The
INSIDE Letters
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Aging column
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Boat rescue
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VOLUME 38, NUMBER 30 • JULY 28, 2015
Feast and famine – a look at unemployment trends by Anna V. Smith Journal reporter
June’s unemployment rate in San Juan County was at 4.3 percent, compared with Washington state’s 5.3 percent, according to a preliminary report by Washington State Employment Security Department’s Labor Market and Performance Branch. San Juan County has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state for June, on par with Snohomish County and just a bit above King County at 4 percent. Since May, predictably, jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector have increased with the tourist season as well as jobs in trade, transportation and utilities. Comparing employment from June 2014
to June 2015, the analysis shows that the professional and business services sector and mining, logging and construction sector have not added jobs, and have instead decreased. According to regional labor economist Anneliese Vance-Sherman for the Employment Security Department, those numbers are the remnants of the recession. “In San Juan County where the recovery is lagging, these two are still declining at this point,” Vance-Sherman said. “Whereas in parts of the state where we’re in a more mature recovery, such as King County, those two industries are really taking off.” Vance-Sherman said that since San Juan County has such a tourist-based economy, unemployment rates here are often amongst the lowest in the state, since unemployed
persons are only counted if they are actively seeking work, which may not happen in the off-season if people work seasonally. “Even during the times there are fewer jobs available we don’t really have high unemployment rate,” Vance-Sherman said. “People aren’t looking for work because they know the rhythm of the economy. In San Juan County people know when to look for work and when not to look for work because the seasonality is so present.” Overall so far in 2015, San Juan County has 170 more jobs than last year at this time, a 2.9 percent increase. San Juan County’s peak unemployment level was in 2010, at 9.6 percent. Vance-Sherman says that recovery has been slower in the islands, but employment numbers are consistently better than
last year. Seasonality is a major factor in looking at San Juan County’s employment numbers due to the influx of workers. To illustrate how much it affects the islands, when looking from January to August in 2013, the county added an additional 1,958 jobs, or a 43 percent increase. Vance-Sherman says this percentage increase is consistent year after year. “There is a gradual decline in unemployment rates, and in San Juan County there’s a lot of noise in those numbers because it’s so seasonal,” Vance Sherman said. “Our recovery has been very slow, but now we’re at the point where we’re seeing employment numbers be higher than they were from the last year and every month.”
Will the sea stars make a recovery in the Salish Sea? by Anna Meyer
Special to the Sounder
Touching sea stars sheltering during low tide will reveal not a sturdy, sandpiper skin but a soft and pulpy texture with white and oozing lesions, its limp, weakened rays and strained tube feet unable to grasp at craggy surfaces. But what has caused such a gruesome change in our ochre sea stars? “We’re hopeful but not sure the cause for optimism is entirely warranted – yet,” said Dr. Christopher Mah, research collaborator at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Ochre sea stars, along with other asteroid sea stars, are suffering from sea star wasting disease, a ter-
minal disease that quickly leads to the dissolution and death of affected sea stars. According to a study by the University of Santa Cruz, the sea star “melts” into a white mucus-like paste in just a few days. The slow degeneration and graphic death of several species of sea stars has drawn concerned marine scientists from across the nation to focus on the potential causes of this disease. The first major breakout of wasting disease was first noticed in 1972 when sea stars began to show symptoms on the east coast. In 1982, stars in California began to decline, seemingly also from wasting disease. Finally, in 2013, massive die-offs began to happen on both the east and west
coasts. Scientists began to study affected sea stars in depth to discover what was causing this unknown and disconcerting disease. Wasting disease showed signs of being caused by something microscopic and transmittable, like a virus or bacteria. This year, two years after the start of the outbreaks, scientists are releasing publications on a major causative agent of sea star wasting disease — a virus. A collection of marine scientists released a publication in December of 2014 showing that affected sea stars were carrying a densovirus, and that this was most likely causing the sea star wasting and dieoffs. According to an article in National Geographic, a
densovirus is a small singlestrand virus of the same family that infects dogs with canine parvovirus. The study showed that sea stars with more viral particles in their bodies were more likely to dissolve and die. Since the disease is due to a virus. It is easily transmitted via water carrying viral particles or via infected individuals and is difficult to treat. Infected water must be treated with ultraviolet rays or otherwise disinfected to effectively abolish the viral particles. This means that there is no straightforward method for treating sea stars or outbreaks in the wild. Without a direct way to treat this virus, scientists are resorting to determining the impacts on sea star
populations. Studies suggest that stress (from heat, unsheltered habitat or other environmental conditions) may increase the incidence of sea stars contracting the virus — meaning that higher water temperatures associated with summer may increase the prevalence of wasting sea stars. Although the major causative agent of the virus has seemingly been pinpointed, scientists are still looking into this disease. Temperature relations, species links and environmental factors are all still potentially factors in the intensity of wasting disease outbreaks. The viral factor is being treated as a piece of a larger puzzle. “There’s a possibility it could be very complicated,” said Mah. “Other invertebrate diseases are not easily understood.” He described coral bleaching, which is caused by microbial imbalances on the skin of various coral species as an example of the complex nature of marine invertebrate diseases. What scientists are focused on—more than temperature and environment—is the sheer number of sea stars affected. Without an accurate idea of how badly sea stars are being hit by this disease, further decisions regarding protection and management cannot be made with cer-
tainty. The University of California Santa Cruz has reported areas with wasting occurring between 5 to 60 percent in areas along the West Coast. On Orcas Island, Kwiáht, a nonprofit focused on the health of the San Juan Islands, has reported 2015 mortality rates for ochre sea stars at Indian Island as around 8 percent. The mortality rate may even be lower than this. “Healthier stars are more likely to move deeper to avoid sun and heat because they are [more] mobile than sick animals,” said Russel Barsh, director of Kwiáht. He does caution that sea star mortality may rise somewhat during summer months when sea stars are subjected to more stress. Recent reports are hopeful, despite the relatively sudden onset of wasting disease and its complicated nature. Scientists at UCSC are reporting juvenile sea stars in some of their study sites, and juveniles were seen by Kwiáht members on Indian Island this summer. Despite the signs of prospective recovery, scientists press for moderation. It is likely that there are several more factors at play than just viral infection: what those factors are is still to be determined. Although hopeful, Russel Barsh counsels “We’re not necessarily out in the clear.”