Radiation in Japan Seas: Risk of Animal Death, Mutation?

[The Straight Story]

Radiation in Japan Seas: Risk of Animal Death, Mutation?

If radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant—disabled by the March11 Japan earthquake and tsunami—continues to enter the ocean, marine life could be threatened, experts say.


In the past week, seawater samples taken near the nuclear power plant, on Japan's eastern coast, have shown elevated levels of radioactive isotopes, including cesium 137 and iodine 131, according to the New York Times. (See "Japan Tries to Avert Nuclear Disaster.")

...

Radiation Can Cause "Bizarre Mutations"

Once in seawater, radiation can hurt ocean animals in several ways—by killing them outright, creating "bizarre mutations" in their offspring, or passing radioactive material up the food chain, according to Joseph Rachlin, director of Lehman College's Laboratory for Marine and Estuarine Research in New York City.

"There will be a potential for a certain amount of lethality of living organisms, but that's less of a concern than the possible effects on the genetics of the animals that become exposed," Rachlin said.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110331-japan-radiation-health-mutations-nuclear-animals-ocean-science-world/

[Pisces]

1. Imagine mutant sharks or whales with a vengeance.

[joeybee12]

2. Imagine dolphins able to hold and use gun!

What they wouldn't do to us for what we've done to them!

[lector]

3. 1st they over fish it

Then they use the ocean as their personal sewage dump for radiation waste. What is wrong with this picture !

[sad sally]

5. If the radiation in the oceans can mix with the toxins left by the BP

oil spill, might just come up with a real evil brew. Seems humans just want to make certain Mother Earth knows her place...

[WheelWalker]

4. Oh, I see. 'Extinction Credits'. The emergence of new species due to the mutagenic

effect of the radiation will be promoted as an offset to the extinction of species arising from the exploitation of the environment.

[flamingdem]

6. What a great time to sail around the world with stops in Sendai and Louisiana beaches!

bleech

[canetoad]

7. Expect this.

[Generic Other]

8. What happened in the South Pacific after the 60s testing?

Didn't most of the sealife just die?

[Baclava]

9. For awhile.....then nature will find a way - "Coral flourishing at Bikini Atoll atomic test site"

CANBERRA, Australia — Coral is again flourishing in the crater left by the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by the United States, 54 years after the blast on Bikini Atoll, marine scientists reported Tuesday.

A team of research divers visited Bravo crater — ground zero for the test of a thermonuclear weapon in the remote Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954 — and found large numbers of fish and coral growing, although some species appeared locally extinct.



I didn't know what to expect, some kind of moonscape perhaps. But it was incredible, huge matrices of branching Porites coral had established, creating thriving coral reef habitat," Zoe Richards, from Australia's James Cook University, said of the trip to the atoll in the South Pacific. "We saw communities not too far from any coral reef, with plenty of fish, corals and action going on, some really striking individual colonies," she said.

The 15 megaton hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times more powerful than the blast that destroyed Hiroshima, vaporizing islands with temperatures hitting 99,000 degres Fahrenheit, and shaking islands up to 120 miles away.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24132798/ns/world_news-world_environment

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Give it 50 years, but don't eat the shrimps