Southeast Alaska: Fast food appeals to humpback whales By LAUREN FRISCH - Four humpback whales in Southeast Alaska have discovered their own fast-food restaurant. The whales have been eating juvenile chum and coho salmon at hatchery release sites in Chatham Strait, near Sitka. While the hatchery fish are likely a negligible portion of humpback whale diets overall in Southeast Alaska, this feeding habit could be an important strategy for a few individuals and could have a substantial effect on revenue for the region’s fisheries.

Hidden Falls hatchery release site in Kasnyku Bay.
Photo by Ellen Chenoweth

Ellen Chenoweth, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, is studying which whales are feeding on the juvenile salmon and why they are choosing to feed there.

Wild juvenile salmon are likely a normal part of a humpback whale’s diet. In addition, there are plenty of humpback whales that swim by the hatcheries without interest. If Chenoweth can pinpoint why certain whales are choosing the hatchery fish when it’s time for a meal, she can work with hatchery managers to suggest release strategies so hatcheries aren’t creating all-you-can-eat buffets for hungry whales.

Juvenile salmon bred in hatcheries in Chatham Strait are raised in captivity for six to 18 months before they are released to live in the ocean for two to six years. After this period, the anadromous salmon come back to the release site to spawn. Enough fish need to return each year to give the hatchery adequate genetic diversity to successfully breed the next year’s stock, and to fill the holds of the trollers, seiners and gillnetters that support hatchery operations.

Juvenile salmon are released into the ocean in large, dense schools. These schools can be an efficient source of food for predators because they maximize the number of calories predators take in per bite.

Eating is hard work for a humpback whale. Humpbacks are bulk filter feeders, meaning they eat a lot of small fish per bite. The whales feed by diving from the surface to the depth of their prey, lunging quickly at the prey, taking a mouthful, and then resurfacing for air. By expanding their throats, whales can suck in a volume of water equal to their body weight with a single mouthful. Then they filter out food with their baleen and spit out the remaining water. - More...
Tuesday PM - October 20, 2015

National: Social Security Cost of Living Increase Equals Exactly.... Nothing By MARY KAUFFMAN - Last Thursday, we learned from the Social Security Administration (SSA) that consumer prices were down over the past year. This led the Social Security Administration to announced that monthly Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for nearly 65 million Americans will not increase in 2016.

Cost-Of-Living Adjustments, or COLAs, are tied to inflation and have averaged an increase of about 2.2 percent annually over the last 15 years for Social Security recipients. For the third time since 2009, Social Security recipients won't be getting a cost of living adjustment in 2016.

The Social Security Act specifies a formula for determining each COLA which appears to have become the ultimate barometer of inflation. According to the formula, COLAs are based on increases in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). CPI-Ws are calculated on a monthly basis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. - More...
Tuesday PM - October 20, 2015

Columns - Commentary

RON PAUL: Debt Ceiling Debate Ignores Warfare-Welfare State - The U.S. Treasury's recent announcement that the government will reach the debt ceiling on November 3 means Congress will soon be debating raising the government's borrowing limit again. Any delay in, or opposition to, raising the debt ceiling will inevitably be met with hand-wringing over Congress' alleged irresponsibility. But the real irresponsible act would be for Congress to raise the debt ceiling.

Cutting up its credit card is the only way to make Congress reduce spending. Anyone who doubts this should listen to the bipartisan whining over how sequestration has so drastically reduced spending that there is literally nothing left to cut. But, according to the Heritage Foundation, sequestration has only reduced spending from $3.6 trillion to $3.5 trillion. Only in D.C. would a less than one percent spending reduction be considered a draconian cut.

Defense hawks have found a way around sequestration by shoving billions of dollars into the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account. OCO spending is classified as "emergency" spending so it does not count against the spending limits, even when OCO is used for items that do not fit any reasonable definition of emergency. - More...
Tuesday PM - October 20, 2015

JOSEPH COTTO: Could Medicare be Obamacare's Savior? - Like it or not, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. Whether or not it will prove to protect patients and facilitate affordable medical care is another story.

Beyond any partisan rhetoric, it does seem that the PPACA will benefit many lower income Americans. While this is good news for a segment of society which has been treated like cattle by insurance companies for generations on end, all is not well for everybody else.

Lower insurance costs for the hard-pressed are being subsidized by those in the middle and upper classes. This is manifested in the cost of policies skyrocketing to an extent which most could hardly imagine.

A great deal on the right have been calling for the PPACA — colloquially referred to as "Obamacare" — to be repealed. While many have suggested alternative policies, it appears unlikely that any of these will seriously help the men, women, and children who have been abused by for-profit healthcare.

Really now, does anybody believe that whichever 'solutions' the Republican Congress trots out won't boil down to repealing bans against screening those with preexisting conditions and allowing insurance companies to raise rates even though their loyal customers are in no position to pay? - More...
Tuesday PM - October 20, 2015