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  • From: Martin Naylor <martinwnaylor@yahoo.com.au>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Red tides? Don't go near the ocean
  • Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:11:49 +1000 (EST)

So why isn't anybody taking the govt to court [that is every govt/leader of
every country on the planet] it is legal and a requirement of the United
Nations that an individual has to exhaust the court process of a country
before an individual can take a country to the United Nations, in this case
it will be for failure to provide safe and secure shelter, obviously caused
by global warming.

I am attempting this in Australia but no one will provide me with the
information including Greenpeace ,the Environmental Defenders office, Legal
Aid, Chamber Magistrate, my next step is State Ombudsman [Federal as already
received enq] Legal Aid head office, then i assume State and Federal Attorney
General

Just as the story outlines the causes of global warming come from people
who support the system [admittedly they have no choice except raise there
voices] what do the couple do, by a get away, build houses for people that
support global warming drive using oil 3hrs to play in Disney land to further
push up global warming

From catch 22 we go to catch one all out

Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com> wrote:
Dark Tides, Ill Winds
With sickening regularity, toxic algae blooms are invading coastal
waters. They kill sea life and send poisons ashore on the breeze,
forcing residents to flee.
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
August 1, 2006

LITTLE GASPARILLA ISLAND, FLA. — All Susan Leydon has to do is stick her
head outside and take a deep breath of sea air. She can tell if her
10-year-old son is about to get sick. If she coughs or feels a tickle in
the back of her throat, she lays down the law: No playing on the beach.
No, not even in the yard. Come back inside. Now.

The Leydons thought they found paradise a decade ago when they moved
from Massachusetts to this narrow barrier island, reachable only by
boat, with gentle surf, no paved roads and balmy air that feels like
velvet on the skin.

Now, they fear that the sea has turned on them. The dread takes hold
whenever purplish-red algae stain the crystal waters of Florida's Gulf
Coast. The blooms send waves of stinking dead fish ashore and insult
every nostril on the island with something worse.

The algae produce an arsenal of toxins carried ashore by the sea breeze.

"I have to pull my shirt up and over my mouth or I'll be coughing and
hacking," said Leydon, 42, a trim, energetic mother of three who walks
the beach every morning.

Her husband, Richard, a 46-year-old building contractor, said the wind
off the gulf can make him feel like he's spent too much time in an
overchlorinated pool. His chest tightens and he grows short of breath.
His throat feels scratchy, his eyes burn, and his head throbs.

Their symptoms are mild compared with those of their son, also named
Richard. He suffers from asthma and recurring sinus infections. When the
toxic breeze blows, he keeps himself — and his parents — up all night,
coughing until he vomits.

If the airborne assault goes on for more than a few days, it becomes a
community-wide affliction. At homeowners' meetings, many people wear
face masks.

On weekends, the Leydons escape inland. They drive three hours to
Orlando so their son can play outside without getting sick. They go to a
Walt Disney World resort with water slides, machine-generated currents
and an imported white sand beach.

"It's a shame to leave this beautiful place and go to a water park,"
Richard Leydon said. "But we don't have much choice. We have to get away
from it."

Harmful algae blooms have occurred for ages. Some scientists theorize
that a toxic bloom inspired the biblical passage in Exodus: " … all the
water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died, and
the Nile stank, so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the
Nile. There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt."

What was once a freak of nature has become commonplace. These outbreaks,
often called red tides, are occurring more often worldwide, showing up
in new places, lasting longer and intensifying.

They are distress signals from an unhealthy ocean. Overfishing,
destruction of wetlands, industrial pollution and climate change have
made the seas inhospitable for fish and more advanced forms of life and
freed the lowliest — algae and bacteria — to flourish.

A scientific consensus is emerging that commercial agriculture and
coastal development, in particular, promote the spread of harmful algae.
They generate runoff rich in nitrogen, phosphorous and other nutrients
that sustain these microscopic aquatic plants. In essence, researchers
say, modern society is force-feeding the oceans with the basic
ingredients of Miracle-Gro.

Yet there is debate among Florida scientists over the precise causes of
local outbreaks. Red tides date back at least 150 years, before the
state became one of the nation's most populous. Some scientists say
their increased intensity is part of a natural cycle.

People who have spent many years on Little Gasparilla Island and in
other Florida Gulf Coast communities say red tides used to show up once
in a decade. Now, they occur almost every year and persist for months.

Red tide announced its arrival this summer by dumping dead tarpon and
goliath grouper on the beaches. Soon after, coastal residents were
coughing and sneezing.

The previous bloom, which ended in mid-February, peppered Florida's
western coast with its fiery breath for 13 months, stubbornly refusing
to dissipate despite three hurricanes.

The culprit is a microorganism known as Karenia brevis. Each Karenia
cell is a poison factory pumping out toxins collectively known as
brevetoxin.

