Since the beginning of April, Julia Parker has seen 216 sick pelagic birds come into the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network. There were only four in February, and three in March. Of those 216, mostly loons, grebes, and murres, only 65 survived long enough to be transferred to the International Bird Rescue center in San Pedro. Many more have been found dead on nearby beaches.
Researchers have more than once warned of “dead zones” and toxic algal blooms as a consequence of changing climatic conditions. Ocean temperatures are increasing, and this in turn encourages a new set of biochemical processes.
Professor Hollibaugh and a colleague report in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that over the course of eight summers they measured peaks of nitrite, alongside massive increases in the numbers of the microorganisms that produce it, in coastal waters off Georgia.
The amphipods were contaminated with PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls — toxic chemicals used for decades in industry, as well as other industrial pollutants known as persistent organic pollutants.
“Every sample we had,” Jamieson says, “had contaminants in it at very high or extraordinarily high levels.”
The team of five exhausted fishermen have just return from a three-day tiring journey of the Arabian Sea. After anchoring their wobbly 30-foot boat at the fishing jetty of Karachi’s historical fishing settlement, Ibrahim Hyderi, they started unloading… Read More ›
Some parts of Southern California have already had record rainfalls this wet season, thanks to storms that moved through in mid-September. The state desperately needs the rain, but not the marine debris that comes with it. Major rainstorms inevitably lead… Read More ›
“When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters,” once a tagline of the American Lung Association, today it might easily describe what is happening in many areas of the ocean. Hypoxia, the lack of oxygen in our estuaries, coastal and deep… Read More ›
Santa Cruz >> Nutrient loading in the ground and surface waters has long been a problem in the Monterey Bay, which is surrounded by major agricultural land and urban areas. Chemical fertilizers spill into streams and the sea, threatening marine… Read More ›
