Tamiflu, the primary flu-fighting drug, is getting into surface waters where ducks and other water birds may pick it up. If the birds are carrying flu viruses, which many normally do, those viruses may develop a resistance to the drug, scientists now worr

What if the solution to one problem causes other problems down the road? That may be the case in the ongoing struggle to fight the flu. Flu season is almost here, which means more and more people may be taking Tamiflu in the months ahead. Tamiflu is a popular anti-flu drug that treats both seasonal flu strains and the new H1N1 flu, an unpredictable disease better known as swine flu.

But this increased use of Tamiflu may be introducing new problems. A team of Japanese scientists recently studied three rivers in Japan and found them to be contaminated with Tamiflu’s active ingredient, oseltamivir carboxylate or OC. They found the same contamination in the water discharged from local sewage plants, water that ends up in those rivers. People excreted the drug in their urine, and water discharged from the sewage plants carried it to the rivers.

Sewage treatment plants are designed to remove germs and solids from the wastes dispensed by household toilets, but many drugs can get through. OC is one of those escaping drugs.

OC in the water may be a serious problem for birds — and for people. Here’s why: The flu, short for influenza, is caused by a virus, a tiny organism that invades living cells and turns them against the body. There is not one flu-causing virus; there are many. These many viruses are constantly evolving, or changing in order to survive. They find new ways to infect people and animals, and every year new kinds of flu show up. Birds are natural carriers of many flu-causing viruses.

If a bird drinks water polluted with OC, that bird may be able to fight off the types of flu that Tamiflu treats. As a result, new flus — flus that can’t be cured by Tamiflu — may start to develop in the bird. Once a drug-resistant flu grows in the bird, that bird can pass it on to other animals. This new, stronger flu could eventually start infecting people. And that could mean big trouble, since Tamiflu would not help people fight this stronger flu..

The Japanese study was led by Gopal Ghosh, a scientist at Kyoto University. Ghosh and his team collected water from two places: sewage treatment plants and the rivers that carried away the treated wastewater dispensed by the plants. They first collected samples in December of last year, when the flu season was starting. They collected more water samples in February, when the flu was bad, and collected a third set of samples later.

The scientists found OC in the sewage samples every time. They found a higher concentration in the second set of samples, from February. That’s when the flu was at its worst, and 1,738 cases were recorded in Kyoto. At the same time, in the second set of samples taken in February, the scientists found OC in the river water as well. The OC did not show up in the river in the first and third set of samples.

Scientists have known for years that sewage treatment plants do not remove OC from the water. Jerker Fick, an environmental chemist at Umeå University in Sweden, published a study two years ago that showed that most water treatment plants removed “zero percent” — or none — of the OC. In fact, Fick says, almost all the Tamiflu ingested by a human being will end up in the environment as OC.

And when the OC comes out of the sewage treatment plants, the birds will be ready. Ducks, for example, love to swim in the warm waters just downstream of those plants during the coldest months — during flu season. “I saw it myself,” Fick says.

POWER WORDS (from the Yahoo! Kids Dictionary)

flu or influenza An acute, contagious, viral infection characterized by inflammation of the respiratory tract and by fever, chills, muscular pain and prostration.

concentration The amount of a specified substance in a unit amount of another substance. The Ghosh study determined how many nanograms (one billionth of a gram) of OC was in a liter of the water they sampled.

virus Any of various simple submicroscopic parasites of plants, animals and bacteria that often cause disease and that consist essentially of a core of RNA or DNA surrounded by a protein coat.

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Scientists recently did experiments on several species of freshwater fish to see how they reacted to antidepressants in their water. Normally a bottom-dwelling species, this bass exposed to antidepressants started swimming at the surface, partially out of

When you’re sick, you might take medications to help you fight off infection, lower a fever or clear a stuffy nose. But once those drugs leave your body, chances are they will find their way into nearby lakes, ponds, rivers and streams.

Drugs end up in a body of water because you excrete them in urine. When you flush a toilet, the wastewater travels to a treatment plant. There, bacteria and other material are filtered out and the cleaned water is returned to natural bodies of water. The trouble is, wastewater treatment plants don’t filter out drugs. Some people even flush unused drugs down the toilet, only adding to the problem.

While medications are meant to help a person feel better, they’re not good for wildlife. Over the past several years, scientists have begun to test how common drugs are in freshwater ecosystems. Researchers also are starting to learn more about how medications meant for humans affect the animals that accidentally ingest the drugs.

Recently, several scientists tested how a group of drugs called antidepressants affects freshwater fish. For many people with an illness called depression, antidepressants can be lifesavers. People with depression may feel sad or anxious for extremely long periods of time, lose interest in activities they once enjoyed and have difficulty sleeping or concentrating. Antidepressants help improve these symptoms for some people.

