Murky waters getting murkier

I try to keep up on the news but sometimes things do slip by. Still, I was surprised to see in the Aug. 23rd edition of NOAA's "FishNews" a reference to a report released nearly a month earlier on the poor state of U.S. estuaries. Here's the forecast:

The report predicts that conditions in 65 percent of the nation's estuaries are likely to worsen in the next decade, while only 20 percent will improve.

That's two thirds of the coastal waters where fish spawn in the eelgrass and oysters and mussels cling to rocks and you and your dog and canoe are paddling about that are still on the road to ruin. More algal blooms, more dead zones, and fewer places where you'ld want to swim. Not very pretty. And this is a government report.

When I poked around in the news archives, I only found two outlets that picked up the release: the Indiana Prairie Farmer and Sportfishing Magazine. Since poor farming practices are considered to be a major cause of nutrient pollution, it was nice to see the story get some play in the mid-west. Sportfishermen are on the receiving end, since estuaries are usually good places to wet a line, so I'd expect them to pick up on this (plus that Doug Olander is pretty sharp). 

Has it gotten so bad that even in a slow news period we can't stand to hear the real news about our estuaries? Sure, there's some pollution already in the pipeline by way of rivers and streams that we can't clean up. But this is actually one of the more tractable ocean problems and it's something you can help fix at home. Don't overfertilize your plants or your lawn, use permeable surfaces like gravel and stones instead of asphalt or cement, and work in your neighborhood to help stormwater go into the soil and not into drains, streams, or bays. This is a trend that needs to be reversed.