Huge fish kill reported in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana

Source: Times Picayune

Huge fish kill reported in Plaquemines Parish
Published: Monday, September 13, 2010, 3:42 PM Updated: Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 7:21 AM
Bob Warren, The Times-Picayune Bob Warren, The Times-Picayune


Plaquemines Parish officials have asked state wildlife officials to investigate what they said is a massive fish kill at Bayou Chaland on the west side of the Mississippi River late Friday.
A massive fish kill was reported late Friday in Plaquemines Parish at Bayou Chaland, west of the Mississippi River.
http://mit.zenfs.com/5/2010/09/Fish+Kill+9-10-10+2.jpg
Photographs the parish distributed of the area shows an enormous amount of dead fish floating atop the water.
http://mit.zenfs.com/5/2010/09/Fish+Kill+9-10-10+1.jpg
This is a closeup of the fish kill at Bayou Chaland in Plaquemines Parish.

The fish kill was reported to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries and the cause has not yet been determined, the parish said. The fish were found in an area that has been impacted by the oil from the BP oil spill, the parish said.

The dead fish include pogies, redfish, drum, crabs, shrimp and freshwater eel, the parish said.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said he has asked Wildlife & Fisheries for a quick determination of the cause. The parish has also requested testing by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read more: http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/huge_fish_kill_reported_in_pla.html

---

What you see above isn't a rural gravel road. It's a Louisiana waterway, its surface completely covered with dead sea life -- a mishmash of species of fish, crabs, stingray and eel. New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL-TV reports that even a whale was found dead in the area.
http://fe10.story.media.sp1.yahoo.com/news/story/maple/en-US/yblog_upshot/20100914/od_yblog_upshot/massive-fish-kill-reported-in-louisiana

:cry:

People sneer at me when I say I'm not eating local seafood. The economy is more important than health concerns these days. Now I'm glad I've held my ground.

WIth such a wide range of species effected in this event, I'd guess it's also due to lack of oxygen. I wonder if the oil spill could cause this selective loss of oxygen or if something else is going on?

...although that's unlikely in the bayou, frankly. If it does happen in the bayou, it's likely because of a combination of factors, including sealing the surface with floating sheen. The issue is depth and turbulence-- the bayou is shallow, so it should not O₂ deplete because gases dissolve at the surface and diffuse (and mix) downward. In deep water the thermocline blocks O₂ penetration, leading to deep dead zones where anoxia kills by suffocation. In shallow water that should not be able to happen.

If the fish kill happened IN the bayou, I'd be skeptical about O₂ depletion.

corexit (dispersant) - the stuff they've been spraying to keep the oil at the bottom of the sea.

but people like to sneer and pretend they'll ride their bike, even the most brainwashed tea-bagger can't claim they're going to give up grain

Where I grew up we had fish kills some summers.

Too much vegetation in the water in the spring and early summer, dying and sucking up the oxygen as it decomposes. But that didn't lead directly to most fish kills.

The really big ones occurred during heat waves when O2 levels were already lowering from decomposition. Heat --> lower solubility for O2 in water --> not as much O2 available to be consumed by rotting vegetation.

The most likely cause is low oxygen in the water due to excessive use of fertilizer or too much detergent in the effluent from a city's water treatment facility. There has also been a concern that berms built at the instance of the Republican Governor, Mr Jindal, are environmentally harmful, and are closing the flow of oxygenated water into the marsh areas.

The measurements taken in the Gulf of Mexico thus far show the oil is biodegraded by bacteria, but the biodegradation is slow, and this is not driving down the oxygen level to a dangerous level.

Additional information about the oil spill impact can be found at

http://gomex.erma.noaa.gov/erma.html

This map is only an example of information you can access by your own person to read the data. It does show the oil spill has less impact than anticipated, and will be less damaging than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Investigation of the equipment pulled out of the sea floor recently also reveals the oil spill volume was very probably less than what was estimated by the official flow rate group a few weeks ago. The volume may be as much as 50 % of the official estimated amount, which is one reason why there is so little oil being found.

