Dear Friends,
I received this mail this morning.
Jusｔ a glance at it will help the world to be awakened to the real and present dangers emanating from Fukushima.
Japan’s retreat from the Tokyo OLympic 2020 in order to consecrate
maximum efforts to cope with the unstoppable Fukushima disaster is
urgently needed.
The mobilization of human wisdom on the widest possible scale is indispensable.
With warmest regards,
Mitsuhei Murata
Former Ambassador to Switzerland
Fukushima Nuclear Waste
Annihilates Pacific Ecosystem
By Yoichi Shimatsu
Exclusive To Rense
5-24-16
Strolling over the cliffs in Southern California, I looked down at a
white-sand beach pimpled with a crimson rash along the high-tide line.
Close up, the red dots turned out to be hundreds of thousands of
thumb-sized crustaceans of the species Pleuroncodes planipes that
resemble tiny lobsters. Most of those pelagic red crabs or langostilla,
also known as tuna crabs, were sprawled dead on the sand, tangled in
strands of kelp or alive but listless inside the rocky tide pools. The
crustaceans appeared to be in fresh, without signs of injury or
disease, and there was no stench of the fish market.
Beached pelagic red crabs at Crystal Cove, Orange County, May 2016
Dosimeter reading of red crab, 0.7 points above human safety level
Seagulls had left the smaller limbs at the water’s edge but soon quit
the all-you-can eat buffet, indicating their ability to detect a hidden
toxin. The langostilla kill-off cannot be called an act of nature since
my dosimeter detected radiation levels of between 0.12 microSieverts
per hour and 0.18 micSv in their bodies. The official safety level for
human health set by the pro-nuclear government of Japan is 0.11.
Considering the difference in body weight and the water content in
their flesh, these marine creatures were terminated by radioactive
exposure.
A World Without Mercy
A Japanese saying about the predatory instinct translates as: “Nature
is harsh”. Hermit crabs are natural-born killers, whose feasting on
victims was the last act of gratification in a microcosm without mercy
or moral conscience. Inside the barren tide pools, shell-shielded
hermit crabs skittered toward living langostilla to prod and poke at
the jerking joints. After hacking off a limb from its prey, a hermit
crab would stumble off to dine in private, only to be accosted and
robbed by fellow thieves. One pelagic red crab still had the residual
energy to escape its attackers by darting backward, propelled by
curling its tail. Its blind retreat led straight to a gang of hermits
that pounced on the meal.
While most other shoreline species have hit dead end by now, these tiny
monsters survive by tucking their thoraxes into the shells of dead
mollusks, which serve as a shield against the elements and other
predators. The calcium content of the stolen shells seems to block
strontium, temporarily at least, affording the hermits a critical edge
over other types of crabs, whose bare flesh is vulnerable to
radioactivity during molting. The undisturbed cherry-blossom pink flesh
of a rock crab revealed an utter lack of defense against radioactive
seawater when bereft of its hard carapace. Though it smelled as salty
sweet as any tidbit at a sushi bar, no hermit or gull came near it,
here again indicating predators have a sensory alarm against
radioactive flesh.
Along 3 kilometers of an otherwise lifeless coastline, I saw thousands
of twitching shells that housed hermit crabs, but only a handful of
surviving rock crabs. This proportion is in stark contrast with two
years earlier when rock crabs were a dominant species in tide pools,
then brimming with marine organisms including anemones, mussels, sea
snails, giant keyhole limpets, colorful fishes, rock lobsters and
octopuses. The kill-off is by now over, and the radioactivity in
langostilla flesh is probably dooming those hungry hermits. Even the
most vicious survivors in this biological disaster will soon perish.
The demise of marine life is caused by a misplaced faith in science of
a non-oceanic species called homo sapiens, which parasites off nuclear
reactors to light and cool their own hermitages. The nearby San Onofre
facility and distant Fukushima have both been spilling radioactive
wastewater onto these magnificent shores of Southern California. It is
astonishing how humans are as psychologically stunted as hermit crabs,
wallowing in greed, myopia and acedia. Predatory cruelty is indelibly
stamped on our character, for it is the brute impulse that led to the
original sin of rejecting our obligation to stewardship over life on
Earth. As radioactivity and pollution annihilate the mother ocean, we
come to understand, that without the strong safeguard of ethical
principles, science is a just sharp instrument for robbery, bloodshed,
cannibalism and moral lobotomy.
