Return of the Inverts

I have sampled plankton from lakes throughout the Fraser watershed, and although Cultus is relatively productive compared to most coastal lakes irt zooplankton and water chemistry, it is nothing compared to that video.
I would bet that video was shot at an interior lake.

Thanks Dave, I have not seen plankton abundance anywhere like in that video fro a long time. It is impressive! When I was young, late1970's-early1980's there were a few frog ponds with similar abundance that I remember. Fairy shrimp was a species I used to net and bring home to feed to my aquarium fish. Have not been able to find Fairy shrimp since.
I tried to search water quality reports for Cultus lake in the ems database but my search results came up empty. I have been able to access information for other waterways thru the site but not that one. Maybe the test results have not been uploaded to that site? If you know of any plankton and water quality reports I would enjoy reading them.

I read thru the Owikeeno report quickly. It did appear to show similar plankton abundance from past years to compare with 2001. One thing that did catch my eye was the alkalinity and ammonia levels for 2001. The alkalinity average was below 10mg/l where as the levels deemed safe for aquatic ecology in the Canadian water quality guidelines is no less than 20mg/l. Ammonia levels seem high but I am not sure of the used measure compared to ppm. We did receive lots of acidic rain thru the 1990's so it is quite possible for there to be unstable ph during that decade. I am wondering if there could been substantial damage to stream spawn sockeye and only a few lake spawners to have succeeded causing low adult to fry ratio in the more recent years? The water chemistry tests did not show any breakdown of heavy metal concentrations other than conductivity. I would be interested to know the water quality during salmon incubation time and how it compares to summer months. It would also be nice to have water quality data from other years for comparison with these 2001 results. Other information that would be helpful is adult-smolt ratios from variable years. Although limnological assessment doesn't indicate freshwater to be a factor in stock depression adult-smolt ratios over time may show a different picture.
Thanks for the discussion! I haven't had time to read the Woss and Nimpkish report yet but will soon.
 
Interesting. "water fleas", otherwise known as Daphnia, are the preferred food of choice for sockeye when rearing in freshwater lakes for their first year (or two).
 
"We now want to know the global degree of this phenomenon," Weiss says. The question is: "Are all freshwater impoundments prone to this kind of acidification?"

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-...r-than-saltwater/article/512113#ixzz54I1LCvMU

"Earlier studies had found that increased CO2 levels were likely to have an impact on important freshwater species like Salmon but lack of data had impeded findings about the extent of acidification. The new study offers a glimpse of what can be expected."

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/...water-bodies-are-turning-acidic-as-well-59494

"When more carbon dioxide is added into the water, the salmon seemed to lose their ability to smell or respond appropriately to the predator, Chadsey said. As the concentrations of carbon dioxide increased, the fish didn’t seem able to sense the predator or to respond appropriately, she said."

https://www.thecordovatimes.com/2017/11/17/ocean-acidification-impacts-olfactory-functions-salmon/
 
I am a little confused here, I guess the idea is that there are many things that are affecting the salmon, whether climate change or introduction of FF and the virus that is now found in the lake systems that was never there before.

What ever the caused there are only so much that can be done. So let's start with one that can be dealt with without having to have the entire world change. The virus that never has been prevalent before on the west coast.

Second a seal cull, the cull on the Columbia river has resulted in massive returns of fish.

Recent population figures indicate that the seal population in Georgia basin now numbers, all that have ever been, in the last 100 years, that is ALL the seals over 100 years, in total. Now, and there are more today.

Along with salmon mortality is the native Orca population has been affected as well, nothing to eat and then they die off. So much is being made to stop tanker traffic because of the noise they create, then they better start looking into stopping the salmon die off.

A seal cull will not endanger the species, not like the several specific salmon species either being driven extinct or on the slide. It may not be popular or even a nice thought, but to save both species a few less may be necessary. First nations used to hunt seals as a supplement to their diets so it could be traditional.
 
ITs a shame that Climate Change does not make the flashy headlines like other topics. I guess people just don't like hearing that driving their cars and boats around are likely the largest contributors to our wild salmon populations demise. Or that countries like China are killing our salmon by accelerating climate change.

Our LNG plants were suppose to send them cleaner nature gas.

We must determine the effect of climate change so we can then have a base line.

