Prankster keeps calling for sea rescue
Coast Guard - Even though crews recognize the voice, they must respond to distress
calls
Thursday, December 01, 2005
LORI TOBIAS
http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/113340211064500.xml?oregoni
an?nwg&coll=7
The call for help came in to the U.S. Coast Guard station in Brookings on the distress
channel. A vessel had become disabled, and the mariner on board needed help.
The Coast Guard launched two 47-foot lifeboats, a helicopter and a response truck. Three
hours later, the caller radioed back: "It was a prank; it was all a prank."
The Coast Guard isn't laughing.
The same person, a man thought to be in his late teens or early 20s, has made four phony
distress calls since early October, each from the Brookings-Harbor area, Coast Guard
officials said Wednesday. The local Crime Stoppers is offering a $1,000 reward for
information leading to the arrest of the caller.
So far, the calls have cost the Coast Guard roughly $50,000, said John Dunn, master chief
of the Coast Guard Station Chetco River in Brookings. It costs $1,200 an hour to operate
a 47-foot lifeboat, and $9,000 to $12,000 an hour to fly the helicopter, he said.
An even greater concern is the risk to the crew each time it ventures out along Oregon's
rugged southern coast, often in treacherous weather, he said. The hoaxes also could make
the rescuers unavailable if someone in real distress needs help.
"While the prank caller is on the hail-and-distress channel, it may be blocked -- we may
not be able to hear another mariner call," Dunn said. Or Coast Guard crews could be
searching for the prankster at one end of the 90-mile stretch they cover and unable to
quickly reach someone in real need in a different area.
Hoax calls aren't unusual in larger cities but are much rarer in smaller towns such as
Brookings, Dunn said. He thinks the caller could be someone angry with the Coast
Guard, possibly someone who has been cited for a violation, or merely someone who
finds the prank entertaining.
The crew at the Brookings station has come to recognize the caller's voice and generally
know those calls are pranks, Dunn said. Nonetheless, the Coast Guard is required to send
out search teams to ensure there isn't a vessel in trouble, he said.
The caller typically calls on a Monday between 3 and 5 p.m., he said.
"Someone who does this sort of thing will normally boast about it to friends. In a small
community like this, it's likely someone will hear something," Dunn said.
The caller could face a charge of communicating a false distress signal, a felony that
carries a maximum of six years in prison and $5,000 in fines. He also would be liable for
all costs the Coast Guard incurred as a result of the hoax calls, said Michael P. Zolzer, a
Coast Guard spokesman.
Prank calls tax Coast Guard, reward offered to find caller
http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=81472
BROOKINGS HARBOR, Ore. - Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for
anyone who can help identify the person responsible for four hoax-calls to the U-S Coast
Guard.
Those pranks took up nearly 20 hours of searching by Coast Guard responders.
The first hoax call came in early October, from a person claiming to be in a disabled
vessel. After three hours of searching by the Coast Guard, the same people called and
said "It was all a prank."
The call was traced to Brookings Harbor.
Then last month, the Coast Guard received another hoax, again traced to the harbor. The
third came from a person claiming to be disabled on a boat with a burned crewmember.
A 47-foot motor boat was launched. The individual radioed for help again but changed
the original name of the vessel.
They suspended the search after five hours.
A call for tougher boating laws
In wake of girl's death in August crash, Schumer appeals to Coast Guard to bolster
rules in federal waters
BY SAMUEL BRUCHEY
STAFF WRITER
November 30, 2005
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/nyliboat304532959nov30,0,5618935.story?coll=ny-linews-headlines
Inspired by the death of Brianna Lieneck, 11, in an August boating accident in the Great
South Bay, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) will call upon the U.S. Coast Guard today to
toughen its regulations on boaters.
"We don't want this kind of accident to ever happen again," Schumer said.
In a news conference today, Schumer will demand that boaters operating in federal
waters submit to sobriety tests immediately after they have been involved in an accident.
