Ocean Current Shift Suspected In Massive NW Bird Reproductive Collapse

[hatrack]

Alone in the nest, the starving seabird chick looked a little woozy. Then it collapsed. Hours passed before the desperate mother bird returned, a fish tail sticking out of her beak. Again and again she offered the fresh morsel. But it was too late -- the baby bird was dying. "It's an ugly, gut-wrenching thing to watch," said University of Washington researcher Julia Parrish, who witnessed such a scene repeatedly last summer, hidden amid the cacophony of 6,000 nesting murres on Tatoosh Island off the Olympic Peninsula.

The murres' unusual mass starvation became a clue in a mystery unfolding along the West Coast.

Weather, scientists know, is the key to the puzzle. For some reason, winds and currents crucial to the marine food web just didn't happen on schedule last year. Seabird breeding failures in the summer were preceded by tens of thousands of birds washing up dead on beaches in Washington, Oregon and California. And Washington's largest colony of glaucous-winged gulls also sputtered: Where 8,000 chicks normally fledge, 88 did last year.

"The whole process broke down," Parrish said. "We don't know what happened."

EDIT

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/257515_deadbirds30.html

[phantom power]

1. I just read the rest of the article. I feel sick.

[enough]

2. Agreed.

[mrcheerful]

3. Why? The eco people have been telling us for 30 years that this

was our future, yet what was the majorities response? Yep you got it SUV's and ban smoking while ignoring smoke stacks bealching out tons of green house gases. Guess what? Its only going to get worse since the same companies relocated out of country and are free to dump to their hearts desire in lands with no EPA. Welcome to the real repuke agenda.

[ladjf]

4. The human race isn't nearly as intelligent as it imagines. If fact,

any species that knowingly collapses their environment is both sick and stupid and will soon be dead.

[FormerRepublican]

5. Easter Island on a global scale, anyone?

[Proud2BaLiberalMom]

6. Oh God! This just breaks my heart.....

I love the big gulls in the Pacific Northwest!
They are beautiful and graceful!

My son lives up there and I visit often.
This deeply saddens me.

I saw an article yesterday that mentioned it
might be too late to turn global warming around.
I hope that isn't the case, or we are going to
see much, much more of this.

I wish people would
wake up to what is going on in our environment.
:cry: