CA Ocean Census 2nd Year Of Collapsing Plankton, Krill, Bird Populations

[hatrack]

This is the time of the year when the ocean off the California coast should be at its most lush, teeming with vast schools of krill to feed whales and salmon as well as plenty of baby rockfish for seabirds, seals and fishermen's nets. But based on new counts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, federal researchers are reporting an odd summer and a scarcity of some sea life from San Diego to Newport, Ore., for the second year in a row. And some scientists wonder if the warming of the world's oceans and atmosphere is playing a part. "The upwelling that we normally expect in the springtime hasn't kicked in,'' said Frank Schwing, a NOAA oceanographer in Pacific Grove. "We think there might be real consequences for the seabirds, fish and mammals.''

On the Farallon Islands, krill-eating Cassin's auklets are producing only a few chicks this year. Common murres, although plentiful in numbers, for the most part can't find the rockfish to keep their young alive. Many scientists believe that the years of 2005 and 2006 should have been cold ones in the California Current, the band of coastal water from Baja California to British Columbia, according to calculations of naturally alternating cold and warm periods over the past millennia.

By now, the offshore waters should be roiling with plankton and the shrimp-like krill, the foundation of the ocean's food chain. Instead, the researchers say, the organisms appear to be in short supply. Oceanographers are scratching their heads over the brand-new data. While they believe that global warming may be throwing off natural climate regimes, they don't know how the warming might eventually affect the California Current. "Is it just natural variability of the climate or is it part of the brave new world that we associate with global climate change?'' Schwing said.

The white-bellied gray Cassin's auklets signal potential disaster for some species of seabirds, an early indicator of the ocean's health. The birds are abandoning their Farallon nests, a sign that they can't find enough krill. Russ Bradley, a PRBO Conservation Science biologist who monitors birds on the islands, called 2006 "an incredibly poor year'' for the stocky robin-sized bird. Its numbers have declined to 25,000 in 2004 from about 105,000 in 1972.

EDIT

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/23/MNGH2JJ7371.DTL

[hankthecrank]

1. They say they just don't know why the die off

Maybe they should look harder. I don't get the feeling that they are working all that hard on it.

It really was nice planet too bad we pissed it away

Next they can say well its all gone nothing to study

[megatherium]

3. Reminds me of the Mark Twain quote Gore uses in his

movie: It's hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.

[megatherium]

2. A week ago I was on the beach at Newport, Oregon.

We saw a sea lion in the surf. Dreadful to think this beautiful ecosystem is threatened.