Schumer said he also wants boats to be equipped with better lighting, more lighting
devices throughout the Great South Bay, and for boaters involved in accidents to undergo
mandatory training courses.
The suggestions, outlined in a letter to the Coast Guard, will be presented today. Schumer
said he hopes the changes can be enacted in time for next year's boating season. Coast
Guard officials could not be reached yesterday.
The accident happened on Aug. 17 off Bay Shore as Brianna, her parents, older sister and
a family friend were returning from Fire Island.
Their 24-foot Bayliner was struck by a heavier 25-foot Grady White skippered by Steven
Fleischer, 33, of Bay Shore. Brianna, who was sitting on the side of the boat, sustained
massive trauma to her head and torso.
Fleischer was initially charged with boating while intoxicated. A sobriety test
administered four hours after the accident, however, showed no traces of alcohol, and the
charges were dropped.
Lieneck's relatives could not be reached last night. They have previously made public
appeals for the formation of a boating task force to examine issues such as licensing,
speed limits and boating while intoxicated.
Report on commercial fishing: 25% of catch wasted
By Craig Welch
Seattle Times staff reporter
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgibin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=fishwaste01m&date=20051201&query=fisheries
More than a quarter of the fish caught by commercial fishermen nationwide is wasted —
caught accidentally and tossed overboard to die, according to a new review of federal
records by ocean scientists.
From the squid and mackerel of the Atlantic seaboard to rockfish off the West Coast,
commercial fishermen still discard more than 1.2 billion pounds of fish every year,
mostly because they catch the wrong kind or surpass their quotas, according to the study
released by the environmental group Oceana.
"Basically, for every four pounds of fish we land, we're discarding one," said the study's
co-author, Andrew Rosenberg, a University of New Hampshire professor and member of
the Bush administration's Commission on Ocean Policy.
"We should do better."
The study, conducted by Rosenberg along with Ransom Myers, a biologist with
Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, and biologist Jennie Harrington essentially
compiled rates of accidental fish catches and other fishing data kept by government
agencies around the country.
The fishing industry and federal managers have struggled for years with how to reduce
so-called "bycatch," or the catch of unwanted fish, particularly those caught in nets that
drag for miles along the seafloor, because most of those fish simply die.
The most wasteful fishery in the country is the shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Mexico, the
study said. The half-million metric tons of fish snagged in those shrimp nets each year
could "fill all the bathtubs in a large city," Myers said.
"The scale of the problem is enormous."
In the Pacific, fishermen generally are doing better, discarding about 15 percent of their
catch. However, the study pointed to failings with groundfish off Washington, Oregon
and California, and the accidental killing of halibut.
In the 1990s, accidental snagging of halibut in trawl nets was so bad that more halibut
were caught by mistake than by halibut fishermen, said Don McIsaac, director of the
Pacific Fishery Management Council, the federal group that oversees commercial fishing
on the West Coast.
"I would say the council would agree the bycatch is still higher than it ought to be," he
said. The council plans to spend the next two years trying to restructure fishing
regulations to further reduce waste.
Some fisheries, such as in Alaska, have implemented various measures to reduce waste,
such as closing certain areas to fishing, requiring all boats to carry independent observers
and forcing some changes in net design to allow unwanted fish to escape.
In Alaska, the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska have seen reductions of more than 200
million pounds in unwanted catches in 10 years. Waste of groundfish, particularly cod,
has been cut in half.
Even so, Alaska is still responsible for 20 percent of the nation's fishing waste because
the volume of fish caught there is huge — half the nation's catch of wild fish.
"You can't discount the amount of progress that's been made in the last several years,"
said David Benton, executive director of the Marine Conservation Alliance, an
organization representing Alaska's factory trawling fleet. "There's certainly more we can
do."
But Benton also pointed out that in Alaska, the rates of waste are factored into the quotas.
So if a fisherman is allowed to catch 100 tons in an industry with a 30 percent waste rate,
the quota is actually set at 70 tons.
