June 18 - 24, 2020
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Free kites for kids on the last day of school, page 4 20
Sheriff ready for Birch Bay Fourth, page 6
Border closure extended to July 21, page 13
PRSRT STD U. S. Postage PAID Permit NO. 87 Blaine, WA 98230
BHS graduates celebrate with parade, ceremony
25 th
Is Whatcom on track for phase 3? With new outbreaks, health officials emphasize mask use and distancing By Oliver Lazenby
(See Phase 3, page 2)
s The community celebrated Blaine High School graduates with a parade on Peace Portal Drive in Blaine on June 12. The parade preceeded an online graduation ceremony. See page 8 for more graduation photos.
Photo by Louise Mugar
50 invasive green crabs caught in Drayton Harbor B y G r a c e M c C a rt h y The first traps this season for the invasive European green crab, detected in Drayton Harbor last August, were set in late May by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). The 150 traps set on May 26 around Drayton Harbor have already caught about 50 green crabs, said Emily Grason, a marine ecologist with Washington Sea Grant marine research program at the University of Washington. “The trapping this year is roughly in line with what I would expect from what we saw from trapping last year,” she said. Washington Sea Grant’s Crab Team started in 2015 after WDFW began monitoring the crabs on inland Washington shores, according to the sea grant website. The green crabs, scientifically known as Carcinus maenas, were detected in Washington and on Vancouver Island
in the late ’90s. Their populations grew on Vancouver Island but disappeared in Washington until they were re-discovered on San Juan Island in 2016. Scientists are concerned that the green crab’s appetite for native species like the Dungeness crab, oysters and clams could harm native ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest if they are not controlled. The northeast corner of Drayton Harbor, where crabs were found last year, was labeled a hotspot after 21 green crabs were caught in the first night of trapping this season, said Chelsey Buffington, the WDFW Drayton Harbor trapping team supervisor. “Our goal is to reduce population numbers to manageable levels,” Buffington said. “We hope to learn more of the biology of [green crabs] and how these management trapping efforts can be utilized in a more productive way to remove as many invasive crabs from the system as
possible.” Drayton Harbor is too premature in the invasion stage to know if the area could eventually be rid of the crabs, Buffington
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(See Crabs page 6)
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Whatcom County entered phase 2 of the state’s Safe Start Covid-19 re-opening plan on June 5, and could be eligible to apply for phase 3 on June 26. Counties must apply to the Washington State Department of Health to move to a more lenient phase, and counties must stay in each phase for a minimum of three weeks while health experts assess the impacts of re-opening. The state department of health assesses phase applications on five metrics, which it says are targets rather than hardline measures. “Where one target is not fully achieved, actions taken with a different target may offset a county’s overall risk,” the state department of health said in a press release. The metrics are: The number of new cases; healthcare system readiness and availability of hospital beds; the number of tests performed, testing capacity, and turnaround time for test results; rapid case and contact investigations; and protection for high risk populations. Number of infections The state health department’s target for new cases is 25 or fewer per 100,000 residents over a 14-day period. For Whatcom County’s population of about 225,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 estimate, that means Whatcom should have less than 56.25 new cases in a 14-day period. For the 14-day period ending June 16, the state department of health reported 46 new confirmed cases in Whatcom County. Twenty-nine of those cases were reported in the last half seven days of the period, representing a slight increase in new cas-
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