmonger’s shop:

The Rhine is now called Europe’s open

sewer.” :

In the 1900s, fishermen on England’s River Tees harvested 8,000 pounds of salmon yearly: by the 1920s, 3,000 pounds; now, virtually zero. A new and deadly tributary empties into the Tees: twelve million gallons of sewage daily. Sewage- nourished “‘blooms”’ of scum algae render

some of Norway’s deep blue fjords . opaque. These dense greenish blooms, ‘

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 26, 1969—PAGE 8

AA SSO: we PAs Po ae ea,

Marianne Spier Donati/Unesco Courier

by exhausting oxygen in the waters, suf- focate marine life and leave stinking -windrows of dead fish on the beach.

Like sewage outfalls, river dams can seriously impair the nurseries of the sea. Soviet marine biologist G.V: Nikolsky notes in his book ‘‘Special Ichthyology’’:

“The fishing industry is faced with

“hew,, vast problems through the construc-

tion of huge hydroelectric plants. Dams built across the southern rivers of the U.S.S.R. are liable fo obstruct and pre- vent valuable commercial fish, primarily the sturgeon, from reaching their spawn- ing grounds.”’

The dams, by directing river water into irrigation diversions, also serve to lower the level of seas such as the Cas-

-pian, further shrinking the habitat of the

famed sturgeon. Sewage outfalls threaten sturgeon as well. Soviet author Mikhail Sholokhov recently reported that almost

’ a million sturgeon died on one polluted

stretch of river. Today, in a critical effort

.to sustain its long-established caviar

industry, the Soviet Union loads sturgeon aboard river boats to carry them safely through slime that covers their migration

- routes.

Unprotected, the nurseries of the sea can degenerate into nurseries of death that threaten human beings as well as

_ fish. Eleven fishing villages and the

industrial city of Minamata line the shores of Minamata Bay in Japan. In 1950, a nerve disease began affecting some

‘residents. A once bright teenage boy

could no longer button his clothes or hold his chopsticks. A fisherman clawed

his hands, bared his teeth at doctors and

growled at his children. Between 1953 and 1963, some 105 similar cases occur- red, most ending fatally or with severe © disability. .

‘Perplexed by “Minamata Disease,”

_ Minamata Bay and San Francis©? cot"

_ men, the diet of millions of peoP

the World Meteorological Orga!

doctors tried to isolate living common to victims. Most victim’, in the fishing villages rather 4 4 city, and these victims subsisted % bay’s abundant supply of shellfish healthy in their own right, the bay fish were found to contain unusually concentré tions of mercury, a SU highly injurious to human nerves. Where did the mercury come Investigators, including Profess0! “h Uchida of Japan and Dr. Leonard i of the United States, found that 40 ical plant was dumping mercury ¢, bt into the bay. The wastes were dilute, shellfish can filter out and concen dilute substances. ‘Ecological Mab™ tion,”’ a basis of survival in the”. . solution of sea water, had thus beet i verted and the shellfish turned into hl vials of poison. ‘Minamata Dis@ according to Professor Uchida, once the chemical plant stopped d mercury wastes into the bay 2” ited sumption of bay shellfish was pron , Recently New York City exper tit

a sharp rise in cases of hepatll i: flammation of the liver). Many “ay remembered consuming oystels: source of the ovsters was trace nearby bay. Oysters in this baY iy found to have an oily taste. The o ol meat was greenish rather than whit 1, wastes in the bay contributed Sate oily seasoning. Copper wastes cont to the greenish hue. These oystelS: | ig inated and steeped in wastes, we 9) flaming the livers of New Yorkers: tlie the bay oysters lie in quarantine J¥> the shellfish of Minamata Bay. Rhine The tragic degradation of the * py

=

dramatizes one stark fact. If Wee tinue to ignore the ocean’s need ial landward nurseries, we will 8! doom our most valuable and sea foods. sche Not only will the livelihood of and

i= S

the favorite recipes of gourmets ardized. Nutrition experts see int tisf! stocks of the ocean the potential t0 a ste? the hunger of an increasingly cone tiot planet. National agencies and inter yt al agencies like the Food and AgMC aie Organization are attempting to cult te this potential, but these attempts Wet seriously jeopardized if we persist! ilizing the nurseries of the sea. gt The common global interest 1” pre ; serving the nurseries of the sea and nd venting marine pollution, is MOP’, is more being recognized. The FAO © os ory Committee on Marine Res? ni Research (ACMRR) has been quest?) ij governments on the fisheries asPer is marine pollution. This month, spect rt from Unesco, the Fcod and Agric 4) Organization, the Inter-Governm® nd Maritime Consultative Organizati? fio! atl | 5 0

meet in London to study proble marine pollution. pind

Such efforts are aimed at establi®",, a general scientific framework ! 4. conduct of research into marine con tio! ination that will serve to avoid duplic@ es: and expedite practical control meas! arf In addition, industrial nations which ie p how to salvage desecre ted nurseries id show developing nations how to 2 such desecration in the first place-

(From UNESCO Courier)