I live in Spain, but I have become very interested in the oil spill, and have been reading the documentation. You should be very careful, because there are a lot of bad information being used by people who want to sue BP for money (that is what you call ambulance chasers). There have also been reports of people who poisoned their own water to claim health effects, and thus sue BP. They are being investigated and may be arrested. A massive fish kill reported by this guy may be caused by poison being spread by a criminal to create circumstances which allow him to obtain money from the oil spill claim fund. I am sure the government will take water samples, and if the water is tainted with poison, then these individuals may be captured and jailed.

And said to myself, "What does that road have to do with dead fish?"

Then I saw the second photo. Horrific. :cry:

someone lied and lied and lied again! DAMN THEM ALL!

:kick:

I hope that every last BP stockholder is hung out to dry for the damage they have abetted.

they only supply capital. It is the CEO's and the board that make decisions,they and those under them should be held to account. If it were up to me, I would give shareholders more say. Try being a small investor these days and try to oust some of the CEO jack asses.....next to impossible. The best thing to do as a small investor is to look for a more responsible company. BP was moving in the right direction, but the corp. culture was to do things on the cheap. I can't speak to their partners but in the oil patch, they were as Broke and Patch Oil Co.

are. Wall Street. Disguised as government. It's a chess game, no one knows what checkmate will look like. Who the winner will be. Will it be Corporate? Or will people finally win something? :scared:

The federal agencies were quick to support BP by putting out undocumented reports minimizing the extent of the damage, urging local fishermen to start fishing again, and everybody to go back in the water.
It was like the EPA reporting the safety of Ground Zero within a few days and urging everyone to move back to the neighboring areas, and the responders to go in to Ground Zero. Now we know this was all for political purposes, and the responders have come down with and are coming down with deadly diseases (which take some time to evidence themselves - like mesothelioma and other cancers.

If I were the local officials, I would have an independent scientific agency analyze the situation.

I think President Obama has done a good job making sure the right people are working on this oil spill. The information they post in their websites is reliable, and it is verifiable. There are a lot of people with political agendas who want to attack the President, maybe because there are elections. These individuals may be Republican agents.

and I do hold President Obama responsible. It has nothing to do with elections. It has to do with his protection of corporations and his tepid response to what is happening in the Gulf.

I hope Mother Nature reaps Justice.

How very, very sad.

...just underlining the book title. But I found this info at Amazon:


17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A Choking Scream in Filthy Air, September 24, 2002
By Patrick Shepherd "hyperpat" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The end of the dream

Philip Wylie is probably best known for his early science fiction classic (1932) When Worlds Collide. The End of the Dream was his last book, and it has far more in common with his other great piece of writing, Generation of Vipers (1942). Vipers was a diatribe against almost everything American, from 'Mom' to apple pie, and is still an effective read today. The End of the Dream is Wylie's rant against all the ecological sins that man is committing. I first read this when in was first published in 1972, and many of the images he paints in this book have remained with me ever since.

The book is structured as a look back from the 2030s to just where man went wrong, at what places he had a chance to change things for the better but blithely ignored them. For by 2030 there are only four million people left alive, most living in enclosed 'bubble' townships and still very much on guard for whatever the next ecological catastrophe will be. As a structure for a novel, this is not terrible, but it definitely leads to an episodic approach, and because Wylie really doesn't present any strong, well defined, and continuing characters who exist over the course of this period (the ones that are there are almost stick-figure place holders), this book does not work as a novel at all.

Where this book does work is the incredible searing images he paints of various disasters, from a SST crashing into a New York skyscraper (due to a multi-state wide power outage, not deliberately), to the death wave moving up 5th Avenue from a deadly concentration of noxious gases, to the golf course built over a landfill that suddenly collapses into a bubbling stew of toxic chemicals. Perhaps the sharpest, most biting image is of a sudden attack by trillions of mutated sea worms that come ashore and attack practically anything moving, with the sharp irony that the defense against these creatures is to spread oil all around the chosen defended area, which naturally will, in time, become another eco disaster.

Although these images are haunting, and in many cases all too plausible, the time frame that Wylie envisions for these events is much too short, as by the 2001 of this book, most of civilization has been destroyed. This, perhaps, was the singular mistake made by many environmentalist voices of the seventies, the mistake of being too extreme and too dogmatic in their claims of disaster around every corner. It's a mistake that has seriously eroded the credibility of many of these voices. Happily, the Earth is a little more forgiving, and rational men have made some positive changes, than the environmentalist movement foresaw or would give credit to.

