3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 2018
Homeless man
pleads not guilty to
attempted murder
Alleged assault
with hatchet at
makeshift camp
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
A man who was living in
a Warrenton homeless camp
pleaded not guilty Friday to
charges that he tried to mur-
der another man at the camp
with a hatchet.
Warrenton
police
responded to the camp near
the woods behind Goodwill
at about 7:30 a.m. on Aug.
8. Ernest Charles Bean Jr.
had been struck in the head
with the hatchet handle and
needed medical attention.
Bean, sitting in his tent
and holding a blanket against
the left side of his head,
told police that Ryan Joseph
Dawson, 33, had struck him
after screaming about his
girlfriend, according to court
documents.
After medical person-
nel arrived to tend to Bean,
p o l i c e
searched
the wooded
area. About
30
min-
utes later,
the
Clat-
sop
County
Ryan
S h e r -
Joseph
iff’s Office
Dawson
Parole and
Probation Division told the
officers that Dawson was at
the office.
Police questioned Daw-
son, who claimed he did
not know about the incident
with Bean. He was charged
with first-degree assault,
along with parole violations
stemming from resisting
arrest, menacing and harass-
ment convictions in March.
An indictment filed
Tuesday charges Dawson
with attempted murder and
first-degree assault.
Dawson is being held
without bail for the alleged
probation violations. He is
scheduled for an early res-
olution conference later this
month.
Baby salmon shark dies after
washing ashore at Sunset Beach
The Daily Astorian
A juvenile salmon shark
was stranded near Sunset
Beach on Saturday morning,
prompting a rescue operation
that ultimately ended with the
shark dying a few hours later
at Seaside Aquarium.
An Astoria man saw the
struggling 3 1/2-foot shark in
the surf and called the aquar-
ium to see if anyone could
help. Attempts to return the
shark to the ocean by tak-
ing the shark back into the
surf failed and the shark kept
returning to shore, staff of the
Seaside Aquarium said in a
Facebook post.
Aquarium staff worked to
get the shark into a holding
tank so it could be transfered to
the aquarium, and then, even-
tually, to a bigger facility with
larger tanks for rehabilitation.
The attempt was not suc-
cessful and the shark died
a few hours later. It is not
uncommon
for
juvenile
salmon sharks to strand them-
selves this time of year, aquar-
ium staff said. Salmon sharks
that beach themselves rarely
survive the ordeal.
Seaside Aquarium
A juvenile salmon shark washed ashore at Sunset Beach on Saturday morning, but died
a few hours after rescue attempts.
The reason for juvenile
sharks washing ashore this
time of year is still a mys-
tery, aquarium staff said. The
animals are often mistakenly
reported as “baby great white
sharks,” aquarium staff said,
which is to be expected when
the two species only have a
couple of small identification
clues to separate them.
“The aquarium often tries
to collect those which have
passed away. We use them
for education, allowing peo-
ple to watch the dissections,
while we take tissue samples
which are sent off to biolo-
gist(s) studying this phenom-
ena,” the staff said in a Face-
book post.
Wild bees may benefit from cleaning up after clearcuts
By JOSEPH WINTERS
Oregon Public Broadcasting
After cutting down trees
in a section of forest, logging
crews can do their local bees
a favor by sticking around to
clear the debris and flatten the
ground.
A recent study from Ore-
gon State University suggests
that removing timber har-
vest residue — also known
as “slash” — could help wild
bee populations thrive in the
wake of a clearcut logging
operation.
The study was led by wild-
life biologist Jim Rivers, prin-
cipal investigator in Oregon
State’s Forest Animal Ecology
Lab. It was part of an effort
to find out how the removal
of slash to be used as biofuel
might affect forest ecosystems
— including the populations
of many pollinators, like bees.
Bees have been in the spot-
light recently due to concerns
about pollinator shortage
caused by colony collapse dis-
order. Cultivated bees are vital
for agriculture; by some esti-
mates, bees pollinate $15 bil-
lion worth of U.S. crops every
year.
But what about wild bees?
Even far from farmland, insect
pollinators are responsible for
fertilizing up to 90 percent of
the world’s flowering plants.
This promotes biodiversity
and creates a healthy food
supply.
Of these pollinators, wild
bees may be the most import-
ant. Not only are they the
most abundant, they’re the
only ones that feed on pollen
and nectar for their entire life
cycles.
“When bees are present,
they’re helping to maintain
plant populations, and those
plants are producing fruits
and nuts, which in turn sup-
port smaller mammals and up
through the food chain,” Riv-
Jim Rivers/Oregon State University
Wild bees are more abundant than cultivated bees. That’s
one reason they are considered important pollinators.
ers said. “We call it ecosystem
services.”
That’s why Rivers and
his team wanted to know
how land management deci-
sions might impact wild bee
populations.
To find out, Rivers turned
to a managed conifer forest in
western Oregon, near Spring-
field. From 2014 to 2015, his
team assessed bee populations
on 28 one-acre clearcut plots.
Each plot received a different
level of management, ranging
from minimal slash removal
and no ground compaction, to
complete slash removal and
total ground compaction.
Against expectations, more
land disturbance — that is,
removing more slash and com-
pacting more land — appeared
to give greater benefits to wild
bee populations.
“It was really surprising
to me the diversity that was
there, and also the number that
was there,” Rivers said.
Not only this, but the
researchers also recorded a
threefold increase in wild bee
population in the second year
of the study, suggesting the
original population was thriv-
ing and that new bees were
arriving, too.
Although 92 distinct spe-
cies of bees were identified
during the course of the study,
the researchers found that
soil-nesting varieties domi-
nated. According to Rivers,
this is normal; 70 percent of
wild bee species nest in the
ground.
