The Watering Hole, Tuesday June 7, 2016 -Environmental News and Food Politics

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Apologize for missing last week. Monday holidays throw me off.

OK so more research is surfacing on the effects of micro-plastics on marine life, with profound implications for the food chain (we’re a part of it, by the way).

Not So Healthy: Young Fish Eat Microplastics Like Fast Food

“In non-exposed waters, the perch eggs hatched at a rate of about 96 percent. This dropped to just 81 percent if large quantities of polystyrene were present. The perch that did hatch in these waters tended to be slower and smaller than those observed in cleaner bodies of water.

Furthermore, the researchers observed that juvenile perch in high-plastic environments were more likely to ignore the chemical signals that alert them to the presence of predators — in this case, pike. While half of the young perch in clean waters survived predator interaction over a period of 24 hours, in waters with a high concentration of plastics, all of the perch were consumed.

In total, perch in the high plastic environments were four times more likely to be eaten than those in the clean water. While researchers weren’t able to measure the potential impacts on predator fish, there is some evidence of wider food chain effects.”

Photo from Narooma Aquaculture

13 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Tuesday June 7, 2016 -Environmental News and Food Politics”

  1. This is to be expected. When an ecosystem is rife with pollution, populations will have increased morbidity.
    This is very much akin to our current political environment, wherein the hate and bigotry of the Republican nominee is poisoning the discourse, the direction of the nation and much of the good that this nation has, in the past, stood for. Things like justice, fairness, tolerance and compassion.

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      • As a 9 year old in Sunday school, I was once ejected from the service for the crime of losing it totally when my mate Shaun swapped the word ‘love’ in the hymn sheet and started singing ‘bum’ instead (as in bottom or arse)

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    • So where does the “Look pal” leave us? A more familiar ring? Implying some additional piety? Gawd has some serious ‘splainin’ to do..

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  7. One almost has to admire rightwhiners. No matter what crazy crap they have said before they can still pull up “the craziest thing ever” at the slightest provocation. Their devotion to the opposite of the truth is really, in a very twisted way, inspiring.

    It inspires me to make stuff up like: Trump and his companies have been involved in 3,500 legal actions more or less evenly split between being the plaintiff or the defendant over the last 30 years, or, Trumpy has actually engaged in a blatantly racist and weeks long attack against the judge hearing his most recent RICCO case. Except, of course, those things are true and we sane and smart people don’t need to make shit up.

    http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jerry-boykin-says-not-letting-him-speak-prayer-breakfast-violates-other-peoples-first-amendm

    http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/michael-savage-obama-reared-high-school-invade-america

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    • Michael the Savage Weiner seems to be a little more nutso than the last time I ran into his recent comments. We’re now a little less than 8 months before the evil Obama is gone, and afaik, people still have guns? People still can vote (except for black ppl in R Districts, of course)? And if Obama’s going to declare martial law and become dictator, he’s been pretty quiet about it.

      IF ONLY Hillary would promise to outlaw right wing radio talk shows, I’d find a way to commit voter fraud and raise her numbers by a million votes in each and every state! Then, maybe she’ll deport Weiner and Limbaugh to someplace in the Mexican desert, and all will be much nicer up here.

      Meanwhile, if Trump would stuff a potato in his shorts, he could honestly refer to himself as Dictator Dick-Tater (unless, of course, he stuffs it in the wrong place).

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