The International Uranium Film Festival makes a stop at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona this December 2nd through the 4th, bringing three days of insightful documentaries that reveal stories of many First Nations and aboriginal peoples worldwide whose historical lands have been used for radioactive minerals mining and nuclear waste disposal - often with little regard for the health, safety, and security of the communities involved. The Southwestern United States was an epicenter of wartime and peacetime uranium mining from the Cold War onwards; the Navajo Nation only one of sadly many who have suffered its lasting ill consequences.
The [International Uranium Film Festival] is the world's only traveling film festival devoted to the entire Nuclear Fuel Chain, from uranium mining to uranium tailings and nuclear waste, from Hiroshima to Fukushima and Fallujah.
The festival will make its way from Albuquerque (Nov. 27-28) to Santa Fe (Nov. 30-Dec. 1), to Window Rock and finally to Washington D.C. and New York City in early 2014. The founder of the IUFF, Norbert G. Suchanek of Germany, will be present at each screening along with Executive Director Marcia Gomes de Oliveira of Brazil and various producers and directors of the films. Each screening is organized by a diverse group of volunteers to bring these films to the wide screen.
Because of the tremendous impact uranium mining has had on Diné peoples, while these films are playing in the theatre of the Navajo Nation Museum, there will be several organizations coming together on the side to dialogue about the uranium legacy issues still plaguing the Navajo Nation and the new uranium mining permit applications threatening nearby communities and Sacred Sites. Community groups, residents and allies will meet for the two and a half days at the museum and in the local area. Online video streaming will be available via ustream.com during selected hours of the event.
Over 20 years ago, the Hiroshima newspaper Chugoku Shimbun sent a team of reporters to 15 nations around the world to gather personal accounts of people affected by radiation - from reactor accidents, accidental contamination, to nuclear weapons manufacturing and testing. The interviews were initially published as a series of eight newspaper features titled "Sekai no Hibakusha," or "Hibakusha (figuratively, "atomic bomb survivors") Around the World." This monumental series won a Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association award in 1990, and was subsequently published in book form the following year. Executive Director of the Chugoku Shimbun Yukio Ogata explains,
"Largely as a result of the articles' success in bringing the public's attention to the dangers of radiation, a number of victims of radioactive contamination from areas as far-flung as Chernobyl and Bikini Atoll were able to participate in the world convention held in Hiroshima by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in October 1989...[T]he convention heard details concerning the damage caused by nuclear testing in Kazakhstan, which until then had been shrouded in secrecy. In turn, this disclosure of widespread destruction of the environment prompted the Chugoku Shimbun to instigate the first-ever investigation of the testing area.
At the same time, the articles served to emphasize the role that Japan could play to help radiation victims around the world. The fact that the articles have prompted the exchange of information concerning the treatment of radiation victims in Japan to help those in a similar plight in other countries is a great source of satisfaction to us at the Chugoku Shimbun. We hope that, in the future, Japan will become known as an information center for radiation victims and the treatment of their illnesses."
"There is compelling appropriateness in the project's being undertaken by concerned journalists from Hiroshima. From the time the bomb was dropped, the Chugoku Shimbun, as Hiroshima's leading newspaper, has been a prime source of information about the experiences and feelings of the people of that city over subsequent decades. Its editors and writers have taken on what I call a 'survivor mission' on behalf of the city's victims, a commitment to transforming the fear, conflict, and pain of the survivors into an active exploratory enterprise of profound significance.
Their contribution goes even beyond their descriptions of the human effects of radiation. In the way they have approached their study, they have demonstrated what I call a species mentality, a commitment that transcends immediate group or nationality and extends to all of humankind. They evoke in us a sense of shared fate, of universal susceptibility to a technology that knows no boundaries, geographical or temporal. We are all in this together, as potential victims and potential perpetrators as well.
Among the regions and incidents covered in these interviews are Chernobyl, the 1987 Goiânia Accident in Brazil, contamination from the Cold War weapons program at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation site in Washington State.
[Image courtesy Hiroshima Peace Media Center: "The mushroom cloud as seen from Kure, approximately 18 kilometers southeast of Hiroshima. This photo was taken by Masami Oki about 40 minutes after the bomb exploded."]
