This is sobering if there is something to it:
L.A. Times: Alarming West Coast sardine crash likely radiating through ecosystem — Experts warn marine mammals and seabirds are starving, may suffer for years to come — Boats return without a single fish — Monterey Bay: Hard to resist idea that humpback whales are trying to tell us something
Los Angeles Times, Jan. 5, 2014:
- West Coast sardine crash could radiate throughout ecosystem
- [T]he biggest sardine crash in generations
- [S]cientists say the effects are probably radiating throughout the ecosystem, starving brown pelicans, sea lions and other predators
- [E]xperts warn the West Coast’s marine mammals, seabirds and fishermen could suffer for years
- The reason for the drop is unclear
- [T]he decline is the steepest since the collapse of the sardine fishery in the mid-20th century
- [T]heir numbers are projected to keep sliding
- [T]he crash is raising alarm
- [T]here is evidence some ocean predators are starving without sardines
- Scarcity of prey is the leading theory behind the 1,600 malnourished sea lion pups that washed up along beaches from Santa Barbara to San Diego in early 2013, said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service
- Biologists also suspect the drop is hurting brown pelicans [which] have shown signs of starvation and have largely failed to breed or rear chicks there since 2010
- Normally, pelicans and sea lions would adapt by instead gobbling up anchovies [...] aside from an unusual boom in Monterey Bay, anchovy numbers are depressed too
The massive sea death, the 2nd trump?
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