Does this mean then that the dangers Wylie is warning of here are not really a problem? Not at all. Wylie is very correct in pointing out the many abuses that man still engages in, that have not been adequately controlled, that still can develop into problems of such magnitude that everyone's quality of life will suffer. Although written thirty years ago, just about every problem he describes will be immediately recognizable by today's readers, problems that still must be solved, and vigilance never slackened. And for this reason, this book should be read and its warnings fully digested.

http://www.amazon.com/End-Dream-Phillip-Wylie/dp/0879979003

;)

will see if my library has this.

I was just trying to treat the title of the book as it would appear if it were an annotation to a bibliography. (Back in school after almost 10 years, so trying to use what I'm being taught) My thanks to DeSwiss to for posting a summary of the book for me. Almost 40 years old, but it certainly is still worth a read.

Couldn't possibly be all of that oil that erupted from the seafloor.

I'm sure this kinda thing happens all the time. In fact, absent that oil gusher, it would've been worse.

The usual causes are algae blooms (with analyses of bloom-related fish kills going back to 1853), and Mississippi river-bottom agricultural run-off from Minnesota to Louisiana. This could be oil related, but it could also not be oil related.

i'm not saying that evil minded racist bigots would kill fish to make obama look bad or whatever the hell nungesser thinks he's doing but yeah i guess maybe i am

i will believe nothing w.out federal confirmation

to believe plaquemines parish is to believe the news straight from the klan, no thanks, i will check around and see what i hear but for now i'll retain my skepticism

who am i gonna believe? the internet or my own lying eyes? racist billy nungesser or my own lying eyes?

i guess i'll believe my own lying eyes because the gulf still appears to be there from where i'm standing...

One thing for sure, you won't find me eating any of it.

;

The amount of creatures killed by the oil spill has been surprisingly less than expected. This was caused by the nature of the spill, far offshore, and the dispersion used to make it turn into small droplets has been quite effective, allowing a lot of the oil to be consumed by bacteria. The bird deaths are also a lot less than in the Exxon Valdez case, some of it because the oil did not reach the surface, some of it because the summer temperature allowed the birds to survive even when oiled, and also because the government responded with a very effective effort to clean the birds. The same applies to the other creatures, which have done very well. This was reported in the NY Times this morning.

FUCK YOU BP!!!

:dem: :kick: & recommend!!

:(

In the Mississippi however...

to consume.

Horrible...beyond words!

:mad:

have we done? How does that get cleaned up?

A devil's bargain, I'll admit.

Not only do they want oil drilling now, they were begging for it right in the middle of the worst environmental disaster of our nations history. Right during the time when there was active discussion that the leak had the possibility of not being able to be stopped.... at all..... for years to come. At that point it was pretty obvious to me that there would be no convincing them....ever.

If I can make an analogy (not that one is even needed), but if you playing with matches in your house while people tell you over and over again that you will burn your house down if you keep it up, you are a fool. If you set fire to your house as a result, but then sit in the middle of your burning house, insisting that you want to keep playing with matches, you demonstrate a very scary and very dangerous way of thinking. There is clearly no way to relate to you at that point.

Lighten up, Beavis, and stop painting everyone who lives here with the same brush. If you had a brain you would know that calling people "hopelessly ignorant" is about as dumb as one can get. If you were convinced of peoples' ignorance because, in the middle of a crisis, they did not agree with you that the leak would not be stopped at all says it all.
Simply put, your alarmist fears were unfounded---the leak was stopped and did not spew forever and ever.

So keep your analogies, you have lost me with your bigotry. Here's an analogy: "farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you are a thousand miles from the cornfield."

Morons are everywhere, but identifying everyone as the same instead of recognizing the diversity of people is evil.

According to you, what "says it all" is that they did not agree with the scientists and engineers that raised the concern that the leak would not be stopped for years. Therefore, since the residents knew better than the scientists and enineers that eventually that the leak would be stopped, it justifies their crying out to keep drilling right in the middle of our country's worst environmental disaster, one which happens to be right in their back yard?

