EnviroPolitics Blog

Researchers use drones to weigh whales

Newswise — How do you weigh a living whale? The obvious response is very carefully, but scientists can’t exactly put these large marine mammals on a scale. Researchers from Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) in Denmark and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the U.S. devised a way to accurately estimate the weight of free-living whales using only aerial images taken by drones. The innovative method, published in the British Ecological Journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, can be used to learn more about the physiology and ecology of whales.

By measuring the body length, width and height of free-living southern right whales photographed by drones, researchers were able to develop a model that accurately calculated the body volume and mass of the whales. Because of their large size and aquatic life, previously the only way to obtain data on the body mass of whales was to weigh dead or stranded individuals.

“Knowing the body mass of free-living whales opens up new avenues of research,” says Fredrik Christiansen, an assistant professor at AIAS and lead author of the study, which was funded by a research grant from the National Geographic Society. “We will now be able to look at the growth of known aged individuals to calculate their body mass increase over time and the energy requirements for growth. We will also be able to look at the daily energy requirements of whales and calculate how much prey they need to consume.”

“Weight measurements of live whales at sea can inform how chronic stressors affect their survival and ability to produce offspring,” adds Michael Moore, a biologist at WHOI and a co-author of the paper.

To calculate the body volume and mass of southern right whales the researchers first took aerial photos of 86 individuals off the coast of Península Valdés, Argentina. The clear waters and the large number of whales that gather there every winter for breeding made it an ideal place to collect high quality images of both the dorsal and lateral sides of the whales. From these they were able to obtain length, width and height measurements.

The model also allowed the researchers to collaborate with the Digital Life Project at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the USA to first recreate a 3D mesh of the whale, and then to work with CG artist Robert Gutierrez to recreate the full-colour 3D model of the right whale. These models can be used for both scientific purposes, such as studying movement, as well as for educational uses.

By adjusting the parameters of the model, the approach could be used to estimate the size of other marine mammals where alternative, more invasive, methods aren’t feasible or desirable.

Baleen whales, which include species like the blue whale, are the largest animals on this planet, with body mass being central to their success as an animal group. However, data on their size has historically been limited to dead specimens, with most samples coming from whaling operations, accidental fisheries bycatch or beach strandings.

Collecting data on dead whales has limitations such as being unable to collect longitudinal data over a whale’s life span and inaccuracies from physical distortion of carcasses caused by bloating and deflation.

“The difficulty in measuring body mass reliably in free-living whales, has prevented the inclusion of body mass in many studies in ecology, physiology and bioenergetics,” Christiansen says. “This novel approach will now make it possible to finally include this central variable into future studies of free-living whales.”

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the oceans and their interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the oceans’ role in the changing global environment. For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu.

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Recycle Right NY: Let’s be clear! Not all glass belongs in your recycling

From the New York Department of Environmental Conservation

When glass is recycled it reduces emissions, saves energy, and conserves natural resources compared to using raw materials. But did you know not all glass can be recycled in your local recycling program?

What glass should I put in the recycling bin?

The only glass you should put in the recycling bin is glass bottles and jars. All other glass, ceramics, or pottery cannot go in your local recycling program. This includes but is not limited to plates, flower pots, drinking glasses, mugs, light bulbs, mirrors, windowpane, broken glass, baking glass, home decor, and more.

Why can I only put glass bottles and jars in the recycling bin?

Other types of glass have a different melting point and chemical composition than bottles and jars. If these materials are mixed with glass from bottles and jars it can contaminate glass recycling or weaken recycled glass which hurts recycling programs.

What can I do with glass that is not a bottle or jar?

Don’t contaminate, reuse, up-cycle or donate! Gently used glass, ceramic, and pottery items can be donated to charitable organizations and other people who can use them. Also consider reuse! If your items cannot be donated or reused, carefully dispose of them in the trash.

What about glass bottles with a deposit on them?

Some glass beverage bottles are part of NY’s Returnable Container Act otherwise known as the Bottle Bill. These glass bottles can be returned for recycling at local redemption centers for 5 cents. Because this glass is generally cleaner and is already separated it makes glass recycling more efficient, making it easier for your glass to be turned into things like new bottles or home insulation. Learn more about the types of beverage containers accepted under the Returnable Container Act.

