The RAF Dakota 576 crash site just outside of Port Hardy.
Yesterday I awoke in Port Hardy and was told we would be spending the day docked while the ship refueled. This meant that 13 hours was needed to top up the measly one-million-liter diesel tank beneath us. This also meant that the crew and supernumeraries (aka the scientists) were allowed to disembark and explore Port Hardy. My roommate, Gina, and I went for a hike, recommended by a local, to the site of a WWII plane crash. The hike was through a lush, muddy, and mosquito-ridden rain forest and it felt amazing to stretch our legs and smell some trees. Gina, a Vancouver Island native, told me which berries were safe to eat along the way and I tried salmon berries for the first time! Seemed like a genetically-modified cross between raspberries and oranges to me, but they were very tasty.
After returning from our hike, Shea and I left again to visit the hardware store to replenish some supplies we were both short on. In an attempt to solve my leaky column problem, I bought ten more rolls of electrical tape, and something called “Magic Wrap” which claimed to form a rubber casing around a cylinder and stay water-tight. I have now tried it out with the next seven samples and it seems to be working – THANK GOODNESS.
We then returned to the ship to assemble Shea’s incubator on the helicopter pad. His experiments are looking at the effect of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels on phytoplankton growth. We bubble air with present-day atmospheric constituent concentrations (CO2 ~ 410 ppm) and air with one of the projected constituent concentrations for the year 2100 (CO2 ~ 750 ppm) into separate containers holding the same diversity of phytoplankton and we will soon see how the organisms react to increased levels of the greenhouse gas.
We still had a couple more hours to kill so I went for one last jog on land among the pretty rock faces and lush wildflowers along the highway. As we ate dinner, the ship started to move again which indicated it was time for me to get to work. I processed a few samples over the course of the night, waking every hour to check for leakage and to change out fresh carboys.
Preparing the ARGO float for deployment.
I am getting more and more confident with the lab protocols, remembering the crew members’ names, and navigating routes around the ship. I am constantly in awe of the stunning scenery surrounding us. Watching the waves interact, the sky change colours at dawn and dusk, and keeping an eye out for whales doesn’t cease to entertain me. I remain endlessly grateful for the chance to fulfill one of my dreams and take this trip of a lifetime.
Speaking of dream come true, I am about to go take another sample, watch the deployment of an ARGO float, eat a strawberry tarte, and then watch the sunset from the hot tub. Goodnight!
Seeing an aerial photo of the CCGS Sir Wilfred Laurier and reading a blurb about an undergraduate studying chemical oceanography on the university’s homepage was the tipping point that helped me decide to attend UVic for my post-secondary education.
Like most students in grade 12, I had very few ideas of what I actually wanted to do with my life and career, but seeing what the possibilities were inspired me and I promptly enrolled in the Earth and Ocean Science program. Becoming thatundergraduate who has the privilege to do scientific research on a cruise seemed like an unrealistic dream – unachievable for an average student like myself. But lo and behold, a little over three and a half years later, I somehow fooled the people in charge to let me participate!
After two months of working on the InFORM project in the lab, the cruise idea seems a bit more normal to me, but I am lucky to be constantly reminded of how much of a privilege this voyage is. Friends and coworkers all have similar humbling reactions when I mention what my summer job is and what part of the world I get to explore – “Wow, that is so cool! Take me with you??” My dad marveled at how I might be the only person in our family who will have crossed the Arctic Circle (before I reminded him that his own father is from Finland). My mom declared that I might be the coolest person she knows because I get to sail with the coast guard. (Sorry to my sister Marina. If you’re reading this, it’s official – I’m cooler than you. Mom said so!!)
Everyone in the EOS department has been so incredibly helpful in preparing me for my trip, especially Dr. Jay Cullen, Sue Velazquez, and Annaliese Meyer. They’ve helped me understand the procedures, both in our UVic lab, with the citizen science samples, and in providing insights to what my life will look like on the ship. From lab techniques to prevent samples from leaking, to the best seasickness meds to have on-hand, to preparing to eat my body weight in decadent fresh-baked pastries; I feel quite ready for what is to come.
Getting ready for departure!
I have stepped foot on the CCGS Sir Wilfred Laurier three times in the past few weeks. First, to set up the lab equipment with Jay. Second to give my mom and stepdad a tour of where I will be working and living for the next three weeks. Last, to bring my personal belongings to my room. It is a lot more spacious than I was expecting. I found out I will only have a roommate for about half of the time (I thought I would be sharing a room the whole time), and it has a little porthole (I had pictured I would be getting one of the interior, lightless rooms)! So overall, I’m already pleasantly surprised by the experience.