"There's just no way you can say bycatch or discards are contributing to overfishing or
hurting the ecosystem here," Benton said.
But, that's not the case in other parts of the country, said Rosenberg, the study's coauthor.
"The people who know best how to reduce bycatch are fishermen, but there needs to be
real incentives to make them move quickly," he said.
Letter: Voters want LNG
http://www.dailyastorian.com/main.asp?SectionID=23&SubSectionID=393&ArticleID=2
9491
I was in attendance at the Nov. 17 city of Warrenton Commission meeting. At that
meeting, there were numerous rude interruptions by a small group of the anti-liquefied
natural gas people in attendance. Several times they shouted for a countywide vote on
LNG, and that compelled me to write this letter.
The story headlined “Port trio survives attack from anti-LNG candidates,” appeared in
The Daily Astorian May 18, one day after the Port of Astoria Commission election. The
headline pretty much says it all.
The county voters have spoken, and they want LNG. The local press made the port
election a referendum on LNG. I truly believe that you can use Rose Priven’s number of
votes to show how many anti-LNG voters there are in Clatsop County. Why Rose
Priven’s? Because Rose Priven ran on an anti-LNG platform and was the least well
known of the three anti-LNG candidates. The anti-LNG people would have known her
stand on LNG.
The two other anti-LNG candidates both had roots going back a long time in Clatsop
County. Peter Huhtala’s father was a very well-known and popular instructor at Astoria
High School when I went to school there almost 35 years ago. People voted for him for
other reasons beside LNG. Rose Priven got 2,505 votes. Her opponent, Dan Hess, got
4,824 votes. All three anti-LNG candidates lost.
Nothing has happened in the world concerning LNG to change anybody’s feelings. No
LNG plants have blown up. No LNG ships have gone aground or been blown up by
terrorists.
The most read newspaper in the county, The Daily Astorian, made the Port of Astoria
election a referendum on LNG. If a majority of Clatsop County voters did not want LNG,
wouldn’t it have been an opportune time to send that message? Clatsop County voters are
not stupid people. They were well aware that LNG was the main topic of conversation in
the election. They voted overwhelmingly against the anti-LNG candidates.
BERNARD BJORK
Astoria
Bird flu scenario finds U.S. lacking
Early detection efforts need improvement, experts warn
By TOM PAULSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/250387_birdflu01.html
BLAINE -- A deadly strain of bird flu broke out yesterday in a conference room at this
border town's posh destination resort, The Inn at Semiahmoo.
It was a hypothetical exercise, with Canadian and U.S. experts in animal health, public
health, agriculture, the poultry industry, law enforcement and emergency management -those expected to deal with such a threat -- gathered in closed session to get better
prepared for the real thing.
In the scenario, the severe form of Asian bird flu known as H5N1 hits a chicken farm
near the border. Birds die. Farmers fall ill. The infection spreads. A mysterious animal
rights group jumps into the fray. The news media go crazy.
"We will need to work together in such an event," said Dr. Leonard Eldridge, chief
veterinarian for Washington state's Department of Agriculture.
But in at least one critical area in this effort at cross-border collaboration and
preparedness -- the ability to detect disease early -- U.S. efforts appear to be lagging
behind those of Canada. And neither country is doing as much as some experts think
should be the case.
Just east of Vancouver, B.C., near Chilliwack, a milder, real version of the hypothetical
scenario has been playing itself out after birds at a duck farm last month tested positive
for avian influenza.
About 60,000 birds had to be killed, and there remains a temporary ban by the United
States and other countries on importing poultry from the area of infection.
It turns out the ducks were infected by a viral strain of bird flu harmless to humans,
H5N2. But because it was an H5 type of bird flu with the potential to mutate into a more
dangerous strain, international standards require destruction and disposal -euphemistically called "depopulation" -- of all exposed birds.
"It's always unfortunate for the producer involved," said Dr. Ron Lewis, chief
veterinarian for the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Lands and a participant at
yesterday's tabletop exercise.