Quick Tips: Glass Recycling and Reuse

Is it a bottle or a jar? It can go in your recycling bin for your curbside program, transfer station or another local drop-off program. And remember – many beverage bottles are accepted in NY’s Bottle Bill deposit programs that are good for recycling!
Not a bottle or jar? Don’t contaminate the bin. Reuse, up-cycle or donate.
Not in condition to donate or reuse? Carefully dispose of it in the trash.
Broken glass? Whether a bottle, jar, or another glass item, no broken glass should ever go in your recycling bin.

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Public Forum October 7 on Proposed Gibbstown LNG Export Terminal

Editor’s Note: The information below, supplied by the Delaware Riverkeeper, appeared today in our Enviro-Events Calendar. If you have an event to publicize, send it to editor@enviropolitics.com
There is no fee for this valuable public service.

In this file photo, Liberian LNG tanker Al Hamra arrives at a port in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, Monday, April 21, 2014. (Koji Sasahara/AP Photo)

October 7, 2019
Public Forum: Proposed Gibbstown LNG Export Terminal
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Cherry Hill Public Library
1100 Kings Highway North, Cherry Hill, NJ 08034
(Information supplied by the Delaware Riverkeeper)
A public forum on the Gibbstown Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export terminal in Gloucester County, NJ will be held on Monday, October 7 in Cherry Hill, NJ to examine and discuss the operations that are proposed, the potential impacts to the environment, public health and safety, and the status of the project. Expert speakers include Fred Millar, LNG and environmental and transportation safety expert.

New Fortress Energy and Delaware River Partners are proposing to add a dock with two more shipping berths to the Gibbstown terminal’s one dock already under construction, potentially tripling the activity at the facility and requiring approximately 1,650 truck trips every day and 24-36 ship passages of loaded LNG or natural gas liquid (NGL) vessels on the Delaware River each year. Rail transport may be added and a new access road built. The Gibbstown site is located adjacent to the residential community of Gibbstown, including schools, playgrounds, and public buildings. Transport by truck and rail will require this flammable and potentially explosive cargo to be carried 125 miles or more through Pennsylvania and New Jersey communities. The highly dangerous loading of LNG directly to ships by pipes will be a continuous operation 24/7, 365 days per year. NGL will be stored on-site in an old underground cavern. The entire property is a polluted superfund site that was owned by DuPont as an explosives-manufacturing plant and by other industries that added to the pollution. More information. Facebook Event Page

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Massachusetts raises 2050 waste reduction target, may expand ban on disposal of organics

Cole Rosengren reports for Waste Dive
Oct. 1, 2019

A new draft solid waste master plan from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) calls for a 30% reduction in annual disposal by 2030 and a 90% reduction by 2050. An estimated 5.7 million tons were disposed in 2018.
MassDEP plans to ramp up enforcement of existing waste bans and promulgate new ones to support these goals. This may include expanding the current commercial organics disposal ban to generators of a half-ton or more per week by 2022. New disposal bans on textiles and mattresses are also under consideration.
Other draft plan goals include supporting producer responsibility policies for challenging materials (i.e. carpet, paint and electronics), working with the state legislature on single-use packaging reduction policies and establishing minimum performance standards for construction and demolition recycling facilities.

Dive Insight:

This new draft, part of MassDEP’s regular 10-year planning process for solid waste policy, comes as disposal capacity continues to shrink in the state.

According to recent analysis conducted by MSW Consultants, Massachusetts will effectively run out of landfill space by 2030 and will likely have to export more waste. Its incinerators are also running at or near capacity, and space at their necessary ash landfills is also projected to decline.

MassDEP’s previous solid waste plan called for a 30% reduction in disposal by 2020, but the state only saw a 14% reduction between 2008 and 2018. While officials are heartened that volumes didn’t rise as state GDP increased by 46% over the same period, they recognize more needs to be done.

Because food waste remains the largest category of material getting disposed, and processing capacity continues to grow, MassDEP saw lowering the original 2014 ban threshold as a logical move. This has long been a priority for organics recyclers in the region. The next tier of covered organics generators is expected to primarily include restaurants. When asked about going farther to include more businesses (as Vermont has done) the agency said its goal is to keep compliance and enforcement cost-effective.

