National News

This Coral Must Die. “In a cold room at Temple University, in landlocked Philadelphia,  finger-sized fragments of coral bathe in four small tanks of seawater. The white skeletons look dead or bleached — but they’re not. Healthy animals reside within these hard bodies. Some wave their tentacles from holes in the gnarled stems, like flowers at a mermaid’s wedding. Getting here wasn’t easy. They were clipped from reefs a thousand feet down in the Gulf of Mexico, and then housed inside a special refrigerated van which traveled by ship before an overnight express delivery to the lab. When the van broke down, some stayed in a chilled cattle trough. They were even packed into Mason jars on ice. Not all the jars made it, but the corals did. Before today, they were kept for nearly a year in another tank designed to mimic the conditions of their home environment. A refrigerated room maintains their water at 46.4 degrees, while pumps deliver carbon dioxide, acidifying the water to levels most other sea creatures won’t tolerate. To prevent stress, the corals are strictly monitored by students who hand-feed them with pipettes, like mamas tending to baby birds.” [New York Times, 6/25/18 (=)]

US Congress Delays Vote on Magnuson-Stevens Act Renewal. “U.S. Congress delayed taking action this week on a bill that would reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act. H.R. 200, which would have extended the fishery management law until fiscal year 2022, has been held up in Congress by more than two-dozen amendments to the bill. Instead of a vote this week, multiple seafood industry and environmental representatives told Seafoodsource they now expect a vote after the House of Representatives returns from its Fourth of July break.  At a House Rules Committee hearing regarding the bill on Monday 25 June, lawmakers introduced 27 amendments to it. What the delay means for the bill's chances remains unclear. However, both the bill's advocates and its opponents will use the time to continue their full court press on lawmakers.” [Seafood Source, 6/28/18 (=)]

Saildrones Launched on Washington Coast to Study Fisheries. “NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center has been testing Saildrone technology, along with NOAA Research’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Alaska for the past three years to gather oceanographic data, acoustic data on endangered North Pacific right whales, information on walleye pollock, and for prey surveys within the foraging range of a declining population of northern fur seals. This year, the focus in Alaska will be on studying abundance and distribution of Arctic cod in the Chukchi Sea.” [KXRO, 6/28/18 (=)]

With Kennedy’s Exit, Tide Turns on Clean Water Rule. “No one, arguably, has been a bigger factor in the reach of Clean Water Act regulations than Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. The Obama administration based its contentious 2015 Clean Water Rule defining which wetlands and small waterways are federally protected on a 2006 opinion from the swing-vote justice. And environmental groups had set their hopes for defeating EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's attempts to repeal and replace the rule on the likelihood that Kennedy would stick to his 2006 Rapanos v. United States opinion, creating a majority with the four liberal justices. With Kennedy's retirement from the court yesterday, everything has changed. ‘The balance has shifted. The moderate voice, the swing vote, is gone, and Scott Pruitt is a very, very happy man,’ Vermont Law School professor Pat Parenteau said. While Kennedy wrote many crucial environmental rulings during his 30 years on the court, his Rapanos opinion is famous for standing alone in a famously muddled 4-1-4 split decision.” [E&E News, 6/28/18 (=)]