Wave Energy Development: What are the impacts to fish and other marine life?

Let's see.... the enviros don't like wind (birds), don't like hydro, (dams), don't like nuclear, don't like natural gas, don't like coal, don't like oil.

It just never ends, does it, Dan?

The fact is people like you don't want more energy, you want less. You expect us to all live in the Ewok Village in the trees, eating our organic, locally grown swill.

No. No. NO and NO. I will not submit.

Waa, what are you going to eat if the dams kill the fish, the nuclear waste gets spread on farmland as sludge (reference http://list.web.net/archives/sludgewatch-l/2005-August/000754.html ), and the coal emissions cause birth defects in your kids (already widespread in China http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jMFXYgdu9D1aliqVffurWn6bM1eA ). It isn't Dan that makes this so. He's just the messenger.

From a strictly utilitarian perspective, the salmon themselves are a source of vitamin and mineral energy for the humans and other animals (seals, bear, otter, etc..) who consume the adult fish as they return to and from the rivers. Salmon contain nearly every mineral and vitamin needed by humans and other mammals for survival, so why not consider these migratory fish as needed energy sources that enable our bodies to function??

When looking into energy sources for machines (oil, nuclear, electricity, etc..), there is a far greater input needed than the energy needed to make us humans walk, bike, roll, swim, row, etc.. with our own locomotion powered by a healthy diet. Part of a healthy diet for people along the coastal region is the seasonal runs of salmon available for harvest. Clearly an increase in the population of salmon following a recovery if their ecosystem is restored will be greater over time and cannot be measured by today's conditions with the Klamath dams, toxic algae and the generally unhealthy conditions they are expected to breed, live, eat and grow up in. Look for examples of Klamath's potential at the population recovery following dam removal and restorations at Butte Creek and how that tributary significantly helps sustain the entire Sacramento run as of late with so many other tributaries inaccessible to the salmon..

Butte Creek background;

"The number of spawning fish returning from the ocean to Butte Creek increased 10 percent from 2006 to 2007, Harthorn said. By the look of things, he said, even more fish are returning this year.

But the most dramatic resurgence occurred over the past 10 years, when an average of almost 10,000 salmon a year swam back up the creek, according to Harthorn, who co-founded Friends of Butte Creek in 1999 after years battling farming interests and Pacific Gas and Electric over its DeSabla-Centerville plant.

It is a minor miracle that there are any salmon at all wriggling their way up Butte Creek, given that only 14 fish returned to spawn in 1987.

The dismal return outraged environmentalists and prompted a desperate effort to save the fish. About $30 million was spent by the state on a variety of projects over the years, including the removal of six small dams, the building of fish ladders and the insertion of numerous screens to keep salmon out of water diversion pipes.

Healthy runs

The effort finally paid off in 1998, when 20,000 spring-run salmon were counted in Butte Creek. The runs in 2006 and 2007 were slightly below the average, but still healthy compared with the rest of the Sacramento system.

"The restoration there I think has clearly had a measurable response," said Rob Titus, a senior Department of Fish and Game environmental scientist. "Butte Creek is a good example in the respect that the removal of diversion dams, migration barriers, hydroelectric dams can make a difference. It's a thing you'd really like to see on the really big systems."
"

article found @;
http://www.saveyubasalmon.org/butte_05_08.htm

Salmon, oaks and other native animals and plants are indeed resources available for harvest, though attention needs to be payed to their condition following decades of ecological destruction. What Butte Creek shows us is that recovery of salmon populations is possible there and any other river once the outdated dams are removed. For Pacific NW coastal people, salmon is part of their lifeblood, a source of needed Vitamin D in this otherwise frequently cloudy and sunless climate..

background on Vitamin D;

"In addition, Vitamin D is essential to maintaining the calcium, phosphorus and magnesium balance in the body. Low vitamin D levels can cause muscle weakness, bone aching and increased falling in the elderly. Deficiency of Vitamin D may also increase risk of hypertension, heart attack and heart failure.

Other than synthesizing Vitamin D in our skin when exposed to sun, the only other way we can get it naturally is with the ingestion of oily fish like salmon. Curiously, wild salmon has four times the Vitamin D per serving when compared to farm-raised salmon. Note that frying fish destroys half of its vitamin content.

It doesn't take too much sun exposure to make your Vitamin D - just 15 minutes daily to the arms and legs or face, hands and arms.

Here's the rub though. November through March, above latitude 34 degrees (eg., north of Los Angeles), there is insufficient ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation to stimulate Vitamin D production in the skin - even if it was warm enough to bare your skin.

Here in the Maritime Pacific Northwest where "mostly cloudy with a chance of rain" is the norm, we probably only have three months to reliably get our vitamin D from the sun."

article found @;
http://sanjuanislander.com/columns/susan-hill/12.shtml

Through drilling, dams, nuclear and other ecologically destructive methods, we may have enough energy for our machines, though less energy for our actual physical bodies, minds and spirits. The machines without humans won't get very far either..