Scientific Fraud Dooms the Whales
Lethal beachings of pelagic red crabs occurred on these shores twice
before, in January and June of 2015. These arrivals have been unusual
events since their native habitat is on the seafloor in the tropical
waters from Mexico south to Chile. In clumsy attempts to explain last
year’s beachings, some marine biologists stated flat-out to the news
media that the red crabs moved northward to the California coast to
mate due to warmer waters caused by El Nino. The unsupported claim is
blatant scientific fraud.
The overwhelming majority of the beached langostilla were juveniles,
about half to two-thirds of the full-grown 13-centimeter (5 inch)
length of a mature red crab. None had egg-sacs attached to their
bellies, and therefore did not swim north for breeding purposes.
The actual force that warms the Southern California coastal waters is
the annual countercurrent of semitropical water during the winter
months, between January and March, originating in the Coronado Island
region off San Diego. This annual back-flow is unrelated to El Nino and
sufficed to carry the first batch of free-swimming red crabs in January
2015. During the rest of the year, El Nino has a negligible effect on
the California current, doing absolutely nothing to encourage local
surfers to doff their wet suits.
The red crabs did not mass migrate because of El Nino. The second
migration occurred in June and the third in May, at the start of
coldest period in the California Current, meaning the langostilla were
not interested in romance but had fled a recurrent disaster affecting
the continental shelf off Mexico. Nor did these invertebrates die from
domoic acid poisoning related to El
Nino, since there have been
no toxic shellfish warnings along the coast and public-health records
show safe levels in Southern California. A domoic acid “contagion” is
the catch-all theory for West Coast kill-offs from a questionable
marine chemistry team at U.C. Santa Cruz. The bogus claims are
dismissed below, at the end of this essay.
Kelp with very high radiation level, equivalent to beaches in Fukushima Province
The federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has
grossly abused its science-funding role to promote climate change as
the sole culprit threatening the global mega-ecosystem. Ethically
compromised research centers have gone along with the pro-corporate
deception, including the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI),
Scripps at La Jolla and the numerous universities under their censorial
influence. With thousands of marine species and countless human lives
at stake, the cover-up of radioactive contamination of the Pacific
Ocean and the atmosphere over the Northern Hemisphere is shaping up as
the most disgraceful chapter in the annals of scientific fraud.
A fair standard of truthfulness, based on observations along the
shoreline, along with deep-sea data if ever such become available, will
show that the driving force behind this mass death of crustaceans is a
major disruption of the Pacific marine ecosystem resulting from
nuclear-dumping from Fukushima’s melted-down reactors since 2011, as
well as radioactive leaks from San Onofre. The poisoning by
radionucleotides of pelagic red crabs, which have a vital role in the
food chain, has dire implications for great whales and other sea
mammals as well as sea turtles, fish and invertebrates, including a
wide range of seafood consumed by humans.
Mid-Level in the Food Chain
Crustaceans comprise the largest share of animal biomass in the oceanic
food chain. Microscopic copepods and amphipods are a major component of
zooplankton, which comprise the broad base of the protein pyramid.
Krill and pelagic crabs anchor the diet of migratory baleen whales on
either end of their annual tropic-to-polar and return journeys. Baleen
whales, including the blue whales, feed on red crabs in the tropic
waters during the winter months, scooping up the crustaceans from the
sandy seafloor (the benthic zone) or passing these through their
cartilage filters in the open waters (the pelagic regions).
As discussed in my autumn 2011 essay from the coast of Japan, titled
Death of the Pacific (rense.com/general95/death.htm), the bulk of
zooplankton in the North Pacific is generated east of the Tokyo region
in huge eddies generated by the convergence of the warm Kurioshio
stream and the cold Oyashio current. Radioactive isotopes from
Fukushima are absorbed by phytoplankton (algae), which sustain
microscopic zooplankton and larvae. These microorganisms, the major
feed stock for fish and marine mammals, are then carried along the
North Pacific Current to the West Coast of North America, and spread as
far as Alaska and Chile.