After we set sail tonight at 18:30, we will be having a full tour of the ship and a safety briefing. This will be followed by our first meal as a team. Then we get to work.
The route of the annual CCGS Laurier trip from Victoria, BC to Barrow, AK.
My project involves collecting seawater from what is called the loop sampler. This water runs through the ship and gives us an accurate representation of the ocean conditions. The seawater is run through a resin which binds to the radiocesium in the water that is left over from the meltdowns of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants in 2011. Once all of the cesium is bound to the resin, I will send the resin to Dr. John Smith‘s lab at DFO’s Bedford Institute of Oceanography where they use gamma spectroscopy to determine how much cesium is at each sample location. These data will become part of the timeseries from the previous undergrads who have taken the same NE Pacific/Arctic cruise to see how the amounts of cesium have changed through time.
Well, all of my lab equipment is set up on board, I have a seasickness-halting medicated patch behind my ear, and I’m about to walk back to the Laurier‘s temporary resting place at Ogden Point where my feet will soon leave solid ground for the last time. I truly wasn’t sure if I would see this day, but here it is, and I’m ready (as I’ll ever be) to set sail!
The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) and surroundings before the tragic events of March 11, 2011
By Jay T. Cullen
The purpose of this post is to bring the community up to date on monitoring efforts aimed at understanding the impact of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident on environmental and public health. This post is part of an ongoing series and will focus on North American monitoring, summarizing work carried out by the Integrated Fukushima Ocean Radionuclide Monitoring (InFORM) project. Seven years since the peak in releases to the environment our project continues to measure environmental levels of radioisotopes that could represent a radiological health risk to living things. InFORM makes measurements of levels in seawater and common marine organisms as consumption of seafood is one of the most likely ways that residents of North America could be exposed to Fukushima derived contamination. Maximum contamination levels in seawater from Fukushima measured in waters offshore and onshore British Columbia and in the Arctic Ocean are about 8 to 10-fold lower than levels present in the North Pacific during the height of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the 1950’s and 1960’s. These levels are roughly 1000-fold below the maximum allowable drinking water standards for these isotopes. Levels in marine organisms have not changed significantly since before the disaster. As was reported in 2015 in this comprehensive study by Health Canada and backed up by measurements made by the international scientific community the release of radioisotopes from Fukushima will have no measurable impact on the health of the marine ecosystem in the northeast Pacific nor on public health in North America.
On March 11, 2011 all eyes were on Japan and I was watching too and feeling acutely the loss of life that the earthquake and tsunami brought on the Japanese people. A little later I watched as events at the FDNPP began to unfold and it became clear that a major nuclear accident was underway. I wondered what it meant for me and my family and friends in Victoria, BC Canada. I catalogued all the monitoring data coming in in 2011 I could find from the international scientific community and kept careful watch on the scientific literature. In 2013 I began communicating with the public about what the triple meltdowns at the FDNPP meant for the health of our marine ecosystem and public health because much of the information getting to the public was not scientifically sound, misinformed the public in general and overestimated the risk to people living in North America. The short of the story then was that nothing in the measurements of air, soil and water suggested any significant risk to public or environmental health. But it was clear that many in the public were being mislead by information online. To address the lack of quality information getting to the public I and other scientists in Canada and the USA, non-Governmental Organizations and citizen scientist volunteers put together the InFORM network. This is what we have found so far.
Study area showing the onshore-offshore sampling line occupied by the InFORM project with the support of Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Station P26 is ~1500 kilometers from the coast of North America.
Measurements of radiocesium isotopes help scientists determine how much impact Fukushima has had on seawater at any given location on the globe. Off North America levels peaked at about 10 Bq per cubic meter of seawater (a Bq = Becquerel is one decay of an atom per second). This peak contamination is about 10-fold below levels measured here in the middle of the 20th century and 1000-fold below levels allowed in drinking water in Canada. The figure below shows how Fukushima derived contamination arrived in the upper ~400 meters of seawater from June 2013 until August of 2016.