[27 A]nalyzed samples of [the] tongue and diaphragm of animals slaughtered during the hunting season 2012/2013 [showed] level[s] of Cesium-137 higher than the threshold specified by Regulation 733 of 2008 as the tolerable limit in the event of a nuclear accident. According to the deputy of the Piedmont Region, Roberto Ravello, alarmism should be avoided because the health risks would be "contained and controlled."
According to Elena Fantuzzi, head of the Institute of Radiation Protection ENEA, the most immediate explanation is that the contamination originated from the 1986 Chernobyl accident. However, she cautions, (translation via GoogleTranslate) "[W]e must also consider the nuclear sites in the area, including the central Trino Vercellese ["Enrico Fermi" nuclear plant] dismantled in 1987 and the experimental site Enea, in Saluggia...[We can not exclude] the trail of toxic waste." Gian Piero Godio, a nuclear expert in the Legambiente Piemonte and Val d'Aosta region adds, "[There may be o]ther explanations....the district of Valsesia has no radioactive source[s]." More: Video news story (in Italian)
While having much of the Internet at one's disposal through search engines is a wonderful thing - especially when you know what you're looking for - specialized blogs like the new Chernobyl Database (launched February 2013) also serve a vital purpose: they can help point you in the direction of new research studies and findings you may have been unaware of.
Chernobyl Database, which I believe is based in Japan, focuses fairly narrowly on posting papers studying the effects of radiation and radioactive contamination on the environment and health, but it also ventures deeply by including links to research going back several decades. Entries are primarily in English, with separate categories for articles published in Japanese and Russian. I think you'll find it a valuable resource.
After nearly two decades of administrative, political, and financial setbacks, major progress is being made now at the New Safe Confinement. Having been previously called "Ukritye" and the "Shelter Implementation Plan" over the years, the secure NSC outer shell being built over the decaying Chernobyl Sarcophagus will allow Reactor 4 to finally be safely dismantled with greatly reduced risk to the environment.
In the clip below, Vince Novak, the EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development]'s Director of Nuclear Safety discusses the construction progress and the NSC's benefits.
This video (:35) shows a time-lapse version of the first NSC section's raising.
As promised, Part Two of our coverage of the Saturday, September 15th Argonne Energy Showcase open house event. Our video highlights can be seen in the first installment of our Energy Showcase posts. Here's our full Flickr slideshow of over 50 photos with captions. Top: "Now, That's Cold!" Argonne researcher explains the technology behind the ATLAS (Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System) facility, the world's first superconducting linear accelerator for heavy ions. The object on the table is a model section of ATLAS' "superconducting split-ring resonator."
Center: "Hot or Not?" This very popular FLIR imaging exhibit in the Nuclear Energy building allowed visitors to see live video of themselves in the room with color-coded temperature gradients. As you can see, some people are literally hotter than others. A similar station set up in the Advanced Photon Source (401) complex let visitors take home a snapshot printout of their FLIR scans.
Bottom: "Clean and Green" One of the several advanced hybrid electric vehicles in the Sustainable Energy Tent. Some of the other new technologies on display were demonstrations of biofuel generation using fermented waste, vehicle charging stations, and an area where visitors could ride the
"Energy Bike" to see how much pedaling they have to do to light up a conventional incandescent light bulb, versus the effort needed to make LED and compact fluorescent devices glow. As we can vouch, it takes a lot less legwork to make those clean and green LED's shine!
Didn't get a chance to visit Argonne National Laboratory's 2012 Energy Showcase in the Chicago suburbs this past September 15th? Don't worry: we're very happy to share our video and photo highlights from this rare opportunity to peek inside the birthplace of modern nuclear science, and see first-hand some of the amazing research being done in America's heartland.
