Office by Alex Penny
A dump of my mind; ideas, pictures, words, and the undecided. You can expect a mess of different things.
northern saw-whet owl with two eye colors
(photo by megan lorenz)
Peru Says 5,000 Birds And Nearly 900 Dolphins Dead, Could Be Due To Climate Change
The Peruvian government said Wednesday that 5,000 birds, mostly pelicans, and nearly 900 dolphins have died off the country’s northern coast, possibly due to rising temperatures in Pacific waters.
The country’s northern beaches were earlier this week declared off-limits as scientists scrambled to pin down what was causing such a massive toll, with non-government organizations blaming oil exploration work.
But Peru’s deputy environment minister Gabriel Quijandria, disputed this and said warming waters, which disturbs species’ food supplies, was a possible cause.
He said that although tests conducted on 877 dolphins found dead on the coast had not been completed, contamination from heavy metals or the presence of bacterial infections was not responsible.
It is probable that the phenomenon “will extend to other coastal areas,” Quijandria said, noting that there could be a resulting increase in the numbers of birds and other sea life killed.
The South American nation’s health ministry declared an alert at the weekend, urging the public to stay away from the beaches around Lima and on the northern coast until the cause of death of marine life is known.
One non-government conservation organization, known as ORCA, has blamed the dolphin deaths on oil exploration activities in the area, which it claims produces noises which are having an acoustic impact on the mammals.
A representative from the group, Carlos Yaipen, said Wednesday it had tested 30 dead specimens and found broken ears and damaged organs consistent with the victims suffering “the bends,” also known as decompression sickness.
Weather expert Abraham Levy told AFP on Tuesday that the warming of the Pacific waters due to El Nino could be to blame.
(via anarcho-queer)
Dead Birds Join Dolphins on Peruvian Beach
The mysterious maritime macabre continues in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of Peru. First, hundreds of dolphins began washing up on the beaches in the state of Lambayeque. Now, in the same area, hundreds of seabirds are joining the marine massacre.
nrdc:
Gulf Dolphin Die-Off Is Unprecedented
What is happening to the dolphins? The rosy predictions that some have made since the Deepwater Horizon was plugged, in July 2010, have been belied by the sickening, relentless washing up of dead bottlenose dolphins on the beaches of the Northern Gulf.
With the spill’s second anniversary just around the corner, NRDC reviewed past dolphin strandings in the Gulf and compared them to the present one. Our conclusion is that the current die-off is simply unprecedented:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began to systematically investigate “unusual mortality events” (UMEs) of marine mammals twenty years ago, after a number of highly publicized mass strandings. Since then, the Gulf’s bottlenose dolphins have gone through 11 high mortality events aside from the present ones—accounting for one-fifth of all the UMEs that NOAA has declared for marine mammals nationwide. The dolphins’ involvement in so many of these events suggests how vulnerable they are to environmental disturbance, and perhaps how likely, as coastal mammals, they are to strand. But never have the dolphins experienced a die-off that has lasted as long, involved as many animals, or afflicted as many calves.
ゴロゴロいってる #cat #猫 (Taken with instagram)
(via leetakeuchi)
