Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Oil Pipeline Goldmine

Did you know that the frequency of occurrence, in the gut of the Penpoint Gunnel, of Gammaridea is 51.14% while the frequency of Harpacticoida is only 13.64%?  You didn't?  Shame on you.  :)

                                                        Oil's Golden Result
In the 1970's there was building pressure to build an oil terminal in Northern Puget Sound to handle oil from Alaska, and there was push back.  At the time there was almost a complete lack of economic and environmental information about the North Puget Sound Region.  In 1974 Washington State initiated the North Puget Sound baseline study through the Department of Ecology which was designed to evaluate the oceanographic, biological, and economic resources of the region.  One result was the publication EPA-600/7-79-259.  Food Web Relationships of Northern Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The opening question can be answered by checking out the contents of the above publication....and the great thing is you can download it for free at :  http://www.epa.gov/nscep/index.html
This website is a real gold mine of publications on marine life, of Puget Sound and other areas...as well as all kinds of other EPA publications.

Food Web Relationships of Northern Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
This publication above all is the one I recommend if you want to know who eats whom....and all about food webs.  It covers; invertebrates, fish, birds, mammals.....the whole caboodle.  Download it and you will have one of the best references available on Puget Sound marine life.