According to an on-site event organizer, this year's open house was the first one held in five years, after tighter security restrictions post-9/11 put National Laboratory open houses on hold. This year's Energy Showcase was also the first to require visitors to pre-register online. While past events had as many as 20,000 visitors each, Energy Showcase 2012 hosted a more modest registered attendance of approximately 2,000* - not necessarily a downside if you were seeking a good, close look at the dozens of fascinating exhibits on hand. [*According to another person I spoke to later, the registration attendance was capped at 10,000, so I may have misheard the original attendance estimate. If any readers out there have more solid attendance stats, please let us know in the comments! - LR]
First, let's stop in at the Physics building to have a look at the Gammasphere, the world's most powerful spectrometer for nuclear structure research. If the Gammasphere looks familiar, you may remember that the device had a 'guest starring role' in the 2003 feature film "Hulk," as the contraption that triggered Bruce Banner's verdant transformation - back then, it was physically located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Read more at http://www.phy.anl.gov/gammasphere/index.html
Next, let's take a short drive south to the nearby Advanced Photon Source complex, a facility which provides the brightest x-ray beams in the Western Hemisphere to more than 5,000 scientists from around the United States and the world. Here's a panned view from the APS observation gallery, as a researcher gives a basic explanation of its workings in the final 30 seconds or so of the video. In person, the building and equipment are remarkably large; what you see here on the video is only a tiny fraction of the APS accelerator "ring." More at http://aps.anl.gov/About/APS_Overview/
Here is a live demonstration of a technique called "acoustic levitation" that uses high-frequency (~22kHz) sound waves to suspend small objects like liquid droplets, plastic spheres, and popcorn in mid-air. Bystanders could manipulate and rearrange the plastic beads within the sound column using a metal spoon, creating intriguing patterns. As you can see from the video, the column behaves as though the beads are 'magnetically' attracted along an invisible vertical line running between the upper and lower sound generators. The demonstrators explain that the beads are spaced at wavelength node intervals of about one-third inch, allowing visualization of the standing wave. More at http://www.anl.gov/articles/no-magic-show-real-world-levitation-inspire-better-pharmaceuticals
Down the hall, we stopped by to see an X-ray diffraction demonstration, which provides a simulation of how the APS' powerful X-ray beam can reveal the before-unseen inner structures of nanoparticles, proteins, crystalline structures, organic molecules, and many other materials. More at http://aps.anl.gov/
The Pentagon has released data showing radiation dosage estimates for the thousands of American nationals and military personnel in Japan at the time of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis at Fukushima. Named Operation Tomodachi, the registry seeks to "[provide] interested individuals with location-based radiation dose estimates for adults and children for the period of greatest potential exposure, from March 12, 2011 through May 11, 2011." According to the September 5th news report in Reuters,
"[T]he highest rate of adult exposure [was] at Camp Sendai, just north of Fukushima, where the estimated adult dose of whole body radiation was 0.12 rem and 1.20 for the thyroid - the organ most affected by radiation. By comparison, a full-body CAT scan yields a whole body exposure of 5.0 rem. Those American personnel who were stationed at Camp Sendai who check the website will see a message saying: 'Your whole-body and thyroid radiation dose estimates are well below levels associated with adverse medical conditions.'"
The Google API-based map [accessible here], which shows selected measurement areas with links to dosage estimate reports, is expected to be completed by the end of 2012, and will also incorporate dosage estimates and data for about 8,000 individuals who had direct radiation measurements taken.
For more background information on the Goiânia accident that claimed the lives of at least 4 people, sickened dozens with radiation illness, and caused widespread contamination (INES 5) throughout several districts surrounding the accident epicenter, see our April 30, 2012 post: http://corium.blogspot.com/2012/04/radioactive-casefiles-goiania-accident.html
Much has been said here and elsewhere on the longstanding tragedy of Chernobyl, so I'm always pleasantly surprised to find a fresh look at the topic. Today I discovered a documentary by Adrian Musto, a photographer and filmmaker who also posts under the nom de WebArkitekture. What's he's created here "on no budget" (in his words) using footage from a recent visit to Ukraine and Pripyat, is remarkable. Beginning with some archival videoclips from the first days of the 1986 accident, the film captures the haunting air of present-day Pripyat, the soon-to-be "New Safe Confined" Sarcophagus, interviews with residents, and some on-the-spot radiation meter readings of objects and structures. I'm sure you'll find "Inside Chernobyl" fascinating. [Note: some of the images may be disturbing to sensitive viewers.]
