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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2018
Washington state to
release Chinook fry
after power outage
Associated Press
OLYMPIA, Wash. —
Up to 2.75 million fall Chi-
nook salmon fry are headed
to the Minter Creek Hatch-
ery in Pierce County in an
effort to replace salmon
lost during a Dec. 14 power
outage at the facility.
The
Washington
Department of Fish and
Wildlife received approval
from NOAA Fisheries to
use excess Chinook from
six other hatcheries for
release from Minter Creek
and Tumwater Falls next
May and June.
Department of Fish and
Wildlife Director Kelly
Susewind said several
tribal co-managers have
agreed to the transfer.
Susewind says it won’t
replace the salmon they
lost, but it helps.
The state estimates 6.2
million Chinook fry were
lost when a windstorm
knocked out power to the
Minter Creek Hatchery.
The facility’s backup
generator also failed to
start, cutting power to the
pump that supplies water
to incubators where the fry
were held.
Nemah home
invader gets 14
years behind bars
By NATALIE ST. JOHN
Chinook Observer
SOUTH BEND, Wash.
— Joshua Andrew Turner’s
meth-fueled shooting spree
earlier this year earned him
about 14 years in prison .
In early December,
Turner, 27, formerly of
Coos Bay, was sentenced
to 166 months after plead-
ing guilty to ﬁ rst-degree
burglary, ﬁ rst-degree rob-
bery, ﬁ rst-degree kidnap-
ping and ﬁ rst-degree theft
of a ﬁ rearm.
In March, Turner and
his girlfriend at the time,
Sincer-A Marie Nerton,
formerly of Naselle, raided
Nerton’s
grandmother’s
Nemah home in the middle
of the night.
Turner and Nerton, who
had been living with the
grandmother until shortly
before the robbery, ﬁ red
several shots into the home
before entering. They held
Study: Northwest salmon not
immune to ocean acidiﬁ cation
By JES BURNS
Oregon Public
Broadcasting
A new study suggests
that salmon will not be
immune to the effects of
ocean acidiﬁ cation.
Scientists found that
changes to ocean chemis-
try disrupt a ﬁ sh’s ability to
smell danger in the water.
Researcher Chase Wil-
liams of the University of
Washington exposed young
coho salmon to the elevated
ocean CO2 levels expected
over the next few decades.
He then dropped in an odor
that normally makes the ﬁ sh
react as if a predator is near.
The ﬁ sh ignored it.
Bureau of Land Management
An Oregon coho salmon.
“They’re still smelling
odorant, but the way their
brain is processing that sig-
nal is altered … Before,
they would avoid this pred-
ator odor and now they’re
more indifferent to it,” Wil-
liams said.
The results are concern-
ing because salmon rely on
smell to avoid danger, ﬁ nd
food and to ﬁ nd their way
back to spawning grounds
in West Coast rivers.
Co-author Andrew Dit-
tman is a scientist with the
federal Northwest Fisheries
Science Center. He said the
results could apply to other
salmon species.
“The
mechanisms
involved … are very sim-
ilar. So the expectation
would be that we would see
relatively similar phenom-
ena in the other species as
well,” he said.
The ocean absorbs about
25 percent of the carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere.
The more CO2 humans
emit, the more saturated the
ocean becomes, thus lower-
ing the pH of the water.
Ocean acidiﬁ cation has
already started to have neg-
ative effects on the Paciﬁ c
Northwest’s shellﬁ sh indus-
try. Knowledge about poten-
tial impacts on other ocean
species is still limited.
The study was pub-
lished in the journal Global
Change Biology.
Bioengineered food label rules draw criticism
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
three occupants at gunpoint
while stealing ﬁ rearms,
phones and other prop-
erty. By the time deputies
arrived, Nerton and Turner
had ﬂ ed to Oregon.
The Paciﬁ c County
Sheriff’s Ofﬁ ce quickly
enlisted help from several
Oregon police agencies,
and both suspects were
apprehended within days.
Nerton quickly pleaded
guilty and was sentenced to
130 months in prison. She
agreed to cooperate with
police. That resulted in a
lighter sentence for her.
Nerton said they had
been smoking meth for
several days when they
robbed her grandmother’s
house.
Nerton is serving her
time at the Washington
Corrections Center for
Women in Gig Harbor.
Turner is at the Washing-
ton Corrections Center in
Shelton.
While farm groups are
pleased with the U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture’s new
disclosure standard for bio-
engineered foods, others are
not.
Some public interest and
environmental
advocacy
groups contend the standard
is deceptive and doesn’t go
far enough to identify genet-
ically modiﬁ ed foods and
inform consumers.
They take issue with the
term “bioengineered,” the
permitted methods of dis-
closure and the omission
of foods they say should
be labeled as genetically
modiﬁ ed.
“This deceptive rule will
keep people in the dark about
what they’re eating and feed-
ing their families,” Weno-
nah Hauter, director of Food
& Water Watch, said in a
statement.
“It is meant to confuse
consumers, not inform them.
This deception is a tool being
utilized to maximize corpo-
rate proﬁ ts, plain and simple,
she said.
The use of “bioengi-
neered,” rather than geneti-
cally modiﬁ ed organism , is
a deceptive strategy because
consumers don’t know what
that means, she said. In addi-
tion, the use of digital codes
and other technology makes
GMO disclosure more difﬁ -
cult for consumers, and the
deﬁ nitions of what triggers
labeling are far too limited,
she said.
Options for disclosure
include text, symbol, elec-
tronic or digital link, text mes-
sage and a phone number or
web address where consum-
ers can access information.
The standard does not
apply to foods such as meat,
milk and eggs derived from
animals fed forage or grain
developed through biotech-
nology. It also does not apply
to highly reﬁ ned products
such as sugar or oil derived
from biotech crops.
The Environmental Work-
ing Group said the disclosure
rule fails to meet the intent of
Congress to create a manda-
tory disclosure standard that
includes all genetically engi-
neered foods and to use terms
consumers understand.
It also fails to address
the needs of consumers who
don’t have expensive phones
or who live in rural places
with poor cell service, the
group said.
“The Trump adminis-
tration has yet again put the
interests of pesticide and bio-
tech companies ahead of the
interests of ordinary Ameri-
cans,” Scott Faber, the Envi-
ronmental Working Group’s
senior vice president of gov-
ernment affairs, said in a
statement.
In addition to using the
unfamiliar “bioengineered”
term, allowing the use of bar
codes that require a smart-
phone and a reliable broad-
band connection and exempt-
ing reﬁ ned products, the
threshold for the unintended
presence of genetically engi-
neered ingredients is far too
high, the Center for Food
Safety contends.
At 5 percent, that thresh-
old is more than ﬁ ve times
the European Union’s 0.9
percent standard. The major-
ity of genetically engineered
foods would not be labeled as
a result of the exemption for
highly reﬁ ned products and
the 5 percent threshold, the
Center for Food Safety said.
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