Several years ago, researchers discovered that some species of fish living near wastewater treatment plants had antidepressants in their brains. “Pretty much any water sample in the vicinity of a wastewater treatment plant will test positive for some group of antidepressants,” says chemist Melissa Schultz, of the College of Wooster in Ohio. This finding inspired a number of scientists to learn how these drugs affect fish and other wildlife.

In their experiments, researchers exposed species of fish in a laboratory to different brands of antidepressants. Then, the scientists tested the fishes’ responses to a number of things, such as the cues predators make or the appearance of prey animals.

Some hybrid striped bass exposed to the antidepressant Prozac eventually began hanging vertically in the water — a highly unlikely pose — and stopped eating.

Clemson University’s Institute of Environmental Toxicology

The researchers found that antidepressants affect fish species in numerous ways, from diminishing their response to predators to slowing down their prey-hunting techniques. One unexpected result even showed that a type of antidepressant called fluoxetine acts like estrogen, a primarily female hormone, when in the bodies of adult male fathead minnows.

Fluoxetine, sold under the brand name Prozac, caused these male minnows to produce an egg protein normally made only by females. In addition, males exposed to fluoxetine did not make the bright colors and facial bumps usually used to attract mates. More testing needs to be done to determine whether these changes affect minnows’ ability to mate.

It’s important to keep in mind that in any lake or stream, fish and other organisms aren’t just exposed to antidepressants, Schultz says. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and even caffeine all make their way through water treatment plants and back into the environment. What happens to fish and other animals when they’re exposed to all of these drugs in combination? For now, nobody knows, Schultz says – leaving the door open to many future research questions.

This video shows a hybrid striped bass quickly gobbling up four minnows. Fed only once every three days, the bass tend to become quite aggressive about downing their meals. After being exposed to high concentrations of Prozac, however, some bass took up to two minutes to capture their first minnow and didn’t finish all four with the allotted 25 minutes. Over the nearly month-long experiment, a few bass lost their appetites altogether.

Source: Clemson University’s Institute of Environmental Toxicology

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There are cranberry bogs, pecan orchards, cornfields, llama farms, peppermint fields, cattle ranches, rice paddies, and more. Along just one short stretch of road in California, farmers grow strawberries, lettuce, artichokes, and Brussels sprouts.

Atlantic salmon are raised on fish farms off the coasts of British Columbia, Washington State, New Brunswick, Norway, Scotland, Chile, and elsewhere around the world.

Timothy Knepp, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Even venturing beyond the coast, you’d find farms in the water, producing fish, shellfish, and even seaweed. It’s called aquaculture.

About one-third of the fish that people eat already comes from such farms. The United Nations estimates that, in 25 years, aquaculture will produce more than half of our seafood.

“There’s simply not enough wild fish to supply the growing demand for seafood,” says Jennifer Dianto. She’s an environmental scientist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.

This farm near Belzoni, Mississippi, produces catfish.

David Heikes, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Although fish farms could supply lots of food and save wild populations from dying out, there are serious concerns about these farms.

For example, fish could escape, says Paul Sandifer. He’s a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Because the escapees often don’t normally live in the surrounding waters, they could have a bad effect on wild fish in the area.

Moreover, fish in a confined space produce a lot of waste, which can pollute nearby waters. Diseases can spread like wildfire within a farm and infect fish swimming nearby.

Despite such concerns, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy recently proposed that increased aquaculture would be a good thing—if it were managed properly. New technology can help solve the problems, says Sandifer, who was a commission member.

Friendly farms

Scientists are already testing new techniques for setting up environmentally friendly fish farms.

In the Caribbean, fish farmers are raising cobia in huge underwater cages. Cobia are long, slim fish that grow as heavy as 30 pounds. They prefer warm water and can often be found seeking shelter in harbors and near wrecks and reefs in the Florida Keys and elsewhere around the world.

Now farmed, cobia prefer to live in warm water in the Caribbean and elsewhere around the world.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The idea is to have the cages offshore in deep waters where there are strong currents, says Daniel Benetti. He’s a scientist at the University of Miami.

He and his colleagues sank cages 90 feet below the surface, where more than 500 million gallons of water flows through a cage per day. These currents flush away the waste and leftover fish food that would otherwise collect beneath the cages.

When scientists tested the water near these farms, they found that the nearby water wasn’t significantly dirtier than water farther away, Benetti says.

In the much colder waters off eastern Canada, Thierry Chopin of the University of New Brunswick and his coworkers have experimented with combining salmon farming with other types of aquaculture.

“Don’t put all your salmon eggs in the same basket,” Chopin says. The waste from one species can be food for another.

Kelp thrives near salmon farms.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The researchers have combined salmon farming with mussel and kelp farming. They found that mussels grew better right next to the fish cages, and kelp thrived when it grew a bit farther away.

