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By Eric Johnson
In his most recent "Our Ocean Backyard" column in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, our friend Dan Haifley reported on two projects that should inject some sanity into the occasionally hysterical public conversation about the Fukushima nuclear disaster—projects that could also help raise our overall scientific IQ.

Haifley writes first about a very cool initiative launched by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to determine "whether radiation from the damaged nuclear plant may pose a threat to the marine food web in the Pacific, and whether it has moved to the North American west coast."

This project includes a citizen-science crowdsourcing campaign in which individuals, groups or classes in seven locations on the West Coast, including Santa Cruz, can participate in a monitoring program. Each participant receives a collection kit from the Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity, gathers a few gallons of seawater, and sends it back to Woods Hole to be tested.

The website, (provocatively) titled Our Radioactive Ocean, contains several good videos explaining the project and giving some background on Fukushima. The site also includes a crowd-funding element to help participants raise the $550 needed for each kit.

If you are thinking that sounds a bit like the wave of pseudoscience that has produced hundreds of web reports claiming to prove that the radioactive plume hit the West Coast months ago, producing cancerous tumors in fish, etc. —the opposite is the case.

First of all, Dan Haifley, director of the O'Neill Sea Odyssey and longtime environmental hero, is one of our best. If you are glad that the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is offshore instead of a bunch of oil rigs, thank Dan.

Secondly: WHOI is legit; Woods Hole, Mass. is to the East Coast what the Monterey Bay area is to the West—WHOI is on par with the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, Long Marine Lab or Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Finally, the scientist in charge, Ken Buesseler, is probably the perfect man for this job. From his bio:

"In June 2011, I organized the first comprehensive, international expedition to study the spread of radionuclides from Fukushima into the Pacific, and I or members of my lab have participated in several other cruises and analyzed dozens of samples of water, sediment, and biota. In addition, I began my career in oceanography by studying the spread of radionuclides from Chernobyl in the Black Sea."

Knowledge vs. Fear

Buesseler has published some of the findings from his years of studies. While he continues to believe that the results of the release of radioactive materials into the ocean should be of concern, his conclusions should put to rest the idea that there is some conspiracy to hide the deadly truth from the world.

With regard to seafood safety—even in long-distance travelers like Bluefin tuna—Buesseler says there is no imminent threat.

"Radiation levels in seafood should continue to be monitored, of course," Buesseler writes, "but radiation in the ocean will very quickly become diluted and should not be a problem beyond the coast of Japan. The same is true of radiation carried by winds around the globe.

"By the time tuna are caught in the eastern Pacific, cesium levels in their flesh are 10-20 times lower than when they were off Fukushima. Moreover, the dose from Fukushima cesium is considered insignificant relative to the dose from naturally occurring polonium-210, which was 1,000 times higher in fish samples studied, and both of these are much lower relative to other, more common sources, such as dental x-rays."

These researched, reasoned conclusions are of course being attacked by the many among us who are deeply distrustful of, well, everything and everybody. The comments on Haifley's Sentinel article include the following: "I would suggest that Mr. Haifley do a bit of digging on the background of an issue he wants to write about before making ignorant assertions like this. The massive plume of radiation arriving any day now along the west coast. These concentrations are expected to climb steadily over the years."

Beliefs like this are fueled not only by a host of alarmist websites but also by some pieces of sloppy journalism that have gone viral, including a Ventura County Reporter article titled A Radioactive Nightmare.

Among the scores of cherry-picked facts cited in this piece is a study that found increased levels of radiation in giant kelp off the California coast, including off Natural Bridges Beach. Here's how Michael Collins of the VC Reporter presents his information:

"Department of Biological Sciences study conducted at California State University, Long Beach, found that kelp along the coast of California was heavily impacted by radioactive Iodine-131 a month after the meltdowns began. The virulent and deadly isotope was detected at 250 times levels the researchers said were normal in the kelp before the disaster."

But Steven Manley, a biology professor at CSU Long Beach and lead author of the very study Collins cites, comes to a very different conclusion. Here's Dan Haifley: "[Manley] said he believes that the substance was air-borne and traveled over the Pacific and was deposited during the rainstorm of March 21 and 22, 2011. With a half-life of eight days, radiation levels subsided quickly."

"The radioactivity had no known effects on the giant kelp, or on fish and other marine life, and it was undetectable a month later."

And here's Manley himself: [Iodine 131] “has an eight-day half life so it’s pretty much all gone,” Manley said. “But this shows what happens half a world away does effect what happens here. I don’t think these levels are harmful, but it’s better if we don’t have it at all.”

Kelp Watch 2014

Manley is now leading the second of the two projects Haifley described in last week's column. For Kelp Watch 2014 Manley is working with Dr. Kai Vetter of UC Berkeley. This is a collaboration of around 40 marine scientists who will monitor kelp from Baja California to Alaska, looking specifically for fallout from Fukushima.

Their work will be important if it puts to rest some of the Fukushima hysteria. The same is true for the Woods Hole project, perhaps more so. By assigning the data-collection to ordinary citizens—many, presumably, who are deeply concerned about the ocean's health—Ken Buesseler and his colleagues are furthering the cause of science.

Michael Moyer of Scientific American wrote a piece in 2011, debunking a storyline at the time, titled "Are Babies Dying in the Pacific Northwest Due to Fukushima?" The answer was a definite "No." But Moyer ended his piece like so: “This is not to say that the radiation from Fukushima is not dangerous (it is), nor that we shouldn’t closely monitor its potential to spread (we should).”

Last week it was revealed that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) misled Japanese authorities about contaminated groundwaterfor months.This has added to the call for an international effort to supervise the cleanup. Meanwhile, we should be grateful for the level-headed scientists and activists who are on the case.