EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Obama Did It For the Money
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Renowned Scientist Stephen Hawking Joins Academic Boycott of Israel
Popular content
Today's Top News
Seasick: Dead Sea Otters, the Canaries in a Coal Mine of 'Sick Seas'
Changing temperatures increase invasive parasites: marine life, humans at risk
This weekend, marine mammal experts revealed alarming new evidence that seals, otters, and many other marine species around the world are becoming increasingly infected by parasites and other diseases common in goats, cows, cats, and dogs, due to changing water temperatures, dramatic shifts in the ocean ecosystem, and human coastal development among other factors.
(AFP Photo/Joe Raedle)
Dead sea mammals have been washing ashore at alarming rates because of these foreign parasites, which, as scientists state, may become increasingly dangerous for humans. Federal funding for such investigations has recently been cut in the US and Canada.
* * *
Agence France-Presse reports:
When dead sea mammals started washing ashore on Canada's west coast in greater numbers, marine biologist Andrew Trites was distressed to find that domestic animal diseases were killing them.
Around the world seals, otters and other species are increasingly infected by parasites and other diseases long common in goats, cows, cats and dogs, marine mammal experts told a major science conference.
The diseases also increasingly threaten people who use the oceans for recreation, work or a source of seafood, scientists told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held this year in this Western Canadian city.
The symposium "Swimming in Sick Seas" was one of many sessions at this year's AAAS that drew a bleak picture of the state of the world's oceans, which are increasingly acidic, warming in some areas and being inundated with melting ice or other climate change effects. [...]
According to [Andrew Trite, director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit], at the Fisheries Center at University of British Columbia, the bodies washing ashore are a grim signal.
"I see the dead mammals coming ashore as canaries in a coal mine," said Trite.
Parasites, funguses, viruses and bacteria are increasingly passed from land to sea animals because human settlements on coastlines changes water patterns through paving, filling of wetlands that are natural filters, and intensive agriculture run-off, said scientists.
Toxoplasma gondii (sometimes called kitty litter disease), round-worm, single-celled parasites that cause brain swelling and disease that cause cows to abort their fetuses add to the challenges marine animals face from human pollution, Trite said. [...]
Changes in disease and frequency in sea animals "could have unrecognized impacts on humans as well," said Melissa Miller, a veterinarian in California. "We live in the same areas, and harvest and eat many of the same foods."
* * *
The Vancouver Sun reports:
The disturbing discovery comes as federal funding for such investigations is drying up. "Funding in the U.S. and Canada has been cut for all marine mammal surveillance work," [Stephen Raverty, a veterinary pathologist] said.
That could mean a dramatic decline in the recovery of stranded marine mammals and post-mortem examinations, which are funded by Ottawa [...]
"I understand budgets have to be balanced, but it's [important] to make people aware of what's happening and the potential impact on our ability to pursue these investigations."
# # #
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
50 Comments so far
Show AllWhich will it be?
If it doesn't, then all can be conveniently explained by the fact that God works in mysterious ways, oh, and by the by, if you don't believe you will burn in hell for eternity.
SFS syndrome. (Self-fulfilling Suicide)
We can't afford to fund this research because we need every penny to line the pockets of the rich and to fight the Corporate War Against the World.
Other factors? Maybe Fukushima?
All of the factors listed have been continual problems for many years and all are without a doubt causing health problems and deaths in all forms of sea life,,, and,,, also with land animals, birds and inscect life.
Since the 11 months of Fukushima however, death of mammals and fish in the oceans has increased in a dramatic way.
But saying that may turn the comments into a Fukushima thread, so let us not forget that the first issue with our oceans' should be (acidification) of the waters from burning coal and temperature rising from global warming, and again, from burning coal.
And we do not need to burn coal or split atoms to have all of the electrical power we would ever need from clean energy sources.
Note the comment from Peter Karras, includes an email explaining no pressure to withhold information from the lab prof, John J. Kelly, performing the research.