During the trans-Pacific passage, of course, the concentration of
radioactive salts and solid “hot” particles is diluted by the vast
volume of oceanic water. Although only a minuscule amount may be
present in clusters of zooplankton, radioactive isotopes are steadily
bioaccumulated in krill and pelagic red crabs, as evidenced in the
dosimeter readings at Crystal Cove in a Southern California.
The ongoing sea-dumping from Fukushima and other nuclear plants
eventually affects the reproduction cycle of zooplankton species, such
as the copepods, protists, diatoms, which form the primary diet for the
pelagic red crabs and krill. Gamma and beta radiation disrupts the
mitosis, or cell division, of tiny marine organisms, disrupting gene
sequences, which results in mutations
or outright death. When the
die-offs of individuals drops the cluster population before critical
mass, physical dispersion prevents these tiny organisms from
biochemically signaling each other for mating. A fatal separation
eliminates the possibility reproduction, and zooplankton becomes
ever-scarcer in the empty currents.
At that point of disbandment, or collapse of the bottom tier of the
food chain, the pelagic red crabs must swim away into new feeding zone
in search of “greener pastures.” Thus, the red crab escaped to
California, a most dangerous feeding ground due to the risk exposure
near radioactive kelp beds. Presumably, a similar movement toward the
south occurs as more distant hordes of langostilla move down the South
American coast to forage off the temperate waters of southern Chile.
Hostile colder waters slows down the pelagic red crabs and makes them
more susceptible to radioactivity-related disorders.
Pursuing the ever-slower red crab hordes, the great whales gorge
themselves on these crustaceans but eventually intake a fatal
radioactive dosage. Radionucleotide poisoning during the red crab
diaspora into the temperate zone probably accounts for the mass deaths
of 337 Sei whales off Chile, as well as the many fatalities among gray
whales off the U.S. West Coast and Alaska. Irregular heartbeat due to
cesium build-up in the coronary region is the probable cause of these
whale mortalities, as shown in my 2013 field research on sea lions at
San Onofre.(http://rense.com/general95/sanofre.html)
A question that any skeptical observer may ask is: Why is this person
one of only a handful out there, along with Canadian Dana Durnford in
British Columbia, assigning blame for the Pacific kill-offs on
radiation from Fukushima?
Juvenile gastropods compared in size with U.S. penny and Hong Kong 20 pence
The answer is: Field studies with simple radiation-detecting devices
enable this type of inquiry, despite the lack of research vessels,
sophisticated scientific instruments and budgets. Given the
cross-species kill-offs, the causal factor cannot be a highly
specialized pathogen. Therefore reasonable conclusions can be arrived
at despite the many limitations. This series of essays is meant only to
stand in while proficient, experienced and honest marine biologists are
being muzzled and prevented from disclosing their findings.
Probably more marine scientists and veterinarians that anyone suspects
know full well that radiation is doing massive harm to sea life but
cannot address the public with their concerns due to professional peer
pressure and risk to their careers and possibly their lives. Many
researchers, as far as I can tell from volunteer colleagues, are doing
radioactivity measurements in private, apart from the increasing regime
of surveillance over lab work. I hope that those honest scientists
continue their work on behalf of the living ocean and its importance
for humanity, and emerge with public disclosure when the political
atmosphere becomes more propitious for policy and action. Now let’s
proceed to the microcosm of tide pools.
Lethal Sandbars, Dead Pools
Judging from the similarity between radiation levels in the younger
kelp washed ashore and the beached red crabs, lethal exposure occurred
on the sandbars between 2 meters and 7 meters below sea level and at a
horizontal distance of 30 meters to 200 meters from shore. After
journeying northward the pelagic crabs clustered below the kelp beds on
sandbars along the coastal shelf. Slightly further out, there are steep
canyons where any crustacean would drop into the jaws of dolphins and
oarfish. (The highest radiation levels were found in on-shore samples
of tall kelp of theMacrocystis fibrosis species and sea palm, or
Eisenia arborea.)
