Originally published August 7 2005
Scientists fear for the future of Pacific Coast wildlife
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Scientists have found an alarming trend occurring throughout the Pacific Coast region: Fewer and fewer fish are being born, more birds are washing up dead and plankton is decreasing.
Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, very little plankton - the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain.
Few scientists are willing to blame global warming, the theory that carbon dioxide and other manmade emissions are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere and causing a worldwide rise in temperatures.
"There are strange things happening, but we don't really understand how all the pieces fit together," said Jane Lubchenco, a zoologist and climate change expert at Oregon State University.
This much is known: From California to British Columbia, unusual weather patterns have disrupted the marine ecosystem.
That allows colder, nutrient-rich water to well up from the bottom of the sea and feed microscopic plants called phytoplankton.
Phytoplankton are then eaten by zooplankton, tiny marine animals that include shrimp-like crustaceans called krill.
Zooplankton, in turn, are eaten by seabirds and by fish and marine mammals ranging from sardines to whales.
Off Oregon, for example, the waters near the shore are 5 to 7 degrees warmer than normal and have yielded about one-fourth the usual amount of phytoplankton, said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Newport, Ore.
"The bottom has fallen out of the coastal food chain, and there's just not enough food out there," said Julia Parrish, a seabird ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
On the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco, researchers this spring noted a steep decrease in nesting cormorants and a 90 percent drop in Cassin's auklets - the worst in more than 35 years of monitoring.
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