Results are expected "in a few weeks" but it is understandable if it takes longer, they are following the scientific method which takes time.
So what's your solution? 'Their' wars?
There is no outcome outside of whatever fate will deliver. And we are all making that fate with everything we do and every word we write. I think it is the conservatives that you speak about that act as if they were gods and you seem to be tacitly supporting them...
The question is, if nature's laws apply to humans, should liberals stop trying not to act like animals and join the conservative berserkers, realizing that in the end it is useless to go against nature? Have ruling cons rigged the liberal mind with morality to make it more easily exploitable?
Not the polar bears though,,, they don't play with humans.
It's so not reassuring to know, in the wake of Fukushima, that our regulatory agencies, FDA/EPA, are refusing to even test fish from the Gulf of AK. http://www.rense.com/general93/curr.htm
Injested human created, radioative isotopes of poison emitted from nuclear reactors, such as cesium and plutonium, etc, destroy animal's immune systems, among other nasty medical maladies.
Humans are animals too, thought to be the "smartest" specie of animal, but obviously not the most intelligent specie. .
I appreciate Andrew Trite's concern, but (as rodent pointed out in another thread) these poor innocent creatures never signed up to be our warning system. The phrase "canaries in the coal mine" is not only trite, but highly offensive in this context - implying that the lives of otters and seals are expendable, and might be usefully expended if we can heed the warning for us their agonies represent.
It's an evocative metaphor, but it's disturbing to hear the phrase coming from a marine biologist, when an appropriate level of respect for our fellow creatures would make it too ugly to utter.
These mass animal deaths are being reported downwind of Fukushima in the Pacific: Alaska, and the West Coast. Of course, the Gulf is already a death trap due to 4,000 leaking Deepwater Horizons and 29,000 un-inspected abandoned wellhead cap offs, which is why the Corexit soaked Dolphins are washing ashore.
Wayne and others are dead on, imho. Animal immune systems are compromised from fallout and now they are subject to dying of other toxins and parasites that they were able to ward off before Fukushima happened. Added to that the certainty that by now fungus, bacteria, and viral mutations are crossing the ocean killing and sickening everything in it's path. I just picked up a relative from Japan and she said everyone on the plane that was Japanese was hacking and many were wearing dental masks.
We've got enough problems on this planet without radiation for a handicap. 400 other ticking time bombs are screaming along into the night as I type this. How much longer are we going to let this madness go on?
TJ
Radioisotopes from Fukushima's TRIPLE meltdown covered the entire planet. Most were washed into the ocean. The "Tiny levels", you claim hit the ocean, are enough to cause cancer if a life form inhales a radioactive emitter. While the fallout on the West Coast seems to be about half of Guam and Hong Kong in civilian monitored CPM's, from what I've been able to detect, NO AMOUNT of radiation from the Zoo of dangerous particles emitted from a Nuclear Power Plant Meltdown and Explosion is safe.
But the animal photos, sure looks like radiation sickness to me; i.e., a compromised immune system, and reports of lymph nodes shrinking are consistent with radiation sickness in mammals. Humans living near nuke plants have been known to have kidneys shrivel up and disappear, and have a 85 percent higher incidence of lung cancer, IIRC. Here's the enews report:
http://enenews.com/diseased-seals-abnormal-brain-growths-undersized-lymp...
If profits can not be made then these things have no value.
Should they become extinct then some clever entrepenuer might see a profit making opportunity and create a means wherein a simulated creature could be recreated for a fee.
Just as an example see how Nature provides FOR FREE clean drinking water. Clean drinking water does not create jobs or allow for profit thus is of no value. If the water is polluted first and then cleaned jobs are created and profits made.
All hail the free market.
Privatize the seals and the otters and the fish and the birds and the bees!!
Yes this all sounds absurd but this is where we are today with those economists that have bought into the stuff peddled by Ludwig Von Mises and his followers.
