Why West Coast Sea Life Is So Wacky Right Now

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http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/why-west-coast-sea-life-is-so-wacky-right-now/283003/



It has been an exceptionally good year for whale watching in California. In past seasons, sightseers off Monterey typically spotted two or three humpbacks on a single afternoon at sea. This past September, October, November, and December, whale watchers were treated to more than 50 at a time. Dozens of killer whales frolicked in the same area throughout the fall. In December, a total of 364 gray whales were counted migrating south past Palos Verdes—double the 182 spotted there in December 2012.

California has witnessed a veritable explosion of sea life over the past six months, and whales aren't the only ones making waves. Environmental scientists said in December that they were seeing "unprecedented" numbers of brown pelicans in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's been "a months-long carnival of lunging humpback whales, bird clouds, dolphin wizardry, frenzied sea lions, playful killer whales and even visits from marine royalty — blue whales," wrote the Santa Cruz Sentinel. To borrow a line from Melville: Surely all this is not without meaning.

And meaning there is in this tale of Pacific ecology and American history. The increased activity of marine megafauna is being attributed to an anchovy boom: The tiny fish have crowded the coast, densely packed, like so many slivers of silver in schools miles across and fathoms deep, sparking an ongoing feeding frenzy. The flip side of the great anchovy upwelling, though, is the great sardine crash of 2013, which scientists expect to reverberate throughout the ecosystem for decades to come. Cetaceans, sea lions, and pelicans in Monterey may be feasting on anchovies now, but they'll eventually be hurt by sardine scarcity, according to some biologists. An epidemic of sick sea lion pups in Southern California is already being blamed on the decline of sardines.

The last time Pacific sardines declined this steeply was around 1950, shortly after John Steinbeck so exquisitely captured the heyday of the sardine canning industry in his novel Cannery Row.