Thursday
High-flying jumper
Another sunny day before clouds arrive here B10
Clayton Willis named All-Peninsula Track MVP B1
PENINSULA DAILY NEWS July 28, 28, 2016 | 75¢
Port Angeles-Sequim-West End
Orca diet declining Chinook, a food staple of species, decreased in size BY HEATHER SPAULDING JOURNAL
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Once tipping the scales at more than 120 pounds, chinook have always been the staple of Southern Resident orcas, according to Deborah Giles, research director and projects manager for The Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor. “Today, we think a 30-pound chinook is big,” Giles said, pointing out an old photo of two fishermen in Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia river. The men in the photo are hold-
ing up a pair of chinook, which appear to be more than 4 feet long and easily weigh 110 pounds. “These are what the Southern Residents evolved to eat,” she added. According to Giles, these salmon eaters pretty much stick to chinook. “They don’t really know what to do with pinks or humpies [pink salmon or humpback salmon]; it’s almost like they don’t register them as fish,” Giles said. “Calves will sort of mouth them, but they don’t really eat them.”
She said studies on orcas’ fecal matter have backed up these observations. Only one Northern Resident orca, the salmon-eating orcas in Canada, showed signs of eating a pink salmon once, she said.
Threatened, endangered The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website lists many salmon species, including chinook, as threatened and endangered. Chinook are facing habitat loss, overfishing, pollution, global warming, ocean acidification, harmful algae blooms and a general oceanic ecosystem collapse THE CENTER FOR WHALE RESEARCH due to ocean temperature shifts, This undated photograph from earlier days shows two according to Rich Osborne.
unidentified fishermen in Astoria, Ore., at the mouth of
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County settles lawsuit
The jig is up
BY PAUL GOTTLIEB PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
KEITH THORPE/PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
Chris Jafay jigs for squid off the end of Port Angeles City Pier on Tuesday as the Crowley tug Response sits in Port Angeles Harbor. Jafay said that the morning hours were usually best for catching the sea creatures.
PORT ANGELES — Clallam County settled a lawsuit this week and also received an acre of beach-access property near the Strait of Juan de Fuca as part of the deal. Clallam County commissioners agreed Tuesday to settle a land-use-related records lawsuit. The settlement and land acquisition will cost the county $510,000, not including closing costs. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Brian Wendt said Wednesday the settlement was unusual because the county got something out of it. “In most cases, you only have money out the door to the individual requestor, rarely with any tangible result coming back to government,” he said. “As far as my knowledge, this is a potential first of its kind.” Under the agreement, the public will gain an acre of public access to state park land that connects with Clallam Bay Spit County Park on the Strait. TURN
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Scientist launches effort to digitize fish Work done in Friday Harbor labs BY PHUONG LE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEATTLE — University of Washington biology professor Adam Summers no longer has to coax hospital staff to use their CT scanners so he can visualize the inner structures of stingray and other fish. Last fall, he installed a small computed tomography, or CT, scanner at the UW’s Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island and launched an ambitious project to scan and digitize all of more than 25,000 species in the world. The idea is to have one clear-
inghouse of CT scan data freely available to researchers anywhere to analyze the morphology, or structure, of particular species. So far, he and others have digitized images of more than 500 species, from poachers to sculpins, from museum collections around the globe.
Add thousands He plans to add thousands more and has invited other scientists to use the CT scanner or add their own scans to the open-access database. “We have folks coming from all over the world to use this
machine,” said Summers, who advised Pixar on how fish move for its hit animated films “Finding Nemo” and “Finding Dory” and is dubbed “fabulous fish guy” on the credits for “Nemo.” He raised $340,000 to buy the CT scanner in November. Like those used in hospitals, the CT scanner takes X-ray images from various angles and combines them to create three-dimensional images of the fish. With each CT scan he posted to the Open Science Framework, a sharing website, people would ask him, “What are you going to scan next?” He would respond: “I ADAM SUMMERS/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON VIA AP want to scan them all. I want to In this undated image provided by University of scan all fish.”
Washington professor Adam Summers, the Trinectes
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FISH/A4 Maculatus species of fish is shown using a CT scan. 671614441
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INSIDE TODAY’S PENINSULA DAILY NEWS 100th year, 179th issue — 2 sections, 18 pages
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