Mysterious whale die-off is largest on record

[The Straight Story]

Mysterious whale die-off is largest on record


Mass death among baby right whales has experts scrambling to figure out the puzzle behind the largest great whale die-off on record.

Observers have found 308 dead whales in the waters around Peninsula Valdes along Argentina's Patagonian Coast since 2005. Almost 90 percent of those deaths represent whale calves less than 3 months old, and the calf deaths make up almost a third of all right whale calf sightings in the last five years.

"This is the single largest die-off event in terms of numbers and in relation to population size and geographic range," said Marcela Uhart, a medical veterinarian with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). She represents an associate director in Latin America for the WCS Global Health Program.

Meeting on the mystery

To get to the bottom of the baby-whale mystery, the scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) convened an urgent meeting at a workshop in Puerto Madryn, Argentina, this month.

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/28793/Mysterious_whale_die-off_is_largest_on_record.html

[Submariner]

1. WE can be damn well sure the problem is anthropogenic

It is something our species has done to harm the environment. Probably a pollutant-taint like lead, mercury or PAHs in the whales food supply, or insufficient quality food availability.

I have been a marine fisheries biologist for the last 36 years, and am totally disgusted with the dramatic decline in environmental quality I have seen in a short lifetime.

Your kids, your grandkids, and their kids are really f*cked. And everyone is kidding themselves if they think different.

WE seriously suck as a caring steward of planet earth, we really do. Instead of tackling a concern before it becomes a problem, GREED always wins, and we always wait until it's too late to do much good, except put cosmetics on the environmental problem to try and make ourselves feel better.

It's too bad the Right Whales have to suffer from our negligence. I would much rather see a mass die off of republicans, then the event wouldn't spoil my early morning coffee like this story does.