Week 9 - The blue marble

Aquaculture 

  • 50% of the world’s production

  • Pros and cons, as with any environmental issue

Outdoor vs indoor aquaculture 

  • Natural filtration/resource use

  • Lower costs

  • Scalability

  • Pollution and release

  • Disease and parasite exposure

  • Limited control

Biological controls 

Salmon prone to sea lice 

  • Lump fish love to eat sea lice 

  • Cost and space associated 

game: find avg sea lice count 

Conservation authorities of Ontario 

Watersheds 

  • UTRCA

    • Depends where you are

    • Water management, flood management, management of recreation park areas 

    • Water report cards 

  • FANSHAWE DAM on Thames river

  • designed to help control flooding in London after severe flooding in the 30s and 40s 

  • Ongoing efforts to restore native plant species and protect habitats 

Watershed report cards 

  • Published every 5 years → reports on environmental conditions in the upper thames watershed 

  • most rated C and D → agriculture, pollution 

2022 watershed report card 

  • First indicator 

    • Phosphorus → Steady D, not getting worse or better 

    • E-Coli → D

Great Lakes report card 

General indicators of ecosystem health 

  • Invasive species in great lakes → Poor 

Wastewater

If you’re in south London, the water has a fishy smell/taste → From accumulation of nutrients in lake Erie 

  • Protecting water quality 

    • •The Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) sets standards and regulations for wastewater treatment to protect water quality

  • Municipalities are responsible for building, operating, and maintaining wastewater treatment plants and infrastructure

Phosphorus needs to be removed, and made sure its not re-released into the environment → Ferric solution

Why flooding becomes an issue in the city 

  • Old sewage pipes 

    • Really heavy rain = systems overflow → raw sewage 

    • Amount of rain it was designed for, doesnt work 

Mercury 

  • Minamata convention 

  • Neurological disease in Japan → Company that released Mercury into water, then to fish 

How mercury can enter our environment 

  • Natural and anthropogenic deposits 

  • Atmospheric deposition 

  • Bioaccumulation 

Grassy Narrows, ON 

  • Mercury poisoning first nations 

    • Historical industrial pollution, ongoing health impacts, and environmental damage

    • Indigenous communities noticed impacts on fish populations in 1975

    • Increased Alzheimer's, MS, Parkinson’s disease, cancers

    • Little to no support

  • 2024 study - Sulphates that are feeding bacteria and converting it into methylmercury 

Where should accountability lie? 

  • Corporate polluters for initial contamination and long-term impacts 

  • Ontarios provincial government for regulatory oversight, remediating and monitoring 

  • The federal government for Indigenous rights protections, health care, and support for environmental restoration 

RCP 2.6 

  • best case scenario 

Coral Bleaching 

  • Zooxanthellae inhabit corals in a symbiotic relationship

  • Photosynthesize and pass nutrients to the coral host

  • Coral provides a physical structure for protection and allow access to light for photosynthesis

  • Corals expel algae in high temperature

  • Calcium carbonate skeleton remains

corals don’t get nutrients → Warm ocean temperatures, expelling microscopic algae 

Bleaching can wipe out entire species 

Staghorn Coral

  • Dominant species of coral wiped out by rising temperatures and disease 

  • Thin leaf lettuce coral took over as dominant coral but was also wiped out by 1998 from rising temperatures