How Bleak To Observe The Dying Pacific

By James Donahue

My new home rests high on a hill which allows me to stand in the yard and look out over the great Pacific Ocean. On special days, my daughter and I drive to a park where we walk to a cliff that brings us close to the water’s edge.

At certain times of the year we are privileged to see the great whales and schools of dolphin leaping high out of the water as they feed on schools of fish that make their way into the bay.

After spending a lifetime living on the shores of the Great Lakes, it is difficult to imagine a body of water as large as the Pacific Ocean. Yet just standing on the shore, one can sense the power that exists in that ocean. The waves come in with a thundering force that can easily overwhelm anyone daring to swim those waters. And there is a smell of the sea that is unique to the ocean.

While it is exciting to go there, I also experience a deep melancholy when I look down from the cliff at that great ocean. For I know it is dying. Thousands of whales, dolphins, sea lions, and birds are washing up on the American coast, many of them dead and others dying, suffering from what appear to be violent seizures.

Commercial fishermen say Sockeye Salmon have lesions on their bodies. The tuna is laced with radiation. Fish all along the west coast of Canada are now bleeding from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.

Researchers say the sea life is dying from exposure to Strontium-90 from the Fukushima disaster that struck the Japanese nuclear power plants in 2011. Since that event, Japanese workers have been trying desperately to stop the disaster that continues to unfold. Tons of radioactive material has continued to flow non-stop daily into the Pacific Ocean with no signs that it can be stopped.

Now, just three years after the disaster, the entire Pacific Ocean…..that massive body of water . . . has been polluted. And the pollution continues to get worse with each passing day. The food chain, which begins with the smallest creatures and ends with the large mammals and birds, and eventually at our dinner table, is being erased.

Researchers say a vast field of radioactive debris from Fukushima, estimated to be about the size of California, this year collided with the west coast. The level of radioactivity is expected to double during the next five to six years. It is projected that significant levels of cesium-137 will reach every corner of the Pacific Ocean by the year 2020.

Environmentalists warn that our days of eating Pacific Ocean fish are over. They warn that people who continue to eat tuna or any of the fish caught from the ocean will soon be showing signs of cancer from exposure to the radiation in the fish.

A recent story in Planet Infowars said the California coastline is being transformed into a "dead zone." That is because the radiation has destroyed the kelp, barnacles, sea urchins, crabs, snails and all other life forms that once lived on the beaches. There once were so many gulls and terns filling the air that the noise was deafening. Today there are only a few gulls in the air. Except for the constant roar of the waves, the other sounds are missing.

I arrived in time to watch it all die.