The kelp on these sandbars are becoming increasingly toxic over recent
years due to the bioaccumulation of radioactive isotopes carried by the
California Current. Older stands of kelp, which naturally serve as a
major food source for coastal species, now has an opposite effect of
killing everything that comes into contact with it, from shellfish to
higher species.
Radioactivity on the permanently underwater sandbars was confirmed by
vast numbers of juvenile gastropod shells that washed up into the tide
pools, many of them small enough to fit on a penny coin. The
innumerable tiny cone-shaped shells of Conus californicus provide a
telltale sign of offshore toxicity, since these predatory mollusks are
concentrated on sandbars. Likewise. immature specimens of purple olive
snails (Olivella biplicata), once used as shell money by Indian tribes,
are also strewn in unusually large quantity over the beaches. There
were a few Trivia solandri,a species of ribbed shell similar in
appearance to a cowry.
The fat dog whelk (Nassarius perpinguis), a a snail with a fine-grained
spiral shell, inhabits rocks at extreme low-tide mark, but I could no
living specimens during the ebb flow. Small round shells of this type
are now favored by hermit crabs,in the thousands, as mobile homes. A
few immature abalone were still clinging to the rocks, and here also
could be found anemones but these were torpid, failing to unfurl their
flowery tentacles. I did spot one large sea snail at the outer edge of
a far-out tide pool zone.
The wipe-out of invertebrates gets stunning in the mid-low tide zone,
where living snails are absent and large shells, such as the
once-abundant wavy turban (Lithopoma undosum) are now gone or broken.
Only a few small samples of empty shells of unicorn snails (Acanthina
lugubris) and festive murex (Pteropurpura festivus) were spotted.
In the shallows, there were only a few remaining hollowed-out spiral
shells of Ocenebra circumtesta, which predated on the once abundant
mussel beds, which have since been reduced to shattered opalescent
half-shells. There were a few clumps of barnacles, which are actually a
sessile crustacean.
Amid these sad pools, the most disturbing piece of forensic evidence
was a warped purple scallop shell, probably a radioactivity-caused
mutant. Its asymmetric form inspired the nickname Quasimodo, after the
hunchback of Notre Dame. Several beachcombers told me that they have
never before seen a misshapen scallop shell. Scallops attach to rocks
as deep as 20 meters (70 feet) below the waves, indicating
radioactivity is by now accumulating on the seabed of the continental
shelf.
Domoic Acid Theory Aids Exploiters
The red crabs, which dwell in the benthic depths and also feed in
open-sea pelagic zones, provide an invaluable periscope into the
macrocosm of the Pacific food chain. The radioactivity levels in these
crustaceans indicate nuclear-sourced contamination of the entire range
of sea life from the tiniest microorganisms up to the largest of all
animals, the blue whale. The pelagic crab deaths stand as
incontrovertible evidence that the inter-species extinction event has
origins in nuclear releases from Fukushima and also other leaking
reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon in Southern California, along
with the Hanford Site and military nuclear waste dumped in the Pacific.
Against the slew of evidence on radioactivity as a primary cause of
sea-life kill-offs, marine chemists at U.C. Santa Cruz have argued for
domoic acid as the sole culprit. This propaganda campaign is no doubt
egged on by federal funding agencies and private interests. In
addition, the domoic theory has origins in Australia, where climate
scientists support a proposed global carbon tax, to be globally
administered by the Rothschild Bank. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull,
on entering office, did what was required by ethics and accountability
by axing 3,000 climate scientists on the government payroll who
contributed to the financial scam.
The knowingly false domoic acid hypothesis is disproved by no less than
the California Department of Public Health, which issues a monthly
report on levels along this state’s coasts. At the height of the
so-called El Nino scare in the summer of 2015, CDPH showed safe levels
of domoic acid along the entire coast and did not issue any warning
over the related threat of amnestic shellfish poisoning. Domoic acid
enters the human diet via clams and mussels that consume the
toxin-producing Pseudo-nitzschia diatom.