The first line of defense against any bird flu epidemic and its consequent threat of
producing a human flu pandemic, said Lewis, is aggressive surveillance for presence of
the virus. Last year's outbreak in British Columbia was not contained early enough, he
noted. It resulted in the spread of disease to 42 farms and the destruction of 19 million
birds.
The virus last year was an H7 flu type, which is of perhaps less interest for human health
but of significant risk to birds. The worry is always about what can happen if the virus
mutates. Birds are destroyed to reduce the chance of mutation.
As Canadian and Asian poultry farmers have learned to great dismay (and, in some cases,
great economic loss), the scientific uncertainties of avian influenza behavior have made
surveillance a double-edged sword.
Bird flu is everywhere. Science cannot yet predict with much certainty if these common
strains of the virus will ever evolve into more dangerous forms.
A recent extensive survey of wild ducks throughout Canada, he said, found more than
half of all waterfowl are infected with some form of bird flu -- nearly half of those
infected with H5 strains.
"We're looking more now, and so we're finding more," said Lewis.
"We would find the same thing," said Dr. Kristin Mansfield, a veterinarian with
Washington's Department of Fish and Wildlife. "It's the same migratory flyways."
But it hasn't been found on this side of the border, largely because no one is looking that
hard.
The state lab that does such testing, Washington State University's Avian Health and
Food Safety Laboratory in Puyallup, has tested about 70 wild waterfowl for avian
influenza this year, according to Charlie Powell, a WSU spokesman.
The Bush administration's recently announced plan for dealing with a flu pandemic
proposes doing something similar to what the Canadians did with their wild waterfowl
survey, Mansfield said, but that wouldn't begin until next year -- and only if Congress
provides money for it.
As for surveillance within the relatively large Washington state commercial poultry
industry, none of the experts at this meeting available to comment seemed to know how
many birds are tested for avian influenza. That's because the system is completely
voluntary and passive.
"We ask permission of the farmers, and if they say no, we have to go away," said
Eldridge. But most major poultry operations, he said, call for assistance at the first sign of
any illness in a flock because it is in their economic interest to contain disease and they
are legally required to report any confirmed outbreaks of H5 or H7 flu.
Most of his agency's focus now is on educating people with small flocks of free-range
and backyard birds, because these are believed to be at higher risk of infection from bird
flu, Eldridge said.
He acknowledged, however, that is merely a working assumption. Both major outbreaks
in British Columbia were in commercial operations, which have higher-density
populations than backyard and free-range situations.
WSU's Powell said the state avian health lab has tested about 650 birds from commercial
farms this year, noting that during last year's large outbreak in British Columbia, the lab
was doing thousands of tests every day, mostly for Washington state producers.
Lewis thinks the approach to bird flu surveillance needs to change, in Canada at least.
"We need to get beyond this routine of passive surveillance," he said.
The survey of wild birds in Canada demonstrated that H5 avian influenza is much more
prevalent than they expected, he noted, and they really don't have a good baseline on
prevalence in commercial birds.
Lewis said B.C. officials are now in discussion with poultry farmers to see if they can
develop a "more proactive" form of surveillance the industry can live with.
We now have 6 months to absorb lessons and retool for 2006 hurricane season
published December 1, 2005 6:00 am
http://www.citizentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051201/OPINION01/51130041/1006
Here’s some good news for the holiday season: Another season’s over.
The curtain officially dropped on hurricane season 2005 Wednesday. The season broke
all kinds of hurricane records, none of them good. Going back to when the government
began keeping records 154 years ago, 2005 saw: the greatest number of storms (26), the
greatest number of hurricanes (13), the most Category 5 storms (3), the strongest
hurricane on record, the largest number of major hurricanes to strike the U.S. mainland
(4) and was the costliest season on record with insured losses pegged at more than $47
billion.
It was, for crying out loud, the year we ran out of letters to name storms and had to dust
off the Greek alphabet to keep track of the things. As the season ended, Epsilon churned
away out in the central Atlantic.
