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Science Quickly

Road Runoff a No-No for Coho

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2015

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Researchers have found the first direct evidence that coho salmon near U.S. Northwest cities are being killed by chemical runoff from roads and parking lots that reach streams   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

0:33.5

This is Scientific American 60-second science. I'm Julia Rosen. Got a minute?

0:39.2

Each fall, thousands of coho salmon flocked to Northwest Rivers to spawn, but many never get the chance, especially near big cities like Seattle.

0:48.1

And in some of these urban areas, up to 90% of the females were dying before they spawned, which is not a good thing for a population.

0:54.3

Julanne Spromberg, a toxicologist affiliated with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

0:59.8

Researchers suspected these deaths were partly a matter of bad timing. The fish often reached

1:04.8

streams during the first showers of the rainy season, which flush chemicals from roads and

1:09.5

parking lots into the water. Now Sbromberg and her

1:12.4

colleagues have produced the first direct evidence that this runoff kills Coho salmon. Their study

1:17.4

is in the Journal of Applied Ecology. The researchers found that fish exposed to stormwater from

1:22.7

Seattle area highways quickly grew sick and died. Surprisingly, though, the salmon didn't seem to mind taking a dip

1:29.4

in a cocktail of common road pollutants, including hydrocarbons and metals. That detail suggests

1:35.2

the killer ingredient in runoff may be a different kind of chemical or a lethal combination

1:39.5

of several compounds. There's a whole lot of stuff in here that we haven't been able to measure

1:43.1

or don't have the capabilities of measuring at this point. However, Spromberg says there's a way to help the fish

1:47.9

even before scientists hunt down the culprit. Her team also found that filtering runoff through just a

1:53.1

few feet of soil made stormwater safe for salmon. Cities can implement this simple form of clean

1:58.3

water technology by building more systems, including

...

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