At the same time, the shellfish and seaweed helped clean up waste generated by the salmon farms, Chopin says.

Attack of the sea lice

Still, many marine scientists are concerned about fish farms, especially salmon operations.

In 2002, the number of wild salmon along Canada’s west coast suddenly dropped sharply. Because there are a large number of fish farms along the coast, scientists looked for a connection between the farms and the population collapse.

They identified one possible culprit: sea lice. Sea lice are tiny parasites that thrive on farms, which often have a million salmon in one place.

Sea lice (dark shapes) cling to young wild pink salmon that have swum past a fish farm in British Columbia.

A. Morton, University of Alberta

“That represents a huge buffet to something like the sea lice,” says John Volpe. He’s a marine ecologist with the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

Whereas adult salmon can tolerate lice, young salmon, which weigh less than an ounce, are vulnerable. For such a small fish, having a sea louse attach itself is like having a 50-pound blood-sucking tick latch on to a 150-pound person, Volpe says. Imagine carrying that around!

The researchers looked for lice infestations as young wild salmon migrated down a narrow channel, past a salmon farm, and out into the ocean. The infection rates were 73 times higher than normal when the young fish passed the farm, Volpe says.

When they pass by farms, baby fish pick up sea lice hitchhikers. And, if the fish survive, the lice they carry reproduce and infect even more fish as the schools migrate to the ocean. In the end, fewer fish make it to the ocean, and wild salmon populations drop.

The same problem could occur near salmon farms in Scotland, Ireland, Norway, and elsewhere.

Choosing seafood

If some fish farms appear to be hurting the environment and others seem to be okay, how does a hungry, but environmentally aware kid know which kind of seafood to eat?

That’s where publications such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch guide come in handy. The guide lists fish in three, color-coded categories: best choices (green), good alternatives (yellow), and avoid (red). It covers both wild-caught and farmed fish.

These catfish come from a farm.

Peggy Greb, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

For farmed fish, scientists look at how many wild fish it takes to make the fish meal and fish oil that feeds farmed fish. They look at the effect of fish farm escapees and whether the farms spread diseases or parasites. They look at what happens with fish waste and how the farms are managed.

“No one wants to be on the red list,” says Dianto, who’s the Seafood Watch program manager. And people seem to be paying attention. The Seafood Watch program has already distributed 5 million guides.

So, if you love catfish, tilapia, or mussels, there’s no problem. They’re all on the green list, which means they’re raised in a sustainable manner. Salmon lovers have to be more careful. Whereas wild-caught Alaskan salmon are in the green, salmon farms have a long way to go before their products would make the list.

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“Whales have that effect on people,” Palumbi adds. He’s a biology professor at Stanford University.

Steve Palumbi is a marine biologist at Stanford University who studies whales.

Stanford University

It might be their gargantuan size, their beautiful and haunting songs, which can travel underwater for thousands of miles, or the fact that they’ve been on Earth for a long, long time. Then again, whale awe might come from something beyond words.

“Something about them is just magical,” Palumbi says. “They’re magnificent creatures. They’ve been swimming the seas for 20 million years. It should be no surprise that they’re the masters of the ocean.”

These ocean rulers, however, are in big trouble. Between 1925 and 1975, whale hunting destroyed many of the world’s whale populations. By the time whaling was officially banned in 1986, some species had already become extinct. Others are still struggling to recover.

Meanwhile, countries such as Japan and Norway have found ways to continue hunting whales for their meat and blubber. And they’re trying to get permission from the International Whaling Commission to start whaling again on a large scale in the next 5 years.

Whales face other threats, too. Lots of boat noise can prevent them from communicating with each other. And pollution may be poisoning the fish they eat.

A humpback whale’s tail has distinctive markings.

Captain Budd Christman, NOAA Corps

Despite the admiration that whales inspire, scientists still don’t know many things about them. “Much of what whales do and how they live their lives is still a secret,” Palumbi says.

So, scientists such as Palumbi are working hard to unravel the secret lives of whales. Their goal is to find ways to protect them for generations to come.

Polluted waters

Oceans act like giant conveyer belts, spreading dangerous chemicals such as DDT and dioxins around the world, says Roger Payne. He heads a whale conservation organization called Ocean Alliance.

As toxins move up the food chain, from fish to whales (and people), they get more and more concentrated in muscle and fat tissue, which increases potential health hazards.

An orca (killer whale) takes a peek through a hole in the ice.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Payne’s organization has sent a ship named the Odyssey on a 5-year, worldwide cruise to collect data. Researchers aboard the ship are gathering skin samples from sperm whales, then analyzing the samples for pollutants.

“The first question is: How bad is it?” Payne says. “Until we can answer that, we can’t really get anywhere.”