It will forever be remembered for the trauma of New Orleans, when America watched
helplessly as we essentially lost a major city. It will be remembered for other major
damage from Katrina, for wiping some towns on the Gulf Coast off the map. While the
victims of Katrina have in some cases faded from the consciousness of a nation always
looking ahead, they are still there and still need help. The lessons of how long a climb
back up from the devastation caused in such storms is still painfully clear in these
mountains, as towns and communities across the region are still dealing with the damage
caused last year by the remnants of hurricanes Frances and Ivan.
Aside from the frequency of the storms, perhaps the most disturbing trend of 2005 was
how quickly some storms intensified. Hurricane Wilma’s wind speeds increased 105
miles per hour in a single day, taking it from a Category 1 to a Category 5.
NOAA administrator Conrad Lautenbacher Jr. told Newhouse News Service, “Intensity
changes are the things that really hurt people. They think a hurricane is coming and it’s a
No. 1 and ‘well that isn’t so bad, my Uncle Fred survived that three years ago and I’ll just
sit in place.’ They hear it’s a Category 5 and they run away, and if it happens to decrease
to a 2 or 3, they feel cheated that they left when they could have stayed with their
house.’’
NOAA and the National Weather Service, along with the Coast Guard and groups like
the Salvation Army, are among the few organizations to emerge from this hurricane
season with reputations intact. Weather warnings and storm track predictions were
generally precise this year.
Other organizations, particularly the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have a lot
of work to do. The acting director of FEMA, R. David Paulison, said, “We have to make
it a much more nimble, more adaptable organization. ... We’ve got good people in place
to make it happen. As long as I’m here, I can tell you, we will not have another
Superdome.’’
There’s much work to do to rebuild that agency, and for that matter to rebuild levees in
New Orleans and retool emergency plans. We have a respite, but it’s a brief one.
Hurricane season 2006 starts June 1.
On the Net: National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
Nisqually quake moved Puget Sound region to the southwest
http://www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=2278
The ground in the Puget Sound region didn't just shake during the magnitude 6.8
Nisqually earthquake, it moved -- literally.
In fact, measurements using global positioning system (GPS) data indicate that in most
areas the ground shifted more during the Feb. 28 quake than it normally does in a year.
"Not only that, but it moved in completely the opposite direction of what we've observed
from year to year," said Anthony Qamar, a University of Washington research associate
professor in Earth and space sciences and the state seismologist.
Qamar works on a project called PANGA, or Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array, that uses
global positioning information to measure how much the ground in western Washington
and Oregon move each year relative to a fixed point farther east. PANGA partners
include the UW, Central Washington University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in
Troy, N.Y., Oregon State University, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Coast Guard
and the Geological Survey of Canada.
PANGA's measurements have shown that typically the central Puget Sound region moves
to the east-northeast at about 3 to 5 millimeters per year. By contrast, at Neah Bay on the
state's northwest coast the movement is about 10 millimeters, or a half-inch, per year.
That's because the coast is much closer to the zone where the Juan de Fuca plate dives
beneath the North American Plate, and the pressure moving the land surface is much
greater than farther inland.
In the Nisqually earthquake, GPS sensors showed a Coast Guard station at Point
Robinson on the east edge of Maury Island moved 8 millimeters to the south-southwest
and the UW campus moved 5 millimeters -- about two-tenths of an inch -- southsouthwest. The data showed that Satsop, which is about midway between the epicenter
and the Washington coast, moved west about 6 millimeters and Pacific Beach, on the
coast, moved northwest about 4 millimeters.
Though currently there are no measurements, Qamar also expects that data eventually
will show that areas west of the earthquake's focus deep beneath the Nisqually River
delta north of Olympia rose as much as a half-inch in the quake. He expects that areas to
the east will have dropped about one-third of an inch. (An earthquake's epicenter is the
area on the surface that lies directly above the hypocenter, or focus.)