In the 1990’s people were bringing up climate change as the cause for crashing salmon stocks yet now it seems like people want to ignore it.
 
Despite the rising co2 levels in the air our coastal streams and rain fall have risen in ph and alkalinity. This I know from testing myself. Todays rain was up near ph6. Local streams have higher alkalinity now than I can find in ems records. If co2 is acidifying waters here on the west coast it sure isn't appearing so in the water samples.
 
So in your opionion then, is high alkalinity the issues why we have less inverts?
 
Attached are rain chemistry results from 1994 Saturna island. My girlfriend formatted the excel program info into a pdf so I could upload it. You may need to zoom in to view the small text.
Acid rain is a proven killer around the world but not studied much here. The signs of it's effects are through out our coastal waters still!
 

Attachments

  • npcdf_capm_dly_all-parms_1994_an_bc_capmcabc1sat_G-FORMATTED.pdf
    1.1 MB · Views: 4
So in your opionion then, is high alkalinity the issues why we have less inverts?

30 years of acidic rain has moved heavy metals or stripped calcium and magnesium from waterways disrupting food webs and inverts. This has been happening for a long time. The recent rise in alkalinity and ph stability is the signs of less corrosive rain allowing cal-mag to build in the soils which can help buffer the rain. The inverts are starting to reappear in some streams but in many they are not.
I was out on the stamp river a couple days ago. It is a biological desert compared to what it once was pre 1995. We seen only a couple anglers. We had no bites from any fish including juvenile s/h. I went through out the fall pool in my boat and didn't even see a fish. It is in a sad state!
 
high alkalinity = higher pH - not lower..

I know what the difference is between a base and an acid thanks, He said that we have statistically high Alkalinity

Local streams have higher alkalinity now than I can find in ems records

So then I posed the question is having high alkalinity also a problem, High alkalinity is usually associate with high materialized water.
 
30 years of acidic rain has moved heavy metals or stripped calcium and magnesium from waterways disrupting food webs and inverts. This has been happening for a long time. The recent rise in alkalinity and ph stability is the signs of less corrosive rain allowing cal-mag to build in the soils which can help buffer the rain. The inverts are starting to reappear in some streams but in many they are not.
I was out on the stamp river a couple days ago. It is a biological desert compared to what it once was pre 1995. We seen only a couple anglers. We had no bites from any fish including juvenile s/h. I went through out the fall pool in my boat and didn't even see a fish. It is in a sad state!

Thank you! is there programs we can be promoting to bring back the inverts? what levels is the PH in the interior lakes where the inverts are so high?
 
I know what the difference is between a base and an acid thanks, He said that we have statistically high Alkalinity



So then I posed the question is having high alkalinity also a problem, High alkalinity is usually associate with high materialized water.

Most coastal streams have been at alkalinity levels far below optimal with many below the levels deemed safe. 20ppm is the bottom line of safe where as 80-120ppm would be considered in the optimal range. The Stamp river has been varying for many years from 18ppm in the drier months lowering down to 13ppm after high rain influence. For the last two years my testing shows alkalinity was 18ppm in 2015 and slowly been rising to 24ppm as of last month. Over the last two years the seasonal rain have not lowered the alkalinity like it was in the past and it is been steadily on the rise.
I did talk to Brian Chan last year and he mentioned some lakes in the interior are now experiencing too high of alkalinity. So what could possibly be better for coastal waterways receiving more water circulation may not be better for dry climate regions.
 
Thank you! is there programs we can be promoting to bring back the inverts? what levels is the PH in the interior lakes where the inverts are so high?

If there was some sort of program I would whole heartedly support it!! Fertilization projects are the best attempts to improve food web productivity in leaned out waters. There is mixed results of the success. IMHO it would take a more balanced supplement addition to enhance than just fertilizer. Acidic rain will strip many more necessary elements from waterways than just phosphate.
Some questions I would like to have answered are: Does exposure to high levels of dissolved heavy metals, starvation or deficiency in calcium-magnesium cause week immune systems and disease in B.C. salmon populations? There is plenty of supporting evidence proving these conditions have been happening here but not much into how it effects our coastal ecology? Is it diseases from salmon farms killing off our salmon populations or the lack of supporting ecology and stable chemistry causing the sickness diseases???
 
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