WORST DIE-OFF IN HISTORY, PACIFIC COAST KNEE DEEP IN DEAD ANIMALS

Wildlife officials are continuing to investigate why so many are dying this year, starting with the attempt to document the scale of the die-off.
"If we don't record they're dying, it goes unnoticed," Irons said.

AND HOW MANY WILL CARE?
"IT'S JUST BIRDS"...FISH, WHALES, TURTLES, SHELLFISH, PLANKTON, EVERYTHING IN THE OCEAN DYING.

Alaska Journal of Commerce, Jan 7, 2016:

Anyone who has walked Homer’s beaches the past few weeks has seen a horrid event.
Every few yards… dead birds… 

In the summer of 2015, the murres also suffered a complete colony collapse and failed to breed… “We had complete reproductive failure, which is really rare for murres,” said Heather Renner, a bird biologist…

8,000 dead murres on a 1-mile stretch of beach in Whittier.
“That number is totally off the charts,” Renner said. “This whole region is having through-the-roof numbers in the last couple of days.”…

In an interview in July, [Julia Parrish, a fisheries professor at the University of Washington] said a big die off would be like one seen at Kayak Island near Prince William Sound, with 1,000 dead birds per kilometer.

“That’s knee deep in birds,” she said then… other species like auklets and guillemots have been found dead… Murres also have been dying in above-average numbers in areas of the Washington and Oregon coast…

“These are scrappy birds. They’re used to it.
Something else is going on… They’re telling us something is going on in the marine ecosystem,” she said.

ANOTHER NEWS ARTICLE HAS A VIDEO AND FURTHER INFO ON THE BIRD DEATHS <HERE>
"The length of time we've been seeing dead birds, and the geographic scope, is much greater than before in other die-off events," said Kathy Kuletz, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We're looking at many times that. So possibly a good chunk of the population."

FROM THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

"Seabird biologists say seabirds are indicators of the health of the ecosystem.
Now they're dying, and that is telling us something," he said.

Wildlife officials say it's not yet known why the birds are starving.
One possible explanation is that the birds' usual food supply - the schools of herring and other small fish usually found near the coast - have not materialised AGAIN this year."

IT ISN'T JUST MURRES...AUKLETS TO GULLS, EVEN GEESE THAT NEST, BREED OR LIVE NEAR THE PACIFIC COAST HAVE DIES IN GREAT NUMBERS. SWANS, PELICANS, EVERYTHING THAT FLIES OVER OR DIVES INTO THE PACIFIC.

FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

"On some beaches the Cassin's auklet death toll was a hundred times greater than any bird die-off ever tallied there, and six times worse per kilometer than the body count recorded after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. On a single stretch of beach on Christmas Eve in Oregon, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Mike Szumski collected 250 carcasses—and left nearly as many behind.

"You'd find them piled up in clusters on the wrack line, where the tide leaves sea grasses and debris," Szumski said. "Most were in these states of decay, but every now and then we'd see tracks coming out of the water and find a bird that was just barely clinging to life. They were just skin and bones."


From Starfish To Whales: Unprecedented Die-Offs

INDIA HAS BEEN SEEING SIMILAR DEATHS IN VARIOUS SPECIES FOR 4 YEARS NOW...
M. Ravi Kumar, the top government official in the port town, told the Associated Press that the    whales began washing up on beaches on Monday evening, and that while 36 of the large mammals had been rescued and pushed back out to sea, they appeared disoriented and kept coming back.

EVEN MAINSTREAM MEDIA PICKED UP THE WHALE DEATHS IN INDIA, EVEN THOUGH AMERICA HAS SEEN AS MANY, IF NOT MORE, FROM HAWAII TO ALASKA, ALL ALONG THE WEST COAST...ACTUALLY, BOTH COASTS AS THE ATLANTIC AND GULF OF MEXICO BEGAN REPORTING VERY LARGE NUMBERS OF DEAD AND DYING DOLPHINS, WHALES, SEA TURTLES, SEA BIRDS, CRUSTACEANS, AND MANY, MANY SPECIES OF FISH.

" These are two isolated incidents, but they’re not unlike others that have been reported in the past year — unexplained die-offs, abnormally large strandings, a worldwide coral bleaching bigger than almost anything else on record. Around the world, animal populations are vulnerable. Huge groups might be killed in a matter of days or weeks. In Kazakhstan in May of last year, more half of the world’s entire population of saiga antelope vanished in less than a month."
BLAMING 'CLIMATE CHANGE' OR EL NINO DOESN'T CHANGE RADIAION READINGS IN AND AROUND THE PACIFIC.