Maybe it was wrong of me to characterize EVERYBODY in the same "ignorant" group, but I must say that after reading your argument, YOU definitely fall into the "ignorant" group. Is that any better? :)

So, let me update my "burning house" analogy. You would be the guy who is in the middle of the burning house and fearing for your life, thinking that you will die any second and you just finished making peace with your God and writing your will. Out of the blue, a fire department comes and puts out the fire and your first statement is, "I knew that the fire department would put it out all along. Can somebody pass me some matches?"

I have to admit that my analogy is not perfect because we have fire departments that have put out house fires thousands and thousands of times. The environmental disaster required technology that was never proven, as we saw, they had several fails before a final success. Still, it gets the point across I hope.

There's very little industry down there, and the oil rigs are pretty much the only game in town.

with immediate, pressing issues like "how do I provide for my family?"

If you work on an oil rig, it pays the bills. How would you feel if someone handed you a pink slip and said better get looking...?

I agree that we need to take a closer look @ how we get our oil. I also think we, as a nation, need to work VERY hard VERY fast to get ourselves off our oil addiction. At the same time I also think we shouldnt forget the people who's livlihoods depend on the fossil fuel industry. If you write them off and say they dont matter, you wont get anywhere.

We'll probably never know the full extent of the havoc the oil spill has wreaked on the environment. this is just the beginning.

but a red tide will do this too. The times I have seen where everything comes to the surface like this, you often have a very high BOD spill of some sort (Biochemical Oxygen Demand). Often, the immediate cause is a raw sewage leak. It seems unlikely that oil spilled weeks to months ago would cause this problem alone. Perhaps other factors contributed to a difficult situation. High water temperatures will occasionally cause a a difficult oxygen balance situation to go critical, but usually if you are bringing up shellfish, it is something far bigger than that.

Of course, once you have a sufficient mass of die off, the decomposing bodies will kick BOD through the roof, making the situation massively worse. Perhaps the oil was a significant factor in getting an oxygen crash rolling. I am interested in the scientific results of the investigation.

and have witnessed many red tides, never have I seen that amount of dead fish. I've walked the edges of Gulf, the sound and the bayous during and after red tide never have I seen anything remotely like the above pictures....

Could it have something to do with the oil eating bcteria that depletes the oxygen?

"Camilli also found that oxygen levels near the plume had remained relatively stable. On the bright side, this was good news for local ocean life for a lack of oxygen would create inhospitable dead zones. But it also suggested that bacteria weren’t breaking down the plume as hoped; if they were, you’d expect to see a fall in oxygen
levels."

read more:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/08/24/oil-eating-bacteria-have-started-to-clean-the-deepwater-horizon-spill/

Words. I just don't have them.

Holy....SHIT.

That is so fucking disturbing. I'm just seeing it for the first time now and it's hard to wrap my brain around because those dead fish seem to go on forever.

PB

You know what?

I think there were birds there.

And I think they ate their fill.

And now they're part of that gravel road of dead fish too.

PB

That's true. :(

BP is buying up all the Indy and small water testing labs ..please pass this on to everyone you know
we need help on the gulf..if BP hasn't bought up the labs, the labs have up to tripled the costs of testing the water!

help us please!

http://www.testingthewater.org/

there is no limit to their treachery

disgusting but not surprising :mad:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9128885

Evidence Mounts of BP Spraying Toxic Dispersants

Monday 13 September 2010

<snip>

However, not long after they began working in BP's response effort in June, what they saw disturbed them. "It didn't take long for us to understand that something was very, very wrong about this whole thing," Shirley told Truthout. "So that's when I started keeping a diary of what we experienced and began taking a lot of pictures. We had to speak up about what we know is being done to our Gulf."

Shirley logged what they saw and took hundreds of photos. The Tillmans confirm, both with what they logged in writing as well as in photos, what Truthout has reported before: BP has hired out-of-state contractors to use unregistered boats, usually of the Carolina Skiff variety, to spray toxic Corexit dispersants on oil located by VOO workers.

