Seabird Dieoff In Oregon - No Plankton To Eat, No El Nino To Blame

[hatrack]

NEWPORT, Ore. -- For 25 years now, retired biologist Robert Loeffel has been patrolling a four-mile stretch of beach south of his home in Newport, gathering data on the fish, marine mammals and seabirds that make their homes in the region. On Tuesday, Loeffel was stopped in his tracks by the 67 dead adult common murres he found washed up on the beach, bringing the total for the month of July on just that one small spit of land to 114.

Similar stories of murre die-off have been reported up and down the West Coast, from Northern California to the Canadian border. In Oregon, dead common murres -- the state's most abundant nesting seabird -- have been spotted in Pacific City, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, Langlois and the waters off Depoe Bay, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says, at a rate of about 10 or 15 birds per mile.

The murre, which resembles a penguin, is about 17 inches tall, with a white belly and dark brown coloring on the back and head. The birds weigh about 2.2 pounds when healthy, and their primary food source is herring. But the birds Loeffel saw most certainly were not healthy. "I have not observed anything like this before," he said. "It was out of the blue -- there was no El Nino warning or anything. We are only starting to understand what the breadth of it might be."

Scientists have traced the murre die-off to an absence of plankton in the ocean, due to unusual weather patterns that have surfaced this year.

EDIT

http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050728/NEWS06/507280366

[wli]

1. hello runaway global warming, goodbye life as we know it

c.f. the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

[phantom power]

2. maybe not that bad

Plenty bad enough, regardless.

One thing that's been on my mind is that this cycle of warming followed by glaciation has evidently been going on for a while now, which implies that these sorts of die-offs are also periodic in nature.

I guess it's an open question as to what our CO2 emissions are doing to this process. Are they simply accelerating it, or will the result be something completely new and different?

[wli]

3. okay, if you're not convinced it's so severe, then check out

The Holocene Extinction Event, in particular the part about the "ongoing Holocene extinction event." It's more severe than the Permian-Triassic extinction event in terms of the rapidity of extinction.

[phantom power]

4. Your link does not convince me it is as bad as the Permian event.

As that text points out, the Permian event has been unequaled by any other extinction. 90-95% extinction.

If we interpret recent events as the latest example of a glaciation extinction-wave, then we'd expect something on the order of the Pleistocene extinction. Due to the unique human influence, I think it's hard to predict what the final outcome will be. Quite likely it will be worse than the Pleistocene, but there's a long way from that to something like the Permian extinction.

At any rate, if you are trying to convince me that what's happening is frightening and of historic magnitude, you are preaching to the choir.

[wli]

5. not on all scales, since it's not run its course

However, the rate of extinction is vastly faster. Anyway I won't push things any further.

[RONSTOO]

6. wow how humbling

compared to these massive time periods a human life is less than a nano second. not even a blip ....hmmmmmmm

[hatrack]

7. Tangential, but a useful illustration in terms of understanding time scale

It applies directly to oil depletion rather than biological collapse, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Draw a horizontal line across a sheet of notebook paper and in the middle draw a small bell-shaped curve one inch high and one inch across at the base. That curve represents the 200 years (give or take) which will represent the discovery, growth, peak and drawdown of planetary oil reserves. The vertical axis of the bell curve represents oil production and the horizontal axis represents time.

Now, if you want to reach back into geological time to include the amount of time it took planetary forces to produce the oil reserves, extend the flat line five miles to the left.