The voyage’s goal is to create a map of pollution in oceans around the world. This information should reveal something about how our waste is affecting long-lived mammals like whales.

Sample collection is still underway. So far, testing of 30 whale samples has revealed the presence of pollutants in every single one.

If most other samples turn out to be contaminated, the findings could also be a warning to people. Seafood is the main source of animal protein for 70 percent of people on Earth, Payne says. If the seafood we eat is tainted, our health could be at stake, along with that of whales.

Loud noise

Chemicals are not the only kind of pollution in the ocean. Noise is also a major problem, says Christopher Clark. He’s director of Cornell University’s bioacoustics research program.

In his research, Clark uses highly sensitive microphones that were originally developed by the U.S. Navy to track ships. The microphones are so sensitive that Clark calls them “the Hubble telescopes of the sea.” The Hubble Space Telescope is an orbiting instrument that has provided extremely detailed images of the universe.

Now, Clark is using these microphones to pinpoint where whales are, how they move, and what sounds they make.

Humpback whales migrate from near the poles to tropical waters.

R. Wicklund, OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Whales generate a variety of sounds, sometimes creating long and intricate melodies. No one knows what whale songs mean, but the tunes can be very complex.

Some scientists suggest that whales make such noises to navigate and communicate. They might keep track of each other, tell others where food is available, and find each other to breed. I wonder if they also talk about the weather!

Clark’s research has shown that whales use low-frequency sound waves to communicate with each other across hundreds, even thousands of miles of water. This means that a whale off the coast of Newfoundland, way up in northeastern Canada, can hear its friends in Puerto Rico, 1,600 miles away in the Caribbean.

But there’s a problem. Ships make a lot of noise, and there are lots of ships out there. All of that “acoustic smog,” Clark says, has greatly reduced the ability of whales to hear each other.

Cape Cod Bay on the coast of Massachusetts is a particularly extreme example, Clark says. The bay is a critical habitat for northern right whales, but the noise is persistent and the levels are very high.

If there were this much noise on land, Clark says, a government agency called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would order us to wear earplugs or stay away to protect ourselves and keep from going deaf.

Whales might end up leaving their homes or swimming to different depths to avoid loud noises. Such moves could create further problems, a recent study by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution suggests.

The researchers found that whales can get “the bends” in the same way that scuba divers do when they swim too deep, stay down too long, or rise too quickly to the surface (see “The Pressure of Scuba Diving” at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20040623/Feature1.asp ). In this ailment, bubbles of gas in the blood can cause severe pain and even death, both in people and in whales.

Deep food

Protecting whales is especially important because a variety of species depend on them for survival, says Craig Smith. He’s an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and he studies “whale falls.” A whale fall is a dead whale carcass that sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

A gray whale pokes its head above the water.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The body of a 50-ton whale can sustain up to 80 years worth of life, Smith says.

Using deep-sea robotic equipment, including the submersible Alvin (see “Explorer of the Extreme Deep” at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20041110/Feature1.asp ), Smith has discovered a wealth of bizarre creatures that seem to thrive only on whale falls.

The blind zombie worm is one example. These odd worms feed on whalebones and grow into mats that look like fields of tall grass waving in the wind.

“The communities are remarkable,” Smith says. One whale can support 3,400 individual creatures that belong to more than 200 species, including mussels, sharks, clams, and worms.

“It’s among the most species-rich habitats in the deep sea,” he says.

A decline in whale populations would mean a decrease in whale falls. As a result, many specialized species would become extinct. For example, calculations show that, if whale falls went down by 75 percent, about 30 to 40 percent of the species that depend on these falls for survival would die out.

Even reducing whale falls by half would cause 15 percent of dependent species to disappear. That’s troubling, Smith says, because some people argue that killing 50 percent of whales would do no harm.

Hunting ban

Not all the news is bad news. Using information buried in whale DNA, Palumbi’s research has shown that Antarctic minke whales have been thriving for as long as 2 million years. Through ice age after ice age, their numbers have continued to grow steadily. Whaling seems to be the only major threat they face.

The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived on Earth.

Bob Hines, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

However, a complete ban on whaling may be the only way to save the world’s whale populations and all of the species that depend on them, many researchers say. At the same time, countries such as Japan and Norway see the sale of whale blubber as a major source of income.

The best thing scientists can do now, Palumbi says, is to learn as much about whales as they can in order to document the negative effects of whaling. With rapid advances in technology, the opportunities for understanding these marvelous animals seem to be better than ever before.

“Learning about how whales live their lives, how they have lived their lives, and even how they die takes more than just looking at them from the surface,” Palumbi says. “It takes technology—new technology that pushes back the curtain of the ocean.”

Though there’s a lot left to be discovered, new technology and new research is beginning to fill in the gaps in the secret lives of whales.

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