Public Hearing - EISs for the Proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal ...

11/3/2012
1 and I'm a marine educator and marine invertebrate
2 ecologist with The San Juan Nature Institute. We're
3 an affiliate of the University of Washington.
4 And I want to draw attention to the
5 importance of plankton in the food web of the Salish
6 Sea and the impacts of coal dust.
7 Phytoplankton produces 50 percent of the
8 world's oxygen through photosynthesis. Zooplankton
9 contains the larvae stages of many marine invertebrate
10 species; including sea stars, urchins, octopus, and
11 many commercially important species, crabs, mussels,
12 clams, shrimp, and squid.
13 All planktonic species are environmentally
14 significant. Phytoplankton species as primary
15 produces are the base of the food web, and we proceed
16 through the web with zooplankton consumed by herring,
17 herring consumed by salmon, and salmon consumed by the
18 apex predator orcas.
19 This is a complex process, but I am of
20 course simplifying it here.
21 Needless to say, any disturbance to this
22 already stressed system would be catastrophic.
23 Coal dust and the high PAHs it includes
24 would be the nail in the coffin for the Cherry Point
25 Pacific herring. Since 1970 Cherry Point herring have
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