The falsifiers at Santa Cruz have claimed that warmer waters generated
by the 2015-16 El Nino caused massive blooms of Pseudo-nitzschia,a
diatom, or microorganisms with a silicon exterior. The public health
data maps showed that extraordinary blooms did not occur, despite the
strong El Nino over the past 18 months.
According to meteorology consultancy Golden Gate Weather Service, it is
an urban myth that El Nino automatically raises water temperatures
along the California coast. This recurrent weather event is generated
near the equator in the Western Pacific, at latitudes and longitudes
far away from the North American coast and where dominant current moves
in the opposite direction, toward Asia.
The “blob” of warm water that developed off the California coast over
the past three years, which is possibly linked to the regional drought
inland, is unrelated to El Nino. A much likelier cause was the build-up
of a dense fog belt over the radioactive marine layer along the
California Current. Radioactive isotopes in large quantity, especially
in cloud-like conditions, generate heat and have electromagnetic
effects that can influence affect rain patterns.
Nutrient availability is a far more probable cause than warm water for
Pseudo-nitzschia blooms along the West Coast. The largest-ever domoic
acid event occurred off the coast of Washington State in 2004, one of
the two lowest-ever El Nino years. That massive bloom, some 30 nautical
miles in circumference, was not the result of higher water temperatures.
What then could be the main cause of Pseudo-nitzschia blooms? Nitrogen.
The California Public Health data-maps show a correlation of nitrogen
sources (shipping and offshore oil platforms) with areas of domoic acid
concentration.
The coast of Washington State is located at the collision point of the
westward-moving North Pacific Current and the outlet of the inland
Puget Sound/Salish Sea, two of the world’s most-heavily trafficked
routes for commercial vessels along with cruise ships heading for
Alaska. At that crux, the swirl of the Juan de Fuca Eddy acts as a trap
for wastewater from bunker fuel tanks of commercial vessels, human
sewage and garbage from Alaska cruise ships, and agricultural runoff,
which all provide ideal conditions for growth of Pseudo-nitzschia.
(Ammonia and related urea are readily soluble in water, which can
collect inside bunker fuel tanks.)
As for concentration of domoic acid in Northern California, these
include the maritime region between the Farallons and San Francisco
Bay, a center for international shipping, where large container ships
illegally empty their bilges and dump wash from bunker fuel tanks. In
addition, agribusiness fertilizers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Rivers flow in the fresh water layer atop saltwater from the Bay into
the Pacific.
The other major clusters of domoic acid off Santa Barbara, Los Angeles
and Newport Bear occur around offshore oil platforms that release
natural gas as a waste product. An unwanted byproduct, that gas
contains as much as 60 percent ammonia in total volume.
Of course marine scientists are aware of nutritional factors in diatom
blooms. Blaming domoic acid on warmer water is a scandalous attempt to
divert public attention from its origins in the dumping of waste
containing nitrogen. The marine chemists and allied biologists are
involved in pseudo-scientific exercise to misdirect public attention
away from the corporate culprits, many of which are silent donors to
the ocean-studies programs.
To cover their arrears when the stench of domoic acid theory wafts too
far in the sea breeze, the UC Santa Cruz hustlers are rolling out
seawater acidification and iron content as understudies for the
villain’s role. It’s all sewage. UCSC is scurrying amid an ambitious
capital-spending program to boost its marine sciences programs to swill
at the NOAA and National Science Foundation trough. UCSC remains
tight-lipped about their corporate partners, but they’re probably the
same ilk as one of its major donors, Donald Rumsfeld’s Gilead
corporation. The entire University of California system is up for sale
to any and all bidders, now that the indebted state has reduced its
funding appropriations. Shiftless survival by the sea is all so
reminiscent of Cannery Row, not the marine samples lab of Doc Ed
Ricketts but Dora Flood’s house of ill-repute.
