[MARMAM] Affect of continuing radioactive marine contamination from Fukushima?

[William Rossiter]

Dear MARMAMERs,

It may serve the general marine mammal community to know what has been 
or should be learned about the affect on marine mammals from radioactive 
contamination of a marine environment. Therefore, this is a request for 
references to scientific studies or documentation on the affect on 
marine mammals from the 300 tons of contaminated water known to be 
entering the ocean every day since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant 
disaster. As such studies are likely to be in Japanese, it is unlikely 
that their data and conclusions have been widely circulated. They so far 
have eluded every effort we've made to find them.

It is necessary to clarify that this request is about the professional 
scientific response to the contamination, with no inference to the 
political, social, national or industry response. In the event that no 
scientific studies are complete or in progress it may be useful to 
conduct some.

The relevant comment from this Guardian article at 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/fukushima-fallout-threatens-fishermens-livelihoods> 
is that: "The environment ministry recently announcement that 300 tonnes 
of contaminated groundwater from Fukushima Daiichi is still seeping over 
or around barriers into the Pacific every day, more than two years after 
it was struck by a tsunami in March 2011. Government officials said they 
suspected the leaks had started soon after the accident, which resulted 
in a nuclear meltdown."

Thank you,

William W. Rossiter
President
Cetacean Society International
65 Redding Road-0953
Georgetown, CT 06829-0953
t/c: 203.770.8615, f: 860.561.0187
rossiter at csiwhalesalive.org
www.csiwhalesalive.org