<snip>

Along with giving a clear description of how the Coast Guard was thus always aware of the findings of the VOO workers, her diary provides, at times, heart-wrenching descriptions of what is happening to the marine life and wildlife of the Gulf of Mexico.

<snip>

The next day, August 6, found her logging more death. "Last night on the news, they reported a fish kill. Before we went to work, I went to the beach by the harbor. The seagulls were everywhere. As for the dead fish, the only ones on the beach, were ones that the tide had left when it went back out. The rest of the 'Fish Kill,' was laying underwater, on the bottom. It was mainly flounder and crab. We only spotted two dead flounder floating that day. I can only imagine how many were on the bottom ... I went back to the beach after work. The tide had gone out and the seagulls were eating all the dead fish that had been exposed. You could still see dead fish underwater, still on the bottom. Dead fish don't float anymore?"


<snip>

The repercussions will go on for years... :(

please go to this web site and read it all..........click on all the links! And pass this info on to all the people you know..we need help on the Gulf getting our waters independently tested!

http://www.testingthewater.org /


http://www.testingthewater.org/content/environmental-and-health-impacts-bp-gulf-oil-spill

Environmental and Health Impacts of the BP Gulf Oil Spill

Plus Necessary Resources for the Healthcare Provider

By Tom Termotto, DCAE

THE COMING OF THE BLACK WAVE


The following article lays bare some of the greatest concerns by those in the field of toxicology. Dr. Shaw offers some invaluable toxicological perspective.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0710/toxicologist-shrimpers-exposed-oilcorexit-mix-suffered-bleeding-rectum/

Dr. Shaw offered a stark analysis of Corexit 9500 in her piece for The New York Times.
“Though all dispersants are potentially dangerous when applied in such volumes, Corexit <9500> is particularly toxic,” she wrote. “It contains petroleum solvents and a chemical that, when ingested, ruptures red blood cells and causes internal bleeding. It is also bioaccumulative, meaning its concentration intensifies as it moves up the food chain.”

Speaking to CNN on Friday, her message was a bit more dire.
“It ruptures red blood cells, causes internal bleeding and liver and kidney damage,” Dr. Shaw said. “This stuff is so toxic — combined, it’s not the oil alone, it’s not the dispersant — the dispersed oil that still contains this stuff, it’s very, very toxic and it goes right through skin.”

Factoid: COREXIT’s interaction with petroleum is particularly troubling in that dispersed oil causes a much higher rate of mortality in fish than either the oil or dispersant alone. As compared with only oil, Corexit-laden oil is four times more lethal; dispersed oil is ten times more deadly than the dispersant alone. (See detailed analysis below)

Radioactive Hydrocarbon Effluent:

Then there is the radioactive component of the hydrocarbon effluent that comes from mantle-generated abiotic oil (See link below) and which irrefutably possesses higher levels of radium isotopes. The deeper the petroleum reserves, the more likely the reservoirs of oil and methane in those geological formations will contain uranium, thorium or radium. Given the elevated levels of radioactivity at the source, the level of radioactivity associated with the hydrocarbon effluent coming out of the well will inevitably be impacted.

http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/global-catastrophe-reaches-epic-proportions/

It is very important to note that the American Petroleum Institute acknowledges the existence of radium in the development of oil and gas prospects. Their website prescribes very specific standard operating procedures when certain levels of radioactivity are measured on site or in the equipment. The seriousness of this matter can pertain to any oil and gas drilling and development operations anywhere in the world.

Radium isotopes have inherent health risks that ought to be identified and properly disseminated. The concerned resident of the Gulf Coast may want to initiate him/herself in the area of health impacts due to long-term exposure to low grade radioactivity. Of course, the seafood, the waters and the beaches all provide different vehicles for such contamination to take place, each with varying consequences.

Isn't that sort of like ebola?

it would presumably come out of the escrow fund but if its nitrate runoff then yes - who would pay ?

:wow:

or do they have a deal with BP to keep running those sappy commercials?

It's amazing to me how this entire incident is suddenly of no interest to the media. Thousands of dead fish don't lie - this area of our country has been decimated.

k and r

in inlets in Pascagoula ,MS. I have pictures and I saw 'people' looking and making notes on it. It stretched from inside a boom at the mouth of the inlet ,to about a quarter mile in. Pogie ,eel,crab and flounder were what I saw.
Since then my computer crashed and was only able to save a few pictures and I can't figure out how to post them here.
This kill wasn't reported,( that I saw).