The actual movement of the fault at the focus of the earthquake was probably about 1
meter, more than 3 feet, Qamar said. But the fact that the focus was some 34 miles deep
in the Earth means the displacement at the surface is far less.
PANGA has about 20 permanent global positioning stations running in western
Washington and Oregon. There also are 70 National Geodetic Survey sites permanently
marked with metal plates that are in the process of being measured with portable GPS
equipment to provide a more complete picture of what happened in the Nisqually quake.
Those sites, a number of them lined up through the heart of the epicenter region, typically
are measured every two years or so.
The purpose of PANGA is to allow scientists to see geographic positions changing over
time. That happens as pressure is applied from the west by the interaction of the Juan de
Fuca and North American plates, pushing this region east, and from the south by the
movement of a large chunk of California against Oregon and Washington, pushing the
region north. Eventually, those forces will counteract what happened in the Nisqually
quake, Qamar said.
"I would expect that if we go back and measure the Satsop station in a year or two, we'll
see that it's right back where it was before the earthquake," he said.
Automated North Pole Station to take pulse of Arctic Ocean
http://www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=3324
An international research team supported by the National Science Foundation will
establish a camp at the North Pole this month. The scientists will use the camp to lay the
groundwork for a five-year project to take the pulse of the Arctic Ocean and learn how
the world's northernmost sea helps regulate global climate.
James Morison, of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory, the lead
researcher for the "North Pole Automated Station" project, said the team will deploy a
system of floating buoys this season and, eventually, devices anchored to the ocean floor
to collect data on everything from the salinity of the water in the Arctic Ocean to the
thickness and temperature layering of its ice cover.
"This will be the first time we've put such a congregation of drifting buoys at the North
Pole," Morison said.
Researchers will return to the Pole repeatedly over several seasons to deploy additional
buoys. Michael Ledbetter of NSF's Arctic System Science program, said that after the
first year the number of research projects will be expanded to cover a broad range of
sciences. Morison added that for long-term observations, an automated station does the
work of a manned platform, but at far less cost.
The new long-term scientific presence at the North Pole recognizes the importance of the
Arctic in regulating global climate. Observations have shown that the Arctic Ocean has
been affected in recent years by a rapid thinning of sea ice and shifts in ocean circulation.
These changes are related to a pattern of change in the atmospheric circulation of the
Northern Hemisphere - know as the Arctic Oscillation - which is roughly centered at the
Pole.
The Arctic Ocean circulation and the flowing of waters from the Arctic into the
Greenland Sea affect the deep overturning circulation of the Atlantic Ocean and thus play
an important role in regulating climate, said Ledbetter.
NSF has committed more than $5 million over five years to support the project Morison's
research team will oversee. This year, in addition to the University of Washington team,
researchers from Oregon State University, Seattle's Pacific Marine Environmental
Laboratory as well as the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center and Canada's
Met-Ocean Corp. will participate.
Morison said the team will travel to the Pole this month to begin deploying several
drifting buoys to measure such variables as atmospheric pressure, temperature, wind,
solar radiation, water temperature, salinity, ice temperature profiles, and ice thickness.
Over the next year, the buoys will drift with the ice pack and are expected eventually to
drift into the Greenland Sea.
He noted that the area around the North Pole is far from any landmass or observing
stations. Even with the use of submarines and icebreakers it is difficult to obtain longterm measurements of temperature and other variables at the Pole. The drifting stations
are designed to provide a mix of coverage over time and in a wide geographic area.
Coverage will be enhanced in future years by instruments that will be moored to the sea
floor. In the future, the new U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy - an icebreaker equipped as a
science platform - also is expected to assist in deploying buoys.
"This station will really fill a hole in our scientific observations," Morison said. "The
station, and others like it, will provide a set of data taken reliably over a long period as a
benchmark for the study of climate change."
When the North Pole station begins operations, NSF's Office of Polar Programs will have
a scientific presence at both poles. The U.S. Antarctic Program operates three stations
year-round in Antarctica, including the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.