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Animals delirious, disoriented up and down West Coast —
Displaying ‘unprecedented’ behaviors — Experts “know something isn’t right” —
Gov’t: “Waters offshore so lacking in things like anchovies, sardines and squid”
Published: September 4th, 2015 at 7:42 pm ET
By ENENewsKION, Aug 13, 2015: “I noticed them out here. And I looked over here and seen all kinds of dead little fish over there,” said fisherman Tucker Bergerson. Bergerson fishes in the Monterey Bay every day. He like others who make a living out in the open waters, know something isn’t right in the bay.
KION, Aug 13, 2015: [Kamyar Shareghi, tour guide:] “There have been fish dying, there have been a bunch of birds dead in the water as well. Some of the marine mammals like the sea lions, seals and the otters, they’ll have seizures and they will be delirious like dementia.”
NOAA, Aug 20, 2015: a common murre die-off was reported… along the Alaska Peninsula… unusual numbers in nearshore areas with many appearing weak and approachable by skiff. We do not know whether the bird mortalities were related to whatever killed the whales.
KING 5 News, Aug 21, 2015: In addition to whales, Alaska’s seen dead walruses and a lot of dead or disoriented birds…
Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium – Local Environmental Observer, Aug 3, 2015: Moose behavior – Found a dead moose in the lake… [others] said that the moose the day before was swimming in circles and struggling… We really don’t know why this moose was in distress or what sickness it may have. I’ve been talking to residents and other people they think it maybe a parasite that went to the brain… LEO Comment: Tina Tinker writes, “I contacted [Alaska Dept of Fish & Game who] seems to think that the moose has pink eye or conjunctivitis…
Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium – Local Environmental Observer: Unusual sea lion behavior – This sea lion was seen for over an hour floating along the shore and holding one front and one back flipper in the air. As long as we watched, it never dropped the flippers, although they moved a bit. We wondered if they were injured or paralyzed. There was no evidence that we could see of trauma or an injury and he (?) came quite close to us and did not seem concerned with our presence, or passing ATVs… Later in the evening we looked out again and he was gone. We wonder what would explain this behavior, if he was sick or injured. We also wonder if this behavior has implications for fish and other wildlife and for peoples health.
Monterey Herald, Aug 12, 2015: Monterey’s ‘Minnie the Minke’ whale was not a baby, may have suffered poisoning… “It was disoriented, and when they have domoic acid poisoning, they act like that,” said Kate Spencer, a captain… [The whale] repeatedly turning from side to side, and appeared to be disoriented throughout the three-hour rescue. “It is possible it suffered from poisoning, but only chemical tests could decipher that,” she said… Another possible reason the whale swam to the harbor — an occurrence authorities called unprecedented — was because it was searching for food.
San Francisco Chronicle, Aug 19, 2015: Entangled whales worry fishermen, environmentalists, officials –Record numbers of whales are showing up along the California coastline with fishing line tangled around their blubbery bodies, in a trend that’s bedeviled fishermen, environmentalists and state regulators alike… The surge in whale entanglements evidently began in 2014, when 30 whales were found entangled on the West Coast…
Nate Mantua, a Santa Cruz-based research scientist for the NOAA… blames changes in the ocean temperature… Mantua said the [temperatures are] leading the “forage fish” that whales eat to seek refuge in a narrow band of cool water by the shoreline… “Part of that is because the water (farther) offshore has been so lacking in things like anchovies, sardines and squid“…
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