This isn’t the first time
ground-nesting bees have
been linked to disturbed land;
sweat bees have been known
to proliferate in forest patches
that have recently burned.
On scorched land and in
clearcuts, the absence of other
varieties of bees like cavi-
ty-nesters — which make their
homes in places like black-
berry canes and in old beetle
burrows — raises questions
about the evolution of bee
communities over time.
“At what point do these
communities change?” Rivers
wondered. How does the for-
est evolve after these trauma?
There has been much research
has on old growth forests,
but the early stages of forest
regeneration have received
relatively little attention.
“At this point, we just don’t
know,” Rivers said.
Across the United States,
native bee species appear to be
in decline. But Rivers and his
colleagues hope their research
may be able to help conserva-
tionists create more habitat for
at least one kind of native bee.
In clearcuts, burn sites, and
other disturbed areas, these
key pollinators could be a
boon for the whole ecosystem,
all the way up the food chain.
Scientists blame ‘The Blob’ for decline in Alaska cod
Another sign of
climate change
By ANNIE FEIDT
National Public Radio
A hint of optimism creeps
into Darius Kasprzak’s voice
as he pilots his boat, the
Marona, out of Kodiak harbor
on a recent calm day.
“We’re in the morning,
we’re at the start of the flood
tide,” he says. “This is where
you want to be.”
He is fishing a bay on the
northwestern edge of the Gulf
of Alaska, about 200 miles
southwest of Anchorage. The
chilly waters here are some of
the most productive fish habi-
tats on Earth. In a good year,
Kasprzak could catch more
than 100,000 pounds of cod.
On the screen of his echo
sounder, he sees a dense clus-
ter of dots on the ocean bottom.
“Let’s drop on it,” he says.
“That looks pretty darn good.”
He kills the engine, leaps
onto the deck and lowers one
of his fishing lines into the
water.
And then …
Nothing.
For years, Alaska fisher-
men like Kasprzak have wor-
ried that climate change would
threaten their livelihoods.
Now it has. The cod popula-
tion in the Gulf of Alaska is
at its lowest level on record,
according to an expert at the
National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration. The
culprit is a warm water mass
called “the Blob” that churned
in the Pacific Ocean between
2013 and 2017.
At its peak, the blob
stretched from Alaska to
South America. In the Gulf
of Alaska, the cod population
plummeted by more than 80
percent.
Climate change didn’t
cause the blob all on its own.
But scientists say global
warming made it worse, push-
ing high ocean temperatures to
the extreme.
Kasprzak says he used to
think the rich ocean ecosys-
tem he fishes was unshakable.
But he has mostly given up on
finding more cod here.
“We’ve just seen now
that even the mighty Gulf of
Alaska, how fragile it actually
is, when all you’ve got to do
is warm it up,” he says. “You
don’t even have to warm it up
that much, a couple of degrees.
It doesn’t take that much.”
Since early 2017, the tem-
perature of the Gulf of Alaska
has been close to normal. Now
everyone in Kodiak is asking:
Will the cod come back?
Fre
e
Est Fast
ima
tes
Call me
ti
Any
Darius Kasprzak is a cod fisherman in Alaska.
Mike Litzow is trying to
answer that question. He is a
fisheries biologist who works
for the University of Alaska
and is based in Kodiak. With
his wiry frame and thick beard,
he looks more like a fisherman
than a scientist.
Litzow does go fishing
every few weeks in the spring
and summer — for science, in
search of young cod. He stands
in shallow water near Kodiak
and uses a net called a beach
seine to sweep up fish hiding
in the eelgrass and kelp beds.
“There’s all kinds of infor-
mation you can get over time,
once you catch the fish,” Lit-
zow says.
He doesn’t find any cod
in this net. But by the end of
the summer, Litzow hopes to
catch enough tiny cod to pro-
WANTED
Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber
Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA
Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500
I LOVE YOU with all of my molecules
Jeff Hale Painting
•
•
•
•
Residential
Commercial
Cedar Roof Treatments
Exterior Repaint Specialist
Over 25 years local experience
503-440-2169
Jeff Hale,
Contractor
LICENSED
BONDED
INSURED
CCB#179131
Happy Birthday Nebojsa • 6 YEARS OLD!!
vide clues on whether the pop-
ulation will recover.
Litzow doubts it will. He
thinks the cod decline may
have been so steep that other
fish might fill its place in the
ecosystem.
“When you push a popu-
lation down really hard, the
resources that population used
to rely on can be exploited by
other populations,” he says.
Other scientists are more
optimistic. But everyone
seems to agree on one point:
The blob is a dress rehearsal
for a future with climate
change. Marine heat waves are
expected to happen more often
and, overall, ocean tempera-
tures will warm.
Litzow says it’s hard to
know what kind of ripple
effect that will have. If you
had asked a bunch of scien-
tists to predict how fish would
do during the blob years in the
Gulf of Alaska, “it would just
be like drawing names out of a
hat,” he says. “It’s not like all
of the scientists would say cod
are going to be the ones that
collapse.”
Litzow says fishing com-
munities must get used to the
prospect of more frequent
shocks to the ocean ecosys-
tem. And Kodiak certainly
isn’t the only place that has
seen them. Those changes
aren’t all bad, he says. When
one species declines, others
do well. Right now, sablefish
populations are booming in
the Gulf of Alaska.
But the cod decline could
be a disaster for fishermen
and for Kodiak. Already,
cod boats are traveling more
than 1,000 miles away to find
fish. That means crews aren’t
stocking up at stores in town
and boats aren’t paying the
local fish tax.