Hi ~Thomas Jefferson~, that information about most of the Japanese pasengers appearing to be ill is troubling... I fear we wil see a lot of dead from Fukushima before it's over... Thank goodness Tepco officials say they plan to have that disaster under control by 2051. Can hardly wait.
Last week there were also a lot of dead dolphins washing ashore along the Atlantic coast and many sick ones beaching themselves, far more than is considered to be "normal".
Like events with dolphins and pilot whales have been occurring in Australia/New Zealand. The dolphins act as if to escape the poisonous water, they probably are... It's pitiful... I've never been able to understand how a person can kill a dolphin or a whale, they are so close to being human, and in so many ways they sometimes seem to be more "human" than we humans are.
I once learned something which I believ is a valuable lesson about fish, and yet I still enjoy trout fishing though, but not as much as I once did... We release most though and only eat a few. We mostly just enjoyu the scenery and peace and quiet.
Our daughter had a large 55 gallon fresh water fish aquarium with about 14 fish... There were two of the small, pink eyed, albino cat fish, who usually stayed pretty close to one another as they ran alng the deep gravel cleaning up any messes.
One Birthday we gave Helen a larger tank, a 70 gallon job, and so we moved her fish into it two at a time, so as to not cause too many fish to be put in the new tank's water all at once.
One of the first two fish to be moved was one of the albino cat fish. About 8 days later we moved the second catfish... It was amazing.. We all know fish have no brains to speak of, no feelings or emotions. They are just cold blooded animals.
Well, those two fish who had been together for about 5 years, raced right at one another and nuzzeled each other for hours, like two lovers kissing at a drve-in theatre.
They were inseperable for months after that reunion. When one slept on the bottom, the other would be right there with it's little square head lying over the other's back. About a year later one died, it was floating on top of the water one morning.. Two days later the other one died... They were the only ones to die that year. It was really sad... We burined them in the garden, right next to each other... Silly isn't it?
Well anyway; I leanred that fish do have feelings and at least some display that sometimes elusive emotion,,, we humans call "love".
~Kem~ .
As far as marine mammals, they too are complicated and wonderful. Once we were on a whale watch boat with a marine mammal rescue crew. A humpbacked whale came over to the boat, lifted her huge head out of the water and looked at us for a long time. I could feel what I can only call powerful waves of love coming off that whale. My whole body felt it and I was astonished. The crew told me that they had untangled her from a net a few years ago, saving her life. The whale comes to visit them year after year.
It is so sad that the human race, and in particular the fossil fuel and military sectors, are depriving us of our relationship with other creatures. All creatures and plants contribute to the web of life, whether or not we have the "sensors" to feel their internal lives. No amount of money is worth leaving future generations with only a mythology of the wonders that once existed.
There are many documented accounts of porpoise svaing people who's boat had sunk in a storm of some such type of a bad day... The porpoise kept them from drownng and pushed or tugged them to shore.... Some accounts of porpoise keeping shaks away from swimmers... Human? Maybe, maybe better?
I believe your bug story. We once had a pet praying mantis for a few months.. It stayed in the house all of the time and would often come and sit on my sholder... I'd put it out on the back patio deck and it would soon come back in the house... They do eat crickets though.
Animals do communicate with one another, ants, bees, birds, whales, penguins, dogs, etc. etc.. A great film is National Geographics award winning film " The March Of The Penguins".. Fascinating.
Our daughter once had a wonderful pet cat, "Chuka". One cold rainy night she didn't come in at 8pm as was normal after an hour of outside potty work. About 10 pm she was scratching and yowling at our front door, she had never come to the front door.
I opened the door and there was a big white cat we had never before seen. It ran out to the street and yowled. I shut the door and went back to my study.
The strange cat returned two more times doing the same thing... We finally went out to the street and there was Chuka lying in the gutter, all beat up and sopping wet. She'd had been hit by a vehicle and was seriously injured. We never saw that white cat again and had never seen it before that night. The vet fixed Chuka up and she lived a long happpy life... She was a "people" cat, really a neat loving cat.