During red tides, they can be absorbed into the food chain by scallops,
oysters and other popular seafood and can cause neurotoxic shellfish
poisoning. The effects range from gastrointestinal illness to seizures,
loss of muscle control and unconsciousness.

Brevetoxin also gets into the air. It collects on the surface of bubbles
and concentrates in sea foam and on dead fish.

When the bubbles burst, brevetoxin is flung into the air and carried by
the wind. If inhaled, most particles lodge in the nose and throat, but
some are drawn deep into the lungs. People don't have to set foot in the
ocean or even on the beach to experience a red tide. It comes to them.

Most of those affected feel as if they have a cold or an allergy. But
researchers reported last year that red tides coincided with outbreaks
of severe respiratory ailments.

They compared emergency admissions at Sarasota Memorial Hospital during
three months of red tide with the same period a year later, when there
was no toxic algae.

During the red tide, admissions for pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma, sinus
infections and similar afflictions rose 54%. No such increase was
reported inland.

"You can tell when it's a bad red tide," said Dr. Brian Garby, the
hospital's chief of emergency medicine. "The waiting room is filled with
people coughing and they don't know why."

Most alarming was a 19% increase in cases of pneumonia, a leading cause
of death among the elderly.

Brevetoxin doesn't cause those maladies directly. Instead, researchers
believe, it makes people vulnerable by inflaming their sinuses and
suppressing their immune systems, allowing bacteria and viruses to flourish.

Boxy air filters stationed around Sarasota have detected the wind-borne
neurotoxin three miles from the coast, said Barbara Kirkpatrick, a
researcher at Mote Marine Laboratory, a private research institute in
the city. "The public health message has been, 'If you leave the beach,
you'll be OK.' Now we know better. People who are window shopping or
eating in outdoor restaurants are still being exposed to the toxins."

Hundreds of visitors from the Midwest and New England have posted
questions and complaints on websites, seeking to learn why, after a
short beach vacation on the west coast of Florida, they suffered weeks
of coughing, bronchial infections, dizziness, lethargy and other symptoms.

Researchers are hearing a growing number of complaints about
neurological symptoms.

Ruth DeLynn, a 79-year-old retired biologist and volunteer curator at
Mote Marine Laboratory, was hospitalized for five days last year with
respiratory distress during a particularly virulent red tide. DeLynn
also experienced numbness and a burning sensation in her legs that made
it difficult to walk. She and her doctor believe the toxin triggered a
resurgence of peripheral neuropathy that had been dormant for 15 years.

"If this is going to continue this way," said DeLynn, who lives on a
barrier island near Sarasota, "I'm thinking of moving inland."

Neurological symptoms usually flare only with high levels of exposure,
said Dr. Lora Fleming, a University of Miami epidemiologist and
physician. "It's all about dose."

Fleming isn't persuaded that people on the beach can inhale enough to
suffer serious neurological effects, but she thinks surfers may be more
vulnerable.

"I felt like I inhaled a garbage bag," said Purdy, 33, a former high
school swimming champion. "It locked up my lungs and throat like a
paralysis." The seconds ticked by. "I was thinking, 'Is this the way
it's going to end?' "

Eventually, he managed to sneak in a little air. It was like sucking
through a cocktail straw. He made his way to shore but didn't feel much
better until emergency medical technicians hooked him up to oxygen. "It
was the closest thing I've had to a near-death experience," he said.

Unlike surfers, marine mammals can't seek refuge on land. Last year's
red tide took the lives of at least 88 manatees, some weighing more than
a ton. Hundreds of these massive sea cows have succumbed during
outbreaks in previous years.

Greg Bossart, a veterinarian and pathologist at Harbor Branch
Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, dissected the tissue of manatees
and determined that many died from inhaling brevetoxin-laden air just
above the ocean's surface. The result was a cascade of nerve and tissue
damage that filled their lungs with blood.

"The manatees are gassed to death," Bossart said. "They die of toxic shock."

Bossart considers the manatee a sentinel for human health, or, as he
puts it: "Florida's 2,000-pound canary. We've opened a Pandora's box of
health issues."

The oceans are awash in microscopic algae, or plankton. But of the
thousands of different kinds, only about 100 produce toxins.

About 60,000 people in the United States are poisoned each year by algae
blooms. Most get sick by eating fish and shellfish that concentrate
neurotoxins from the vast quantities of algae they consume.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only 2% to
10% of all cases are reported to health authorities — usually those that
involve numbness, paralysis, coma or other severe symptoms. Cases of
nausea, cramping and diarrhea tend to go unreported.

Estimates of algae-related illness don't include the many thousands of
people in Florida and other Gulf Coast states who suffer from inhaling
airborne brevetoxin.

Nearly every coastal region has outbreaks of harmful algae or bacteria.