SINCE THESE MASS DIE-OFFS ARE ONGOING FOR ALMOST 5 YEARS AND ARE HAPPENING FROM THE ARCTIC TO THE ANTARCTIC, FROM ONE SIDE OF THE PACIFIC TO THE OTHER MEANS IT'S HAPPENING IN BOTH COLD AND WAR WATERS, IN WATERS UNAFFECTED BY EL NINO, SUCH AS IN AUSTRALIA'S WATERS, INDIA'S WATERS, RUSSIA'S COASTAL WATERS, UP NEAR THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, ETC.

THE DEATHS ARE OCCURRING IN HUNDREDS OF SPECIES, THOSE WHICH LOVE WARM WATER AND COLD, THOSE WHICH HAVE SURVIVED EL NINOS AND NAVY SONAR AND ALGAE BLOOMS AND CHEMICAL POLLUTANTS...BUT THEY CAN'T LIVE IN RADIOACTIVE WATER 24 HOURS A DAY, EVERY DAY.

THE FOOD CHAIN HAS DIED OFF.
TFROM THE PLANKTON TO THE BIG FISH THESE SPECIES LIVE ON ALL HAVE SEEN MASS DEATHS.

AND NOW, THE DEATHS ARE MOVING INLAND...DUCKS, RIVERS OF DEAD FISH, DIE-OFFS IN THE GREAT LAKES HERE, A SPIKE IN HUMAN BIRTH DEFECTS.

NO KNOWN SUBSTANCE EXCEPT RADIATION COULD KILL SO MANY SPECIES AT ONE TIME IN SUCH A VAST EXPANSE OF OCEAN WATERS.
IN ALL THOSE PLACES THERE IS ONE COMMON DENOMINATOR...HIGHER RADIATION LEVELS AS FUKUSHIMA KEEPS POURING WASTE INTO THE SEA AND ATMOSPHERE.

READ THE "STUDIES"...WHATEVER IS KILLING THESE SPECIES HAS ALSO AFFECTED SPECIES REPRODUCTIVE ABILITY.
THEY AREN'T PRODUCING YOUNG AS THEY ONCE DID.
THE TEA ROOM SHOWED THE STUDY FROM JAPAN ABOUT REPRODUCTION FALLING TO ALL-TIME LOWS.
THAT, TOO, SCREAMS "IT'S RADIATION, IDIOTS!"

 

THE DEAD INCREASE.          
A study published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in fact, showed that mass die-offs of birds, fish, and marine invertebrates are growing increasingly frequent and severe, hiking at a rate of approximately one major mortality event per year...

"Incidents like these are often mysteries to be unraveled, with scientists sorting through various explanations—hunger, habitat loss, disease, disorientation—for the mass deaths," Sarah Kaplan wrote at the Washington Post on Wednesday.

 

 "But in a swath of recent cases, many of the die-offs boil down to a common problem: the animals' environments are changing, and they’re struggling to keep up."

 

THE SEALS ARE STILL DYING.
MOTHERS LEAVE THEIR YOUNG TO BRIEFLY GO FEED AT SEA AND NEVER RETURN.

PHOTOS OF MOTHERS WITH YOUNG SHOW BOTH THE ADULT AND THE PUP  STARVING, COMPLETELY EMACIATED, COVERED IN LESIONS.

Dr. Shawn Johnson, director of veterinary science at the Marine Mammal Center: “[The seals] were basically just skin and bones. Their liver, their pancreas, their intestines were basically shut down. And they were eating themselves from the inside to stay alive by the time we saw them… If it continues, if this is the new normal, the sea lion population and the fur seal population in California are going to have severe drops in their overall population.”

Laguna Beach Independent, Dec 18, 2015: With the lowest body weights ever documented, California sea lion pups are not only starving from lack of food, they’re infested with parasites and immune to antibiotics, said [Keith Matassa] the director of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center… A record number of emaciated and dying sea lion and seal pups is expected along local shores this winter…
Last year, 3,500 sea lions and seals were rescued by various California marine rehab facilities. This year, the stranded pinnipeds are expected to hit 4,000…

The animals are riddled with intestine-perforating parasites, known as thorny-head hookworms. “We’re seeing such a high level of parasites now, it’s not normal,” said Matassa… Antibiotics for infections are proving ineffective…

Conditions have “not gotten much better over the past couple of years,” [Sharon Melin, NOAA wildlife biologist] said… The food web, said Melin, “has been out of whack now for quite some time.”… The fact that northern pup seals are following suit signifies the domino effect of a distressed environment, she said… the California sea lion population tops out at 300,000… she predicts a drastic decline to 100,000 due to low food availability… “There’s so many stressors on the ocean right now,” Matassa said.