Musto's photos from Chernobyl, viewable in a gallery on his website, are also stunning. You can listen to some of his Chernobyl trip backstory at Deep Inside Podcast from July 10, 2011, which features very nice atmospheric IDM music from Kiev-based producer Queensway.
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will open its gates to the community on Saturday, September 15, 2012, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. for a day of discovery and fun for the whole family. The event is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required as attendance will be limited.
Argonne's Energy Showcase will be a similar event to the traditional Argonne Open House but will be on a somewhat smaller scale, making it easier to experience all that the laboratory has to offer in a single day. The Energy Showcase will feature interactive demos, exhibits and tours, giving attendees a unique opportunity to mingle with prominent energy researchers and innovators within a hands-on atmosphere. This is a great opportunity to learn more about Argonne's research and talk with leading experts at the laboratory.
The event will be held rain or shine. Free shuttle service will be provided and food and drink will be available for purchase. Advance reservations are required and visitors are welcome to take photos and videos of the event.
The Laboratory facility is located on 1,500 wooded acres, about 25 miles southwest of Chicago. Outdoor fans also may wish to take in the DuPage County Forest Preserve District's Waterfall Glen nature area in Darien, which includes a scenic 9-mile hiking/biking loop trail that encircles the Argonne grounds. The Energy Showcase promises to be an unusual, exciting opportunity to get a glimpse inside Argonne, and to meet some of the researchers who are pushing the boundaries of today's knowledge to meet our energy needs for the present and future.
"As countries struggle to meet the electricity demands of their growing populations while also reducing their carbon footprints, many have turned to nuclear energy. The U.S. nuclear energy program may not increase significantly in the coming decades, but other countries, including many developing countries, have plans for rapid expansion. Even after the recent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, the global trend toward expansion of nuclear energy has continued.
While serious accidents like Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl can provide invaluable lessons, the nuclear industry, nuclear regulators, and the
research community must study minor incidents and near-accidents as well. These experiences often reveal not only how to decrease the likelihood that the
same mistakes will occur, but also how to avoid larger accidents that may be foreshadowed in earlier, smaller incidents.
In this paper, Edward Blandford and Michael May enumerate the lessons from nuclear accidents and incidents, asking whether the nuclear energy community has indeed learned from those lessons. The authors argue that stakeholders must commit to ongoing improvement of their protocols and standards. Each nuclear incident—no matter its size—underlines the importance of pursuing high standards of safety, security, and proliferation resistance."
One standout key finding in "Lessons Learned..." is on page 23, in Table 1, "Main Sources of Electricity in the World and Their Morbidity and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Per Unit of Electricity Produced." The authors find that while nuclear energy is the fourth most prevalent form of electricity generation worldwide (at 14% of global usage), it is associated with the lowest number of deaths per terawatt hour (0.04). The least common form of generation, wind power (< 1% of global usage), somewhat surprisingly has a morbidity rate of 0.15 deaths per terawatt hour, but I suspect many of these might be a result of accidents involving installation or maintenance of the wind turbines, rather than the operating process itself.
If you're pressed for time, the paper's executive summary provides an informative primer on its conclusions and policy recommendations for the industry. The paper is available as a free PDF download as part of the AAAS' Occasional Papers series at http://www.amacad.org/publications/lessonsLearned.aspx, or as hard copy for a nominal fee from the AAAS.
This story from Japan illustrates how radioactive contamination can be dispersed by animal vectors, as well as weather, water, and human intervention: NHK News reports cesium has been found in the brains of wild rats in the forested area about 30km from the beleaguered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Apodemus speciosus is actually a species called the Large Japanese Field Mouse, so I'm uncertain if the article is referring to both rats and mice, or just the Large Japanese Field Mice. The linked NHK News article contains a 1:37 video (in Japanese) which may provide a more detailed explanation. Judging from size alone, the rodents shown captured in the video look to be A. speciosus, not the typical species of domestic rat common in Japan.
[English text via Google Translate]
Highly Radioactive Cesium from Rat Cortex
Radioactive cesium in the 3100 Becquerels [range] was detected in rats in the wild, captured in the forest approximately 30 km from [the] nuclear power plants. An expert at Fukushima Daiichi Tokyo Electric Power Company [said] there is a need to examine continuously the impact on wildlife.
