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Whale mystery

Kathleen Willett, NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN
Walking Sonoma and Marin county beaches recently has yielded some unusual sights and smells.
According to officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 12 dead whales have washed up on Northern California beaches in the last three months, including two along the Sonoma County coast and one in Marin County. The carcass of a young gray whale showed up on Portuguese Beach on May 23, with another gray whale washing ashore near Jenner around May 28. In Marin, a headless whale came ashore on South Beach along the Point Reyes National Seashore on May 26.
Other than the fact that they are all whales, what do the carcasses share in common?
“There is no unifying factor,” says Mary Jane Schramm, spokeswoman for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.
Marine scientists have identified four species among the dozen dead whales: orca, humpback, sperm and gray, which are commonly seen heading north along the coast this time of year. Their ages, along with their causes of death, have varied.
According to Schramm, one of the dead whales found in Pacifica was mature and possibly died of “old age,” given the condition and apparent wear on various body parts. Several others were young, possibly calves from the winter birthing season in Mexico, and may have been victims of predation by orcas.
One humpback was a victim of shipping traffic, while other whale carcasses have shown signs of possible “fishery interactions” such as net entanglements, which can mortally wound the immense animals.
In a typical year, one or two gray whale carcasses wash ashore. So what is different this year?
Read more at: Whale Mystery | News | North Bay Bohemian

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Dead gray whale washes up at Portuguese Beach

Clark Mason, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A series of dead whales has washed up on Northern California beaches over the past five weeks.

A dead, juvenile gray whale washed up on the Sonoma Coast this weekend at Portuguese Beach.
The 28-foot whale appeared to have been dead for some time and was in a state of obvious decomposition, according to California State Parks Ranger Damien Jones.
He said the carcass came ashore Friday night or Saturday morning. The Marine Mammal Center took a tissue sample in an attempt to determine cause of death, but it did not to appear to be from trauma, he said, such as being struck by a ship.
Jones said State Parks did not plan to remove the whale from the beach, which is about halfway between Jenner and Bodega Bay. He said the tide could carry it out to sea again.
“Generally we leave dead and sick animals where they are and let nature take its course,” he said.
May is the tail end of the gray whale northern migration from their breeding and birthing lagoons in Mexico back to their feeding grounds in Alaska. Although thousands of whales make the approximate 5,000-mile journey, including the newborn calves and their mothers, some of the cetaceans, especially juveniles, are believed to stay closer year-round to a more confined area.
Read more at: Dead whale washes up at Portuguese Beach in | The Press Democrat

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Bad news on the West Coast: Pacific sardines are collapsing

Paul Shively, THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS
The population of Pacific sardines, a crucial forage fish for marine life along the U.S. West Coast, has dwindled to the point that it can no longer sustain a commercial fishery, according to a preliminary assessment by scientists advising West Coast fishery managers.
The ongoing collapse is bad news for ocean wildlife, as well as fishermen and others who rely on a healthy ocean.
This is a major cause for concern, but it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. In 2012, two government scientists predicted we would end up in exactly this position, finding a parallel with the last major collapse in the middle of the 20th century. Three years ago, the scientists wrote that “all indicators show that the northern sardine stock off the west coast of North America is declining steeply again and that imminent collapse is likely.
”That prediction turned out to be right.
A panel of scientists advising the Pacific Fishery Management Council is reviewing the draft assessment today, March 6, in Vancouver, Washington. In April, the scientists will make a recommendation to the full council, which has already established plans for an automatic cutoff of commercial fishing for sardines when the population’s biomass estimate falls below 150,000 metric tons. In recent years, the stock size has fallen steadily, from 1.4 million metric tons in 2007 to 300,000 metric tons in the last official stock assessment in August of 2014.
Now, the new draft assessment projects that the population will be less than 150,000 metric tons as of July 1, the beginning of the new fishing season.
Sardines are small individually, but they are a big deal for the ocean food web. They form large schools known as bait balls that provide an oil-rich source of protein for many species of seabirds, marine mammals, and bigger fish, including salmon and tuna. The estimated size of the West Coast sardine population has fluctuated from several million tons— based on sediment records gathered on the seabed off Southern California—to less than 5,000 tons in the 1960s following the last major collapse.
If the new assessment holds up to scientific review, fishery managers should follow through in April on their harvest guideline protocols and suspend fishing on sardines for the 2015 season. Doing so would give the population a chance to recover as ocean conditions improve.
Read more at: Bad News on the West Coast: Pacific Sardines Are Collapsing

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Scientists: Warm waters, scarce prey likely cause of sea lion strandings