Dr Terry Gosliner, senior curator of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Sciences: “We are entering a really interesting period where the observations we make don’t have a precedent… It could take decades for these ecosystems to stabilize again.”


AND ACROSS THE PACIFIC, THE DEATHS THERE ADD UP:

Around a hundred whales have been washed ashore near the Tiruchendur beach in this district early today while 250 of the same species have been stranded in shallow waters, officials said.Carcasses of 30 baleen whales were also found washed ashore near the beach. 

According to officials, the fishermen dragged many of the beached whales back into the sea but they kept returning to the shores near Manapadu and Kallamozhi villages.

WHY GO BACK INTO THAT WATER?
THEY HAVE NO PLACE TO RUN.

CORAL REEFS DYING.  

Bad weather and warm waters are also thought to be the culprit behind the global coral bleaching event that scientists say is going on right now. Though coral looks like simply a colorful rock, it actually comprises many millions of tiny tentacled creatures living in a symbiotic relationship with brightly-colored algae, which give the corals both their color and their nutrients.

This is a bleaching, and the world’s reefs are in the midst of only the third global bleaching event in recorded history.

SPREADING, EVER SPREADING!  

“This is really not biologically normal,” Richard A. Kock, of the Royal Veterinary College in London, told the New York Times last year. “I’ve worked in wildlife disease all my life, and I thought I’d seen some pretty grim things. But this takes the biscuit.”

Back in the U.S., the Los Angeles Times reported last August that the drought that has plagued western states for four years was causing a major die-off of vital fish populations like salmon, steelhead and the endangered delta smelt. Water levels were too low, and what’s more, water temperatures were too warm for fish and their offspring to survive.

The smelt numbers had diminished to “the last of the last,” UC Davis professor emeritus Peter Moyle, a leading authority on California’s native fish, told the LA Times. “It would be a major extinction event.”

BEES, INSECTS...MUTANTS AND DEATHS ACROSS THE GLOBE. 

And last July, researchers reported that global warming is working to “crush bumblebees in a kind of climate vice,” according to Nature.

“Bumblebee species across Europe and North America are declining at continental scales,” Jeremy Kerr, a biodiversity researcher at the University of Ottawa in Canada, told the scientific journal. “Our data suggest that climate change plays a leading, or perhaps the leading, role in this trend.”

It’s not only animals that are at risk. Researchers believe that the western drought killed 12 million trees in California’s forests, and estimated 58 million are so dry they’ve reached the brink of death, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

A study released that last month predicted that climate change would cause massive die-offs of the American southwest’s coniferous trees, like junipers and pinon pines, within the next half century.

Not every die-off of the past year can be blamed on climate change. Two “unusual mortality events” involving endangered Guadelupe fur seals — which were being stranded at eight times the normal rate on California’s central coast — and large whales in Alaska — where scientists have found the decomposing carcasses of more than 30 unlucky animals — have been loosely linked to that weird warm “blob” out in the Pacific. And the causes of other incidents — the recent whale stranding in India, for example — remain undetermined.

Typically mass strandings are linked to toxic algae blooms, disease and trauma, and changes to the animals’ habitat, marine mammal expert Darlene Ketten told Scientific American.

But a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year suggests that the number of animal die-offs has gotten worse in recent years.

And the researchers weren’t talking about small scale problems like the murres deaths or even the saiga die-offs either.

They looked at more than 700 mass mortality events in which either 90 percent of the species was wiped out, more than a billion individuals were killed or 700 million tons (nearly 2,000 Empire State Buildings) worth of biomatter was destroyed.

What they found was not heartening. Mass Mortality Events (MMEs) are “rarely placed in a broader context,” the study’s authors reported. But they seem to be happening at an increased rate for birds, marine invertebrates and fish. 

These die-offs matter not just because of the inherent value of the creatures involved, the authors said, but because whole ecosystems may depend on that species to survive.

MMEs, they wrote, “can reshape the ecological and evolutionary trajectories of life on Earth.”

AND YET THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY HAS DONE NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL TO STOP THE NIGHTMARE OF FUKUSHIMA.  

WHEN THE "EXPERTS" START DROPPING DEAD, WHAT WILL "STUDIES" REVEAL THEN?

MAYBE THE TRUTH, AT LAST?

OTHER EXPERTS HAVE FOR YEARS NOW BEEN TELLING US THAT FUKUSHIMA IS AN EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT...IT IS THAT BAD...IT IS NOT GETTING BETTER, ONLY WORSE.  

THEY HAVE NOT LEARNED, SO WE CAN BUT WATCH AS LIFE PERISHES.