...Apodemus speciosus was captured wild in October and December last year in the forest. As a result of examining the concentration of radioactive cesium accumulated in the body of 12 mice...on average, per kilogram, from rats captured in the village of Kawauchi [measured at] 3,100 becquerels, in Kitaibaraki 790 becquerels has been detected.
Radiation dose in the air of the capture location, Kawauchi village, is in the [range of] 0.2 μSv - 3.11 μSv per hour, and [in] Kitaibaraki, where radiation dose is high, [there was a tendency to find] higher concentrations of radioactive materials in the rat[s]. The results of the survey, Yoshihisa Kubota, Sub-Leader of the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, [indicate] "There is a need to examine ... rats to study the effects of radiation to the same extent as human animals, continue to impact on wildlife of radioactive material."
Linked below are a few studies that may give an idea of how radiation spread by animal vectors like rats contributes to environmental contamination: when contaminated vectors are consumed by predators, if vector and subsequent predator wastes contain appreciable radioactive contamination, and also, if vectors die naturally, how much contamination is left in the soil, landfills, etc. According to one of the articles linked below, larger wildlife like deer pose a greater risk due to their larger body size, wider habitat range, and longer lifespan. Rats in particular would be a particularly important vector to study, given their affinity for human dwellings and garbage dumps. Please note that academic or library access may be needed to access the linked journal papers.
A little over one year after Chernobyl focused the world's attention on what was then the worst-ever civilian industrial nuclear disaster, the Brazilian city of Goiânia became the scene of another major radiological accident, resulting in several fatalities and widespread contamination. [A definitive 1988 report is available online at IAEA.org. See links and videos at the bottom of this post.]
On September 13, 1987, two men broke into the Instituto Goiano de Radioterapia (IGR), a partially demolished private cancer radiation therapy facility, and carted away a 300kg object in the belief they'd a found a valuable scrap metal item. Roberto dos Santos Alves and Wagner Mota Pereira took the object to Alves' home, about one-half kilometer north of the clinic, and began to dismantle it.
Over the next few days Alves and Pereira cut away at the metal exterior and managed to puncture the casing. Despite the fact both men started to become violently ill with vomiting and diarrhea, they continued their efforts, eventually cracking open the device - inside was a smaller metal canister with a movable "window." When the inner canister's window was pried open, it revealed a mysterious blue glow inside the inner shell. The men scraped away and extracted several small chunks of the glowing blue substance within with a screwdriver to keep as "souvenirs."
On September 18th, Alves sold the object to Devair Alves Ferreira, a nearby scrap dealer. Fascinated by the blue glow, Ferreira invited his family and friends over to see and touch the object. Ferreira's brother Ivo brought some of the powder from the canister home and spread it on his floor; innocently, his 6-year-old daughter Leide played with the powder, rubbed it on her skin, and even ingested a small quantity. Over the next several days, she and others who handled the glowing powder fell ill with vomiting, diarrhea, skin rashes, burns, and blisters.
Now fearing the object was "killing her family," the scrap dealer's wife Gabriela placed it in a plastic bag, boarded a bus, and brought it to the Vigilancia Sanitaria hospital on September 28. One of two doctors who met with Gabriela that day suspected the danger, and placed the bag on a chair in the outer hospital garden, as far away as possible from human contact.
The following morning, a visiting medical physicist with a borrowed radiation detector confirmed the doctor's fears - the hospital now was massively contaminated with radiation. The physicist, identified only as "W.P." in official reports, initially encountered a great deal of resistance alerting authorities to the severity of the emergency. By the end of the following day, W.P. convinced the Secretary for Health of Goias State and the Director of the Department of Nuclear Installations in CNEN to begin a massive search and cleanup operation in the area.
What Alves and Pereira unknowingly brought home from the abandoned clinic was a lead-shielded cancer therapy device containing a lethally radioactive cesium137 chloride (salt) core. All told, 130,000 people were tested for radiation at area hospitals, about 250 were found to be contaminated, and 20 required treatment for radiation sickness. Several houses within the neighborhood had to be demolished, and the rubble buried in a remote waste site. The cleanup effort also was hampered not only by the length of time that passed since the core was exposed and handled, but also by the fact the radioactive powder was water-soluble.