For the second summer in a row, shellfish beds in New England are being
closed because of toxic algae that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning.
These blooms that typically begin in the Gulf of Maine were rare until
the 1970s. Now, they appear almost every year, often spreading down the
coast as far as Cape Cod.

California and other West Coast states periodically have banned
shellfish harvesting because of toxic algae, including Pseudo-nitzschia,
which wasn't identified until 1987. That was when it killed three people
who ate contaminated mussels in Montreal. Since then, it has left
California's coastline littered with dead and dying marine mammals and
seabirds.

Marine biotoxins are among the most potent biological poisons ever
discovered. Saxitoxin, which causes paralytic shellfish poisoning, is
listed among chemical agents banned under a United Nations compact on
weapons of mass destruction. As with other algae-produced neurotoxins,
there is no known antidote.

People help spread harmful algae by fertilizing them with sewage and
farm runoff, transporting them in the ballast water of ships, dredging
harbors or warming seawater through climate change.

Patricia M. Glibert, a marine scientist at the University of Maryland,
has found that the worldwide spread of paralytic shellfish poisoning has
closely tracked the expanding use of urea, a nitrogen fertilizer.

Glibert estimated that fertilizer use will rise 50% this decade "in
parts of the world that are already saturated with nitrogen and
frequently plagued by harmful blooms."

Donald Anderson and colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
in Massachusetts traced the origin of a strain of algae responsible for
a 1998 outbreak of paralytic shellfish poisoning on France's
Mediterranean coast. Analyzing DNA and shipping records, they concluded
that it hitched a ride from Japan in the belly of a ship.

Disturbance of the seafloor by dredging is believed to help promote the
growth of algae that cause ciguatera fish poisoning. About a million
people a year show signs of ciguatera poisoning — such as
gastrointestinal distress, numbness, weakness, vertigo and coma — after
eating fish from tropical waters.

Cruise ship passengers who ate raw oysters from Alaskan shellfish beds
became violently ill two years ago in an outbreak that medical
researchers tied to the bacterial pathogen Vibrio, common in the Gulf of
Mexico. Researchers realized the strain had moved 600 miles farther
north than ever before, as Alaskan waters warmed above the 59-degree
threshold that limited the bacterium's range.

A University of Miami marine biologist, Larry E. Brand, examined water
samples dating to 1954 and found that outbreaks of Karenia brevis off
Florida's Gulf Coast are getting stronger, lasting longer and spreading
farther.

"When you look at it statistically, red tides are 10 times more abundant
than they were 50 years ago," Brand said. Once, "the peak time was in
the fall…. Now we have blooms continuing on and lasting into the winter
and spring."

The highest concentrations of algae, he said, were along heavily
developed shorelines and around the mouths of rivers that disgorge
nutrient-laden waters from sugar-cane fields and sediment from phosphate
mines.

Brand said that was no coincidence. It reflects "a huge increase in
sewage, runoff from lawns and golf courses, mining and agriculture," he
said.

State officials say Brand may be misinterpreting the water samples.
Cynthia Heil, a senior state scientist, said the data do not support the
conclusion that pollution from agriculture or development spawns red
tides, although she said it may intensify or prolong the outbreaks.

Heil said there is compelling evidence of blooms that originate out at
sea, far from coastal concentrations of man-made pollutants.

She and a team of university scientists in Florida have published a
study theorizing that iron-rich dust from Africa's Sahara Desert drifts
across the Atlantic and triggers a natural process that stimulates
harmful algae blooms off Florida's Gulf Coast.

"The timing sure matches up with blooms," Heil said. "We know it has to
contribute to enriching seawater with iron and nitrogen."

A television suspended from the ceiling at Mote Marine Laboratory in
Sarasota plays a public service announcement sponsored by state and
federal agencies, offering hints for dealing with red tide.

"If you are going to the beach for a short trip, go to your local
drugstore and buy a face mask, like the ones painters wear," the
narrator says. "But remember, these masks are only effective for a short
time.

"People with asthma should also be sure to take their inhalers to the
beach and use them as prescribed. If your inhaler is not providing
relief, seek immediate medical attention."

Tourist officials point out that red tides come and go and vary in
intensity, and that the airborne toxins don't trigger health problems
unless there is an onshore breeze. Beachgoers on one stretch of coast
can get a heavy dose, while others a few miles away aren't affected.

Last fall's red tide was one of the worst on record.

Tourists bailed out of hotels and motels, said Dianne Manspeaker,
manager of the Gulf Surf Resort Motel in Nokomis. "People come to check
in and say, 'I can't stay here, I can't breathe.' "

Manspeaker is sympathetic to tourists who feel ill and refunds their
money. She lives inland, and when the wind blows brevetoxin onshore, she
stays home and tends to business by phone. "If I have to be here," she
said, "I wear a mask."

