Gates and Buffet Visit Oil Sands, Home of Two-Headed Fish
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08.20.08
Ling Wang, Mikisew First Nation
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are casing the joint at the Alberta Oil Sands, to satisfy "their own curiosity" but also "with investment in mind", according to the National Post.
We wonder if they were shown the mutated fish with two heads that was caught just downstream. Stuart MacMillan of Parks Canada calls it "really unusual. The fish has an obvious abnormality. I had never seen anything like that myself before. I can’t speculate on what might have caused it.”
Native people living in Fort Chip certainly were speculating. George Poitras of the Mikesew Cree showed it at a Keepers of the Water conference: “People were in disbelief. Here they saw a fish that we suspect is very much linked to tarsands development and contamination of the Athabasca River. Our elders tell us that what happens to the animals and the fish is just a sign of what is going to happen to human life.”
The Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program in Alberta (RAMP), which identifies impacts of the oilsands, says that " it is normal to occasionally find deformed fish and that physical injuries or increased water temperatures in the egg stage can cause mutations."
The Star notes that a two-mouthed trout was caught in Nebraska in 2005, sparking headlines around the world. The angler who caught it donated the head of the fish to Harvard but ate the body; that might not be a good idea with this one. ::The Star
UPDATE: Joe Romm at Climate Progress says there is Simpsons angle to the story.
More on the Alberta Oil Sands in TreeHugger:
Tar Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth
Bad PR Week in Fort McMoney
Edward Burtynsky on the Alberta Tar Sands
Library Late Fees in Alberta Are 16 Times Bigger than Environmental Fines at the Alberta Tar Sands
Explore Alberta's Latest Tourist Attraction: The Tar Sands Resort
Tar Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth
Oil Companies and Alberta Government Go After Little Old Lady
Quote of the Day: Martin Roscheisen, CEO of Nanosolar, "Biofuels don't cut it"
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That fish is straight out of the Simpsons.
So, they only found one of these things? I'm sorry, but that isn't enough to make the claim that the tar sands are the cause. I hate tar sand oil extraction as much as the next treehugger, but the fact is that weird things like two-headed animals or human babies with eight limbs do happen from time to time. Rare events do and ought to be expected to happen from time to time; usually they go unnoticed. If they found a dozen in a weekend, I'd be convinced. But I'd say they probably just found it by chance or because they were looking more closely.
The same thing happened near Three Mile Island after the partial meltdown. All data indicated that no radioactive material or radiation was released, but people started poking around in the area much more closely than ever before. Unsurprisingly, they found some weird specimens and paraded them around as evidence of the horrible effects of radiation.
@Anthony: For the most part when some genetic abnormality like this appears, it is very probable that it's caused from an environmental agent. You can't blame people when they see 2-headed fish and they look toward the nuclear plant or the chemical plant or whatever is in the area. There's a good chance that those things are the contaminants that're causing the defects.
Of course there's also the chance that it was just a normal genetic mutation. A 2-headed fish certainly is not proof, but it is a good reason to look a little more closely.