“Our capacity is actually fairly hungry for food material and we think that will be able to support the ban at a half-ton threshold,” John Fischer, branch chief for commercial waste reduction at the agency, told Waste Dive.

Enforcing that new disposal ban (along with potential bans on textiles and mattresses) will come down to resources. Environmental groups have criticized MassDEP for not doing enough to enforce existing waste bans on cardboard or other recyclables. Fischer couldn’t confirm whether these new policies would be paired with a higher enforcement budget.

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Questions about how MassDEP might engage with the state legislature to push for stalled producer responsibility policies also remain unresolved.

Massachusetts lawmakers have struggled to reach agreement on bills around paint and plastic bags in recent years, let alone the tougher question of packaging. Fischer did not rule out following the leads of Maine or Vermont, which are currently working on some of the nation’s most ambitious packaging policies.

Beyond regulatory tactics, a key theme for MassDEP continues to be supporting municipalities in their own source reduction and material recovery efforts. Compared to many other state environmental agencies, MassDEP’s level of financial and technical support is seen as among the more active in the country.

Still, the agency caught flak from industry service providers for not doing more to stave off rising costs spurred by the state’s disposal crunch.

Fischer said MassDEP isn’t restricting new landfill capacity and confirmed it would also consider replacing current incinerator capacity that could meet or exceed current facility standards. The agency also remains open to 350,000 tons per year of new capacity for “innovative” technologies such as gasification or pyrolysis. According to Fischer, no permit applications have come in for any of those categories and MassDEP still says more disposal capacity is not the primary solution.

“The best way we can address our capacity challenges is through advancing capacity that can manage material in other ways,” he said. “The more material that can flow through those facilities and that infrastructure, the better off we’ll be.”

MassDEP has scheduled five hearings throughout the state and is accepting public comment through Dec. 6.

Trump administration’s canceling of net neutrality rules upheld by federal appeals court

The FCC’s cancellation of Obama-era rules on net neutrality sparked demonstrations in 2017. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

By Tony Rommm /Washingon Post/October 1 at 11:25 AM

A federal appeals court on Tuesday affirmed the Trump administration acted lawfully when it scrapped the U.S. government’s net neutrality rules in 2017, dealing a blow to tech giants and consumer advocates who argued that the repeal would create a stratified Internet of fast and slow lanes.

In a nearly 200-page opinion, judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals largely sided with the Federal Communications Commission and its Republican chairman, Ajit Pai. While the agency must return to the drawing board on some elements of its repeal, the court upheld the breadth of its work, finding that net neutrality supporters had made “unconvincing” arguments in their efforts to override the FCC’s deregulation of companies such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

But the ruling still appeared to offer a lifeline to net neutrality supporters: It overruled an effort by the FCC to block states from adopting open-internet protections of their own, a move that could spur states such as California to act.

The ruling marks the latest legal salvo in a decades-long battle between Internet giants and telecom providers over the government’s authority to regulate the Internet.

With the backing of the FCC’s two other Republicans, Pai secured repeal of the government’s net neutrality rules in 2017. Until then, federal open Internet protections had prohibited providers including AT&T and Verizon from blocking or slowing down access to web content or charging services such as Netflix and Hulu for faster delivery of their shows.

Pai justified the repeal by arguing that the rules, adopted under former President Barack Obama, crimped telecom investment, stalling broadband build-out nationwide. In its place, the FCC only required broadband providers be transparent about their practices while shifting enforcement to the government’s competition watchdog, the Federal Trade Commission.

The repeal triggered widespread backlash: More than 22 states’ attorneys general banded with other city and state leaders as well as Internet companies, such as Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox web browser, in challenging the FCC’s efforts in court. Larger tech giants including Facebook and Google also filed supportive briefs through their Washington lobbying group, the Internet Association.

State regulators said the FCC had acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner, ignoring “substantial record evidence showing that [Internet service] providers have abused and will abuse their gatekeeper roles in ways that harm consumers and threaten public safety.” Tech giants, meanwhile, contended that the FCC had embarked on an “abrupt about-face” in response to the election, choosing to subject AT&T, Verizon and their peers to less regulation based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the web works.