A few miles up the coast, Sarasota County lifeguard Mike Zanane listened
to a familiar chorus of coughs, throat-clearing, sneezes and
nose-blowing from hundreds of beachgoers.

It was a typical day at the beach during red tide, Zanane said. The
die-hards lie in the sun and cough all day. They won't leave. Nor will
they venture into the surf, and Zanane doesn't blame them.

"Sometimes," he said, "you go out there and you feel like you've been
Maced."

Red tides have become a staple of the daily reports on surf conditions
posted on the lifeguard tower. The sign read: "Some Red Tide = Coughs.
Sneezes. Dead Fishes." A few extra words were scribbled in chalk in the
margin: "Can't do anything about [it]."

Not that people haven't tried.

In one experiment, researchers from Mote Marine Laboratory sprayed a
slurry of clay onto the murky water in an effort to smother and sink the
offending organisms. Another experiment in the works would sterilize
algae patches with injections of ozone. Such remedies can be
problematic. Not only do they kill the harmful algae, they wipe out
every living thing in the vicinity.

Jim Patterson, a past mayor of Longboat Key next to Sarasota, would have
been satisfied just to rid the beach of the stench of dead fish.

A retired Army general, Patterson took the fight to the fish. He hired a
boat and crew and set out to chop up the carcasses with a fish shredder
before they could reach the shore.

The results were disappointing for Patterson and his nonprofit group,
Solutions To Avoid Red Tide. Instead of whole fish, Longboat Key was
littered with decaying fish chunks.

Buddy Gaines invited a visitor to look out at the Gulf of Mexico from
his oceanfront house built on stilts on Little Gasparilla Island. "You
can see why we love it here," the retired filmmaker said. "It's a shame
we cannot go outside."

Gaines and his wife, Laurie, don't let their dogs — a pair of Hungarian
vizslas — outside either. Not during the bloom of a red tide. It's a
costly lesson the couple learned a couple of years ago.

Their younger dog, Olivia, was a gregarious puppy who loved to frolic in
the sand, splash in the warm surf and follow joggers down the beach.

One morning, after eating a few small fish that had washed up, she
arrived home staggering and stumbling. By the time the Gaineses got her
to a vet, Olivia couldn't see. She was vomiting and convulsing.

"It was heartbreaking to watch," Laurie Gaines said. "We didn't think
she was going to live."

Veterinarian Amanda Schell didn't know what to make of the symptoms.

"Did she eat rat poison?" the vet asked. "Did she get into antifreeze?"

Schell ran blood tests, looking for West Nile virus and canine
distemper. Finding no clear answers, she sent the couple to a specialist
in Tampa.

The next day, local veterinarians treated 16 dogs — all twitching,
vomiting and suffering from seizures. One died.

Buddy and Laurie Gaines embarked on a monthlong odyssey to save Olivia
that took them to clinics, animal hospitals and finally Tufts
University's veterinary school in North Grafton, Mass. The couple camped
in the parking lot in their motor home while Olivia was cared for inside.

"Sometimes I think I'm the biggest fool in the family to have spent
$22,000 on this dog," said Buddy Gaines, 70, sitting on his couch with
Olivia. "I had to take out a second mortgage. But I don't care. I love
this dog."

Olivia, now 3 years old, appears fully recovered, except for her
incessant drooling. Veterinarians suspect it's a sign of residual
neurological damage.

A half-mile down the beach, Susan and Richard Leydon were keeping their
dog, a sheltie, inside, along with their son, Richard. The air
conditioner was going full blast.

Richard's bedroom is at the seaward side of the house with a picture
window overlooking the gulf. "I have the best room," he announced.

It's the best room until the wind begins to blow hard off the ocean.
Then it's the first to get dosed with toxin-laden air, coming through
the cracks and electrical outlets. It leaves a vague metallic taste on
the back of the tongue.

The family has taken to wearing surgical masks on windy red tide nights.
It's not enough to keep Richard from coughing. His parents also move him
into a room on the other side of the house.

Richard has spent nearly his entire life on the island and was among the
first residents to develop symptoms. His most common ailment is a dry
cough, which he says makes him sound like a barking seal.


=== message truncated ===



Remember God created the world, but the Devil is the one
keeping it active' Bob Dylan

"Put away the book, the description, the tradition, the
authority, and take the journey of self-discovery.
Love, and don't be caught in opinions and ideas about what love
is or should be. When you love, everything will come right.
Love has its own action. Love, and you will know the
blessings of it. Keep away from the authority who tells you
what love is and what it is not. No authority knows and he
who knows cannot tell. Love, and there is understanding."
-- Krishnamurti

There is no consciousness or unconsciousness, there is only awareness, Love
and Freedom are states, every Human has a right to be in Love and Freedom
every Human has a right to shelter food clean water and clothing.All
psychological thought is a waste of energy, Martin



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