Four deaths are attributed to direct exposure to the cesium core: Leide and Gabriela Ferreira, and two of Devair Ferreira's scrapyard employees succumbed to radiation poisoning about a month after receiving radiation doses of 4.5 to 6.0 Gy (500 to 600 REM). Leide was buried in a lead coffin surrounded by concrete in a Goiânia cemetery, where crowds protested her burial, fearing their relatives' graves would be contaminated. Remarkably, Devair Ferreira survived his massive 7.0 Gy exposure.
The accident - rated 5 on the International Nuclear Event Scale [INES] - spread radioactive contamination throughout the Goiânia districts of Aeroporto, Central, and Ferroviários. To this date an estimated 7 of the device's nominal 50 TBq (terabecquerels) of radioactivity remain unaccounted for.
Image at top from the IAEA 1988 report on the Goiânia Accident. Lower image, by Alexander Sassaki/SIPA Press appears in "Radiation Accident Grips Goiania," by Leslie Roberts, Science, 1987 (see link below).
Pra não dizer...que não falei do Césio-137: from Brazil, focusing on the radiological incident. Very interesting and informative blog, well worth visiting, even if (like me) you need to use Web translation tools for the original Portuguese.
"Radiation Accident Grips Goiania," by Leslie Roberts, Science (New Series), Vol. 238, No. 4830 (Nov. 20, 1987), pp. 1028-1031. Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science [JSTOR subscription required]
[Note: the URL for this video has been changed] On YouTube, you can view an informative 37-minute TV documentary on the Goiânia accident (in Portuguese) as part of the Linha Direta investigative series, hosted by Domingos Mireilles, containing a detailed re-enactment*: Odesson Alves Ferreira, president of Associação da Vítimas do Césio 137, is interviewed beginning at timestamp 4:18.
IAEA Video: The Legacy of the Goiânia Radioactive Source Accident:
YouTube video: "Enterro de Leide das Neves Ferreira - Apedrejamento e Vandalismo no Cemitério Parque" ("Burial of Leide das Neves Ferreira - Stoning and Vandalism in Cemetery Park")
RadioActive! readers near Chicago: the University of Chicago, the birthplace of the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, hosts Atomic Age Symposium II - Fukushima, this Saturday, May 5th.
[K]eynote speakers are Hiroaki Koide of the Kyoto University Reactor Research Institute, who has been speaking out against nuclear power for over 40 years; and Ruiko Muto, an anti-nuclear activist based in Fukushima and a member of a citizens’ group, Hairo [Reactor Decommission] Action Fukushima.
Robert Rosner, Astronomy & Astrophysics & Physics, University of Chicago (former Director of the Argonne National Laboratory) will share his stance on nuclear energy via a videotaped message. Ruiko Muto’s speech will be followed by Bobbie Paul, Executive Director of Georgia WAND—Women’s Action for New Directions, Jeffrey Patterson (MD, Board Member and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility), and Dean Wilkie, a retired nuclear plant operator and manager who, with Nancy Foust, an online media expert, has collaborated on the Simply Info website to provide detailed information about Fukushima.
This will be an all-day symposium investigating the multiple dimensions of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster through discussion by experts from Japan and the US, Saturday, May 5, 2012: 8:45am–6:00pm. This event is free and open to the public. Continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. For full information and details, visit http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/atomicage/aboutsymposium/ or call 773-702-8647.
An influx of "thumb-sized" creatures in cooling sea water proved too much for a California nuclear power plant this week, according to NDTV:
The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, in San Luis, California, shut down its Unit 2 reactor after sea salp, a planktonic jellyfish-like creature clogged the screens of the plant’s coolant water intake. The influx of the gelatinous animals was discovered Wednesday. Initially, plant operators reduced its functional reactor to 25% capacity. Unit 1 had a scheduled refueling earlier in the week, and had been shut down.
In smaller quantities away from industrial activity, Salps have been known to have a beneficial effect on seawater by consuming bacteria. The San Luis coastal salp invasion may be just a periodic bloom.