The battle played out over four hours of oral arguments in February, where the D.C. circuit’s three judges at times seemed skeptical of the FCC. At least two of them harbored specific concerns about the effects of the agency’s repeal on public safety agencies. First responders from cities such as Santa Clara, Calif., had told the court they feared Internet providers could charge them for faster delivery of critical communications during an emergency, adding the FCC never took their arguments to heart.

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Debate over water rights in Maryland divides boaters, anglers, and rafters

Boats docked at Traders Landing on Deep Creek Lake at dusk. (AMY DAVIS / Baltimore Sun)

Scott Dance reports for the Baltimore Sun

Fights over water rights usually wrack Western states, but a similar debate is bubbling in Western Maryland.

On one side are the thousands of boaters who spend their summers cruising and playing in the waters of Deep Creek Lake, the largest of the state’s lakes, all of them man-made. During the driest years, when lake levels drop too low, waters can recede far enough from some docks that they get trapped by dry land.

Those enjoying the waters of the nearby Youghiogheny River, which lake waters help feed, have a different set of concerns.[From The Archives] No, Deep Creek Lake is not going to be drained »

Whitewater rafters and kayakers depend on scheduled releases of lake waters into the river for an exciting ride downstream. The river’s trout, which attract anglers from across the state and region, depend on the surges of cool lake water, because otherwise the river could get too warm for them to survive.

In the middle is a 94-year-old hydroelectric dam that uses the lake water to generate electricity, and also bears some responsibility for keeping water users on both sides of the earthen dike happy. The Maryland Department of the Environment is currently weighing a new permit to govern how the dam owner must manage water flow over the next dozen years.

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The permit, expected to be issued by the end of the year, has been the focus of a months-long debate because the lake and river waters are the lifeblood of the economy in Garrett County, a remote part of the state with few remaining industries. Wherever the water flows, it draws with it tourism dollars, whether they’re tied to recreation with speedboats and jet skis, tackle and lures, or rafts and paddles.

The environmental agency’s John Grace said the state will have to weigh the impacts on both sides of the dam before issuing a final permit. Advocates for the lake and the river will get one more chance to share their concerns publicly at an Oct. 15 hearing at Garrett College in McHenry.

“It’s a really challenging situation to make everyone totally happy,” said Grace, chief of the source protection and appropriations division of the state water supply program. “I don’t think that’s realistic, but I think it’s realistic for us to be consistent and follow our mission.”

[From 2010] Residents concerned about Deep Creek Lake’s future »

A string of wet or wet-enough years has prevented much conflict for the past six or seven years. But those who see the potential for it know it could be just a dry season away.

Drought has developed rapidly across parts of Maryland in recent weeks, and all of Garrett County and the surrounding area is considered “abnormally dry,” a precursor to drought. A relatively small 62-square-mile watershed feeds Deep Creek, so Grace said the lake’s fortunes can change quickly, for better or worse.

As population and development spread around the area, Neil Jacobs said, he’s prepared for more conflicts like this one. The McHenry resident and angler said he expects there will only be more need to share water resources in the future.

“There’s going to be some pain,” he said. “Everyone’s going to have to take a little pain.”

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To residents, many of whom spend summers or weekends there but live elsewhere in Maryland and Pennsylvania, lake access is paramount. Development has been building around the lake ever since its creation, when the Deep Creek was impounded to power the hydroelectric station that began operating in 1925 and is now owned by Brookfield Renewable Power.

Concerns about low lake levels last appeared in 2012, the area’s third dry year in four. It prompted the Deep Creek Watershed Foundation, a nonprofit group, to commission research that found significant potential impacts to water access.

The lake’s surface currently lies at an elevation of about 2,458½ feet, though it’s often higher in the summer. Just six inches below that level, 2,458 feet, about 9% of the lake’s 2,200 boat slips lose access to water, said David Myerberg, the foundation’s president. At two feet lower, 2,456 feet, 15% are affected.

But in some southern coves, the impact is more pronounced, with more than half of boat slips inaccessible when the lake surface lies at 2,457 feet or lower, Myerberg said.

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