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
An intensifying spate of sea lion strandings on the California coast is likely caused by a shift in winds that has warmed coastal waters, making prey scarce for sea lion mothers and interfering with their ability to feed their pups, federal scientists said Wednesday.
The announcement marked the clearest answer yet to what might be affecting the sea lions, hundreds of which have come ashore malnourished and severely underweight in recent months.
With more than 940 animals, mostly pups, already admitted to rehabilitative care over the past several weeks, the state’s marine mammal centers are nearing capacity and running through resources, said Justin Viezbicke, California Stranding Network Coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
Many sea lions won’t be saved.
Read more via Scientists: Warm waters, scarce prey likely cause of | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Climate Change & Energy, Sonoma Coast, WildlifeTags , Leave a comment on New ocean study shows alarming pattern in ice age oxygen loss

New ocean study shows alarming pattern in ice age oxygen loss

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
New research on sea floor core samples collected from across the planet shows oxygen levels in the world’s oceans plummeted as the last ice age came to an end, a discovery that sheds light on the speed and extent to which modern-day climate change could alter global marine environments with potentially staggering results.
The study, made public this week by UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, suggests expansive low-oxygen zones that characterized world oceans during a period of melting ice sheets 10,000 to 17,000 years ago could be predictive of a trend already underway, potentially leading to mass die-offs of marine species and drastically disrupted food systems.
“The potential for our oceans to look very, very different in 100 to 150 years is real,” lead researcher Sarah Moffitt, a postdoctoral scholar at the marine lab, said in a statement unveiling the work.
The study was based on analyses of 36 sedimentary cores drilled from sites along the continental edges in the Pacific and Indian oceans. The meters-long plugs of sediment serve as records of geochemical and biological changes within ocean layers.
They revealed extreme, rapid oxygen loss in every region, occurring in some cases over 100 years or less but persisting for thousands of years, Moffitt said.
As with the current period of climate change, the deglaciation period was a time of increasing temperatures, surging levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and rising sea levels, Moffitt said.
Read more via New ocean study shows alarming pattern in ice | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Climate Change & Energy, Sonoma Coast, WildlifeTags , Leave a comment on Large-scale die-off of small seabird along Sonoma Coast

Large-scale die-off of small seabird along Sonoma Coast

Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Scientists up and down the West Coast are monitoring what appears to be a large-scale die-off of young Cassin’s auklets, small seabirds whose breeding grounds include a colony in the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco.
Emaciated, white-bellied birds have been washing ashore in Sonoma County and along a broad swath of California coastline since early November after a period of ocean warming in the Farallones region and disappearance of the tiny krill that provide their main source of food, researchers say.
Read more via Large-scale die-off of small seabird along Sonoma Coast | The Press Democrat.

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Small amount of Fukushima radiation detected in water off North Coast

Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

More information about ocean monitoring for Fukushima radiation can be found at http://www.ourradioactiveocean.org/.

Trace amounts of radiation from the ruined Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan were found in water samples collected in the Pacific Ocean 100 miles due west of Eureka, a Massachusetts-based researcher reported.
The concentration of cesium-134, a radioactive isotope known to come from the earthquake-and-tsunami ravaged Fukushima plant, was just barely detectable by his equipment and far below a level that would pose a risk to human health or marine life, said Ken Buesseler, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute marine chemist who has been monitoring North American coastal waters since January.

“We knew it was out there,” Buesseler said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It’s good to be getting some numbers.”

Cesium in the sample collected in August offshore from Eureka was less than 2 becquerels per cubic meter, he said. The acceptable U.S. limit for cesium in drinking water is 7,400 becquerels.

“It wouldn’t stop me from swimming in it or from eating any local seafood,” Buesseler said.

Read more via Small amount of Fukushima radiation detected in water | The Press Democrat.

Posted on Categories Climate Change & Energy, Sonoma CoastTags Leave a comment on Threat of 'dead zone' developing off Sonoma Coast

Threat of 'dead zone' developing off Sonoma Coast

Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Climate change is the likely cause of unprecedented mass of oxygen-poor water off the Sonoma Coast, a phenomenon that could harm the region’s prized Dungeness crab and other marine life.
Scientists at the Bodega Marine Laboratory, who were the first to detect the hypoxic (low-oxygen) waters, aren’t calling it a “dead zone” yet, despite the similarity to a lethal condition along the Oregon coast for the past 12 years and forecasts that it will occur worldwide with global warming.
coast-&-ocean
“There’s nothing dead,” said John Largier, an oceanographer at the UC Davis research facility on Bodega Head. But equipment on a bright yellow buoy anchored about a mile offshore has recorded dissolved oxygen levels low enough to cause “significant distress” for some marine organisms, he said.
Oxygen-poor water is common in deep water of the open ocean, but until this year had never been documented over the continental shelf close to the Sonoma coast, he said.
via Threat of ‘dead zone’ developing off Sonoma Coast | The Press Democrat.