It should come as no surprise that the marine biosciences are allied
with the ocean-resource industries including nuclear power, offshore
energy and shipping lines. Sanitized environmental-impact reports for
these corporate exploiters provide lucrative income for consultant
scientists and their research labs. BP and Shell Oil have promoted
themselves as “green” corporations and maintain corporate partnerships
with dozens of laboratories and environmental groups that promote
diversionary climate-change scams, including the Earthwatch Institute
and the UN Global Compact. The most laughable and sickening scam from
the unethical marine-science fakers is how oil rigs are now being
touted as “green reef islands”, a pristine paradise for sea life!
Saving What’s Left
Political leaders, high bureaucrats, corporate executives and
international NGO heads have abysmally failed to save the seas. To the
contrary, the self-appointed global elite are environmental felons.
Marine biologists have insinuated themselves in a media role as
protectors of the ocean, alongside various government agencies and
those environmental NGOs that raise funds from “saving” baby seals and
whales. None of these preposterous eco “defenders” bothered to show up
for the do-or-die battle against radiation in the Pacific. Their
self-interests are intertwined with the corporations that exploit the
sea and contaminate the marine biological community. Legal immunity for
the nuclear industry is a touchstone of that shameful alliance.
“Quasimodo” the mutant purple-hinged scallop
Rot fells the biggest trees. Fresh saplings grow from new seeds. It can
only be hoped that biologists, environmentalists, regulators, funders,
fishermen and citizens who refuse to pander their conscience to
corporate interests should rally around an authentic movement to save
the seas in desperate need of a human-aided transition toward a livable
future on behalf of generations to come. Small yet genuine steps to
save what’s left of life in the seas for the distant future, include:
- Removing older stands of kelp that have bioaccumulated radioactivity,
drying these and burying it safely in barrels in isolated locations on
land; and replace these with new kelp to absorb incoming radioactivity.
Instead of being towers of radioactivity, managed kelp beds can act as
life-saving filters for sand bars, tide pools and shores.
- Creating pockets of managed habitat for marine biological communities
using aquaculture techniques and seawater filtered of radionucleotides.
Biospheres cleared of radioactivity and chemical pollution need to
created along shorelines, lagoons, estuaries, islands and atolls.
- Redesigning the concept and role of aquariums from marine circuses
toward large-scale havens for marine species and outdoors fisheries,
especially for breeding genetically diverse groups of endangered
species.
- Collecting DNA, plankton larvae, eggs, tissue samples, and whole
organisms, along with stem cell genesis, for cryogenic preservation in
event of long-term contamination of the oceans lasting up to several
centuries or even a millennium.
Pyrrhic Victory for the Crustaceans
The presence of hermit crabs and barnacles is a credit to their body
armor, that thin hard layer of exoskeleton and stolen shell. As
witnessed in the mass death of pelagic red crabs, however, the toughest
and meanest crustaceans are themselves vulnerable to radioactivity via
ingestion. By now, many of these invertebrates have suffered
significant losses, for example, sand fleas and other bug-like decapods
that dwell below ground at the waterline.
In my boyhood on the coasts of California and Japan, on either side of
the Pacific, I dug out and de-shelled these juicy morsels as bait for
surf casting. On those predawn expeditions, I’d also put a hogshead
into a wire cage and heave the baited trap off a rocky jetty. Pulling
up the heavy cage a few hours later, the haul was always a bunch of
feisty big crabs for the boil. By comparison to those halcyon days of
abundance, a now-radioactive Pacific Ocean is nearly devoid of life and
poses an ever-greater health risk to surfers, swimmers, sailors and
beachcombers.
After harvesting so much sustenance and enjoyment from the ocean, the
cycle of destruction and renewal now requires that we return life to
the seas. Our earliest ancestors and their descendants arrogantly
abandoned their calling to stewardship, yet the choice remains, for we
still have one last chance to revive the waters and land given to our
care before the sand slips through our fingers and humankind, too,
disappears.
Yoichi Shimatsu, a former editor with the Japan Times media group, is a
science journalist who conducts research on radioactivity effects in
the Fukushima region. His research and articles have helped to shut
down the Rancho Seco and San Onofre nuclear plants in California.
Photos by author.
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