ZeroHedge and Dying Pacific

Finally, ZeroHedge picking up on this.   Washingtons Blog (which often gets picked up on ZH) has done a lot of good articles, but nothing on the death of the Pacific.    

 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-23/guest-post-unprecedented-mass-die-offs-pacific-ocean-turning-desert-california-coast

The original source is SHTFPlan.com
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/unprecedented-mass-die-offs-as-pacific-ocean-turning-into-a-desert-off-california-coast_05212015

Natural causes in the environment are partly to blame; so too are the corporations of man; the effects of Fukushima, unleashing untold levels of radiation into the ocean and onto Pacific shores; the cumulative effect of modern chemicals and agricultural waste tainting the water and disrupting reproduction.
A startling new report says in no uncertain terms that the Pacific Ocean off the California coast is turning into a desert. Once full of life, it is now becoming barren, and marine mammals, seabirds and fish are starving as a result. According to Ocean Health:

Paveway IV

I've heard that before, Deathrips - about blind sea lions, actually. If seals are going blind, too, then... gosh, something for the pointy-heads to investigate, no? Yet it seems like it's all the marine biologists can do to get off their ass and figure out why everything else is dying off. I hold out little hope for them to grab a few hundred seals and sea lions and figure out if they're blind and what's making them blind. But then who would fund THAT grant - the U.S. government?? [derisive snort]
I'll toss a few more rocks out at the 'scientific community'. The direct threat to most larger sea creatures directly from radiation in the water is small. The real threat is bio-amplification throughout the food chain. Seems like a good place to go is right off the Japanese coast and start grabbing phytoplankton and zooplankton and see what those little bastards are sucking up. Then check the things that eat them: krill. Shouldn't be too hard to find any - in fact the coast off of Fukushima was one of the richest Pacific Krill fishing areas in the entire Pacific the last couple of decades.
Are the krill accumulating anything?

Is is getting better or worse? Well, we don't know except the food chain has also crashed off of Fukushima, just like it's crashing off of the West Coast. Try to Google a study, article or even a conspiracy nutjob blog where ANYONE has done a serious radiation study of plankton and krill off of U.S. coasts, much less off of Fukushima. Nothing. Almost like they wouldn't think it matters. And no studies for the last few years means we have nothing to compare it with even if someone did a huge study today. There have been plenty of studies on raw seawater, but the amounts are barely detectable.

I don't really give a crap because I don't drink much seawater.
About the only reports I did see is how there isn't even as much cesium as 'naturally-occurring Polonium-210' in fish. Well, there was always microscopic amounts of Polonium-210 from radon decay, but it's like 20,000 times more toxic than cyanide. The Po-210 alpha decay causes about a thousand times more damage to chromosomes than the beta decay of our old banana friend: Potassium-40. So if a fish had 1/10th the amount of Po-210 vs. P-40 (radiation-wise), the Polonium would still be causing 100 times more chromosome damage than a the decay of potassium. Gosh, they never mention that in banana-dose calculus.

No harm in a little 'natural' Polonium-210 in fish, right? I guess unless you're an ex-Russian spy in exile in London like Litvenenko. He got a massive 10 microgram dose, but you really only need 50 nanograms on average to kill you. And, yes, it kills entirely throught acute radiation poisoning - not chemical toxicity. Incidentally, as a liquid-borne alpha emitter, it would be impossible to measure its presence with a Geiger counter or even a sensitive gamma detector for that matter. Litvenenko's hospital had him there for weeks and tested him for radiation several times and found nothing - because they were using gamma detectors like they always did and they wouldn't detect polonium-210's lethal alpha, especially in bodily fluids. You need alpha spectrometers and a completely different way of preparing a sample.

So no big deal in fish because polonium is 'natural' right? Well, since they haven't bothered to measure it except in samples AFTER Fukushima, we really don't have much to compare it with. Common sense says that there is a crapload of highly-toxic polonium-210 in fish that probably wasn't there before Fukushima. Polonium-210 is part of the uranium decay chain. Uranium - I believe several hundred tons of uranium were either launched into the air or are being continually washed into the sea right now from Fukushima. But the fuel rods also had plenty of uranium decay products before they melted. How many 50 nanogram lethal doses of polonium were in the hundreds of tons of fuel rods that melted down? Maybe some scientist should ask themselves if we 1) suddenly have like 10x or 100x the amount of 'natural radon' in the atmosphere turning into polonium, or 2) the three uranium-lava cores of the reactors are somehow responsible for the increase.

I have no idea if polonium-210 is the biggest or even a major danger from Pacific seafood OR if it has anything to do with Fukushima. That's just one thing I can think of that is remarkable by it's (apparently) complete absence of study in the scientific community. It might be nothing. Maybe the whole West Coast thing CAN be explained by sea lion overpopulation and warmer water temperatures.

Call me a nutter but - personally - I'm trying to cut back on my imaginary polonium intake. A nanogram here and a nanogram there, and pretty soon you're bleeding out every orifice of your body. You know how funny people get about THAT nowadays.