Sixathome. :hi:

Please continue to post your stories.

but of course you wont find it anywhere...... Besides the DU

It was necessary for them to kill in order to stay intact. How dangerous they are.

There are times when the temperature hits just right to de-oxygenate the water and you'll get a very short term kill-off like this. I hope that's what this is. On the coast they actually watch for it in summer, and have "Jubilee", a huge harvesting of dead, but totally edible fish. Apparently this wasn't expected, which in any event, is spooky.

Facts? Who needs 'em ...

:shrug:

I hope that gets noted too. BP's the worst kind of evil, the kind that closes its eyes to its power and potential for harm and just trucks along hoping the chickens won't come home until the roost has been bled of all it has to offer. That said, I'm a fan of saying "What the hell IS this?" rather than "I'll bet tis is..."

:sarcasm:

I'm just sayin'

without ever touching the water.:(

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

we'll be told that they're safe to eat. :puke:

DEVA STING!!!

well, if wasn't the oil spill or the dispersant, it was the fertilizer run off.

My money is on one of the first two.

This is $$ talking -- not intelligence --

and here's yet one more very CLEAR signal from Nature that we are practicing insane and

suicidal behavior.

Wake up, America!!



Patriarchy --
Organized Patriarchal Religion -
Capitalism -
_____________________

= The Unholy Trinity

Go to visit Chernobyl or the oil fields in Siberia, then return to tell us how communism works better. :-)

Whatever made us think that a small group of powerful CEOs working in secret for the benefit of investors would have the best interest of this nation at heart...

If you want to sell CDs, pizza, or lipstick, use capitalism, but for matters of national security (energy, defense, education, the environment, health), socialism works best.

My friend thought it was a picture of a gravel road, too.

:grr:

I am totally SHOCKED!

you can't dump that much oil and that much dispersant into the system and shrug
and say well they turned it off.

Now that the truth has come out (see .102), nobody will give a sh*t again ...
same as they haven't given a sh*t about any of the previous shallow-water
events or any of the previous & ongoing agricultural-waste events or ...

I want to know if it was the Oil or was it the Corexit

this is a TREMENDOUS LOSS and scary stuff

is what it is.

:cry:

I want to cry. FUCK FUCK FUCK!

nt

http://www.nola.com/weather/index.ssf/2010/09/plaquemines_fish_kill_is_unrel.html

should i believe billy nungesser, professional hater of obama looking to exploit the bp oil spill, or should i believe the louisiana dept. of wildlife & fisheries which says this is NOT related to the bp oil spill and is of a type of fish kills that we have every year this time of year in louisiana?

for some reason i think i'll believe the dept. of wildlife & fisheries...

Department biologists found the fish kill in Bayou Chaland had nothing to do with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Olivia Watkins said.

After the dead fish were found on Friday, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser asked for an investigation, because oil from the BP spill had affected the area. (and because he can't stand being out of the news with his obama hate for five fucking seconds)

Watkins said the area is bounded on one side by a rock dam, with a shallow pass to the Gulf of Mexico on the other.

"When the tide is low, it becomes a pool," she said. "We had a low tide and all the fish got trapped" in water less than 2 feet deep.




Hot water holds less oxygen than cold water, and heat speeds metabolisms so plants and animals need more oxygen. The fish suffocated because the water held too little oxygen to keep them alive, Watkins said.

of course nungesser should have known that this stuff happens every year because, well, because it happens every year but this isn't a man to let facts or decency stand in the way of grabbing a headline

Mother nature has a habit of being a better killer than man in many cases.

Nobody trusts BP but at some point we must accept reality.

but simple searchs on the subject of Lousiana fishkills come up with date precedents well before the current Gulf issue. Aside from that the whole area is subject to nitrate runoff so it would've been easy to determine whether it was oil or nitrate related.

:hi:

BP oil spill is a problem but there are actually much bigger problems due to agrichemical runoff which has been occuring for decades.