Progression of Fukushima contamination in the upper 500 meters of seawater over time toward the coast of North America along the Line P times series stations. Data J. Smith (DFO). The coast is on the right hand side of the figure with distance offshore plotted on the x-axis and depth in the ocean on the y-axis. Red values would indicate seawater with cesium concentrations that exceed drinking water standards. The color scheme is on a logarithmic scale.
The figure below shows the change in contamination with time and the levels in comparison to historical levels in the eastern North Pacific Ocean.
Peak levels of contamination from Fukushima in the northeast Pacific at stations P26 (offshore), P16 (intermediate) and P4 (coastal) since 2011 compared with model predictions of Rossi. Insert shows Fukushima contamination relative to weapons testing fallout. Levels at P26 have peaked and are declining reflecting the large releases in the weeks following the meltdown with sustained by much lower releases persisting from that time on.
Levels measured now and predicted to arrive along the coast in the future will not approach levels known to represent a significant risk to the health of marine organisms or human beings.
Coastal Monitoring Efforts by InFORM Citizen Scientists
Every month since about December 2014 volunteer citizen scientists in 15 coastal communities up and down the shores of British Columbia have collected seawater samples at the beach and returned them to our laboratories for analysis. The sampling network is shown below.
Coastal seawater monitoring stations in British Columbia.
Since monitoring began coastal seawater concentrations have increased as the Fukushima contamination plume arrives. The first detection of Fukushima contamination at the coast occurred in Feb. 2015 in the coastal community of Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Since that time levels have increased moderately and likely reflect that fact that the mixing of freshwaters coming from the land with the contaminated oceanic waters tend to insulate the coast from higher levels of contamination measured offshore. At the coastal locations contamination levels of human-made isotopes (which are a very small fraction of the radioactive elements in seawater) have increased 2-4 times relative to the pre-Fukushima levels.
Levels of radiocesium detected at the coast of British Columbia since monitoring began in 2014. Regional patterns are shown in the second panel with more ocean exposed (west coast of Vancouver Island and north coast of BC) sites showing more Fukushima derived contamination than sites in the Salish Sea or in sheltered areas of the central coast.
Our coastal ecosystem and food supply are not at risk from these low levels of radioisotope contamination.
Monitoring of Pacific Salmon and Other Marine Organisms
Since 2014 we have collected and analyzed ~100 Pacific salmon and steel head trout per year returning to rivers up and down the BC coast from the Pacific Ocean. There has been no statistically significant increase in the levels of human-made isotopes in the fish since before the Fukushima disaster. The dose of ionizing radiation experienced by consumers of Pacific fish and shellfish is still dominated by the presence of naturally occurring radioisotopes in the Uranium and Thorium decay series (principally 210-Polonium) and remains well below levels that might represent a health risk. Our results are summarized in the following two figures.
Monitoring results for Pacific fish as of September 2017. Approximately 450 fish have been collected over the period 2014-2017. No significant increase in artificial, human made isotopes has been detected.
The ionizing dose from consuming these fish is insignificant relative to other sources of ionizing radiation dose experienced by members of the public in North America. No measurable health impacts are expected.
Dose of ionizing radiation from Fukushima derived isotopes relative to other sources.
Summary
Our intensive monitoring of environmental levels of contamination from Fukushima here in North America indicate that there is insignificant risk to ecosystem or public health resulting from the levels of radioisotopes detected in seawater and marine organisms. A summary of our program results thus far and monitoring of conditions off of Fukushima in Japan are given in the following figure.
Consistent with model predictions and the measurements made by scientists around the globe, the FDNPP accident will not have measurable negative impacts on North America’s marine ecosystems or public health. Levels of contamination are simply too far below those known to represent a threat to wildlife or human health. The InFORM project will continue its monitoring efforts into March 2019 and will continue to report its results and make them available to the public as soon as possible. I am available and happy to answer and questions related to the project, its goals and results. As always on this somber anniversary I think about the incredible loss of life from the tsunami and wish the best for the recovery of Japan’s coastal communities.
No Fukushima contamination has been found in any of 12 fish sampled and tested by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in 2017. Sampled between March and July 2017, the Pollock (Gaduschalcogrammus), Pacific Cod (Gadus macrocephalus), Halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis), Herring (Clupea pallasii), and salmon (Sockeye (Oncorhynchus nerka), Chinook (O. tshawytscha), and Chum (O. keta)) were sampled from waters off the the Southeast panhandle to the Bering Sea. Continue reading No Fukushima Contamination in Alaskan Fish – 2017 Update→
Home 