Leifer
Senior Member.
Why are massive numbers of sea creatures dying along the west coast right now?
by Michael Snyder, @ Activist Post
(first posted HERE)
To be fair, neither am I.
It's all too easy to put together a list of circumstances....then claim a connection. He suggests there IS a connection somehow, but asks the readers to come up with one. (He hints at the floating garbage patch, in the Pacific ocean.)
The most prevalent connection from readers comments is Fukushima.....by a large percentage.
His article is found reprinted at the usual places....Infowars, Geoenginnering Watch, etc.
Are all (or most) the examples of Pacific marine life declines/problems he lists.....truly connected ?
Or did he simply collect unrelated stories....propose they are connected -- in order to popularize himself as an online writer ? (or promote his new book, available on Amazon)
Perhaps the best way to decipher and understand what is really going on within his list, is to examine each marine anomaly/ailment....one-by-one, to determine if there is a connection.
(opinion: this article by Snyder is but a Gish Gallop (a fish gallop) in order to gain followers and believers.....those whom will never check all 15 of his examples)
Here is the abbreviated list of creatures in "trouble":
1) Sea Stars
2) Bluefin tuna
3) Sardine, Anchovy, Herring
4) Sea Lions
5) certain marine birds
6) red King Crab
7) Pelicans
8) Pacific Oysters
9) Sockeye Salmon
10) Herring (again)
11) plankton
12) Anchovies (again)
13) Anchovies (again, mass death)
14) unknown fish die-off
15) tuna, possibly Albacore
(please note....in any/all cases, if the results were indeed from Fukushima, independent and university scientists would certainly say so when diagnosing these creatures....yet they do not. The only claims that the illnesses come from Fukushima.....are from non-scientific blog readers, conspiracy theorists or from people who fear the worst - and make a connection to a popular meme and/or will not investigate these stories on their own)
1) Sea Stars (starfish):
It's from a specific disease....marine biologists know this....and research is ongoing.
2) Bluefin tuna
It is from over fishing.
......from Snyder's own link :
Again, over fishing.....and normal/historical decade fluctuations.....as well a century fluctuations -- both known as fish species (population) oscillations.
July 8, 2014....San Diego, CA
(I'll post more....need to go to work)
by Michael Snyder, @ Activist Post
(first posted HERE)
First, looking at Snyder's other posts, it does not seem he is in any way a specialist in the field of oceanography.Never before have we seen so much death along the west coast of North America. Massive numbers of sea stars, bluefin tuna, sardines, anchovies, herring, oysters, salmon, marine mammals and marine birds are dying, and experts are puzzled. We are being told that we could even see “local extinctions” of some of these sea creatures. So are all of these deaths related? If so, what in the world could be causing this to happen? What has changed so dramatically that it would cause massive numbers of sea creatures to die along the west coast?
(Snyder)
To be fair, neither am I.
It's all too easy to put together a list of circumstances....then claim a connection. He suggests there IS a connection somehow, but asks the readers to come up with one. (He hints at the floating garbage patch, in the Pacific ocean.)
The most prevalent connection from readers comments is Fukushima.....by a large percentage.
His article is found reprinted at the usual places....Infowars, Geoenginnering Watch, etc.
Are all (or most) the examples of Pacific marine life declines/problems he lists.....truly connected ?
Or did he simply collect unrelated stories....propose they are connected -- in order to popularize himself as an online writer ? (or promote his new book, available on Amazon)
Perhaps the best way to decipher and understand what is really going on within his list, is to examine each marine anomaly/ailment....one-by-one, to determine if there is a connection.
(opinion: this article by Snyder is but a Gish Gallop (a fish gallop) in order to gain followers and believers.....those whom will never check all 15 of his examples)
Here is the abbreviated list of creatures in "trouble":
1) Sea Stars
2) Bluefin tuna
3) Sardine, Anchovy, Herring
4) Sea Lions
5) certain marine birds
6) red King Crab
7) Pelicans
8) Pacific Oysters
9) Sockeye Salmon
10) Herring (again)
11) plankton
12) Anchovies (again)
13) Anchovies (again, mass death)
14) unknown fish die-off
15) tuna, possibly Albacore
(please note....in any/all cases, if the results were indeed from Fukushima, independent and university scientists would certainly say so when diagnosing these creatures....yet they do not. The only claims that the illnesses come from Fukushima.....are from non-scientific blog readers, conspiracy theorists or from people who fear the worst - and make a connection to a popular meme and/or will not investigate these stories on their own)
1) Sea Stars (starfish):
It's from a specific disease....marine biologists know this....and research is ongoing.
Give a look for yourself..... http://data.piscoweb.org/marine1/seastardisease.html“We’re holding steady here and we’re not sure why,” said Drew Harvell, a marine epidemiologist from Cornell University who has studied marine diseases for 20 years. She teaches an infectious marine disease course at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs on San Juan Island and was at the labs when the disease broke.
(later)
Some have asked whether radiation or tsunami debris associated with the Fukushima disaster could be behind this die-off. But scientists now see Fukushima as an unlikely culprit because the die-offs are patchy, popping up in certain places like Seattle and Santa Barbara and not in others, such as coastal Oregon, where wasting has only been reported at one location.
(1/30/2014) http://earthfix.opb.org/water/article/northwest-starfish-experiments-give-scientists-clu/
2) Bluefin tuna
It is from over fishing.
......from Snyder's own link :
3) Sardine, Anchovy, Herring:
On Wednesday, The fisheries division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that it’s considering a ban on recreational and commercial fishing of Pacific bluefin tuna. After years of large-scale fishing and rising demand in the sushi industry it is estimated that as few as 40,000 adult Pacific bluefin tuna remain in the wild, around four percent of the fish’s historic average.
With catches dropping dramatically recently and up to 90 percent of those caught qualifying as juveniles, this initial step by the federal government could result in the fish being added to the list of imperiled species that must be released immediately if caught.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/24/3463930/fed-considers-pacific-bluefin-tuna-fishing-ban/
Again, over fishing.....and normal/historical decade fluctuations.....as well a century fluctuations -- both known as fish species (population) oscillations.
"Largest Northern Anchovy school seen off Scripps in more than 30 years"
Such population swings are well known, if not well understood.
Centuries of fossil records indicate sardine abundance fluctuates widely on a sixty-year cycle, appearing to coincide with "warm" and "cold" periods that alternately favor sardines and anchovies. In a 2011 report, fisheries researchers Juan Zwolinski and David Demer showed that certain environmental conditions today mirror the circumstances surrounding a dramatic sardine crash in the late 1940s, suggesting we may be experiencing a similar natural decline.
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2014/07/forage_fish_management_key_to.html
July 8, 2014....San Diego, CA
(I'll post more....need to go to work)
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