Michael Snyder / Activist Post & Amy Moreno/ KING 5 News & ENENews & The Oregononian – 2013-11-04 02:19:09
http://csglobe.com/something-killing-life-pacific-ocean 


Something Is Killing Life All Over The Pacific Ocean
Michael Snyder / Activist Post
(October 29, 2013) — Something Is Killing Life All Over The Pacific Ocean — Could It Be Fukushima?

Why is there so much death and disease among sea life living near the west coast of North America right now? Could the hundreds of tons of highly radioactive water that are being released into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima every single day have anything to do with it?

When I wrote my last article about Fukushima, I got a lot of heat for being “alarmist” and for supposedly “scaring” people unnecessarily. I didn’t think that an article about Fukushima would touch such a nerve, but apparently there are some people out there that really do not want anyone writing about this stuff.

Right now, massive numbers of fish and sea creatures are dying in the Pacific Ocean. In addition, independent tests have shown that significant levels of cesium-137 are in a very high percentage of the fish that are being caught in the Pacific and sold in North America.
Could this have anything to do with the fact that the largest nuclear disaster in the history of mankind has been constantly releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean for more than two years? I don’t know about you, but to me this seems to be a question that is worth asking.

Since I wrote my last article, major news outlets have reported that large numbers of sea stars living off of the west coast of North America appear to be “melting”…

Divers were out in Puget Sound waters Saturday to see if they can help solve a mystery. Scientists are trying to figure out what’s causing one species of starfish to die in parts of Puget Sound and the waters off of Canada. Seattle Aquarium biologists Jeff Christiansen and Joel Hollander suited up in scuba gear in their search for answers.
“We’re going to look for both healthy and potentially diseased sea stars,” Christiansen explained. “We’ve got some sea stars that look like they’re melting on the bottom.” The same thing is happening in the waters near Canada and nobody’s sure why.

If scientists don’t know why this is happening, perhaps there is an unusual explanation for this phenomenon.

Could it be Fukushima?

The following is what one invertebrate expert quoted by National Geographic says is happening to the starfishɉ۬
[The starfish] seem to waste away, ‘deflate’ a little, and then just … disintegrate. The arms just detach, and the central disc falls apart. It seems to happen rapidly, and not just dead animals undergoing decomposition, as I observed single arms clinging to the rock faces, tube feet still moving, with the skin split, gills flapping in the current.
I’ve seen single animals in the past looking like this, and the first dive this morning I thought it might be crabbers chopping them up and tossing them off the rocks. Then we did our second dive in an area closed to fishing, and in absolutely amazing numbers. The bottom from about 20 to 50 feet [6 to 15 meters] was absolutely littered with arms, oral discs, tube feet, gonads and gills … it was kind of creepy.
That certainly does not sound normal to me.

Shouldn’t we be trying to figure out why this is happening?
Something is also causing a huge spike in the death rate for killer whales living off of the coast of British Columbiaɉ۬
A Vancouver Aquarium researcher is sounding the alarm over “puzzling” changes he’s observed in the killer whale pods that live off the southern British Columbia coast. Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard says he fears changes in the ocean environment are prompting odd behaviour and an unusually high mortality rate.
Barrett-Lennard says the southern resident orca pod, which is found in the Salish Sea between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland, has lost seven matriarchs over the past two years, and he’s noticed a lack of vocalizations from the normally chatty mammals.

Once again, scientists do not know why this is happening.

Could it be Fukushima?

I am just asking the question.

Clearly something unusual is happening to the Pacific. The following is what one Australian discovered as he journeyed across the Pacific Ocean recentlyɉ۬
The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear. “After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead,” Macfadyen said. “We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.
“I’ve done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I’m used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen.” In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes. “Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it’s still out there, everywhere you look.”

What would cause the Pacific Ocean to be “dead”?

Could it be Fukushima?

When you consider the evidence presented above along with all of the other things that we have learned in recent months, it becomes more than just a little bit alarming.
The following are some more examples of sea life dying off in the Pacific from my recent article entitled “28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima”…

* Polar bears, seals and walruses along the Alaska coastline are suffering from fur loss and open soresɉ۬
Wildlife experts are studying whether fur loss and open sores detected in nine polar bears in recent weeks is widespread and related to similar incidents among seals and walruses. The bears were among 33 spotted near Barrow, Alaska, during routine survey work along the Arctic coastline. Tests showed they had “alopecia, or loss of fur, and other skin lesions,” the US Geological Survey said in a statement.

* There is an epidemic of sea lion deaths along the California coastlineɉ۬
At island rookeries off the Southern California coast, 45 percent of the pups born in June have died, said Sharon Melin, a wildlife biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service based in Seattle. Normally, less than one-third of the pups would die. It’s gotten so bad in the past two weeks that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared an “unusual mortality event.”
* Along the Pacific coast of Canada and the Alaska coastline, the population of sockeye salmon is at a historic low. Many are blaming Fukushima.
* Something is causing fish all along the west coast of Canada to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.

* Experts have found very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast.

* One test in California found that 15 out of 15 bluefin tuna were contaminated with radiation from Fukushima.

* Back in 2012, the Vancouver Sun reported that cesium-137 was being found in a very high percentage of the fish that Japan was selling to Canada…
73 percent of mackerel tested
91 percent of the halibut
92 percent of the sardines
93 percent of the tuna and eel
94 percent of the cod and anchovies
100 percent of the carp, seaweed, shark and monkfish

Is it really so unreasonable to wonder if Fukushima could be causing all of this?

And the total amount of nuclear material in the Pacific Ocean is constantly increasing. According to the New York Times, the latest releases from Fukushima contain “much more contaminated water than before”, and the flow of contaminated water will not stop until 2015 at the earliest…

The latest releases appear to be carrying much more contaminated water than before into the Pacific. And that flow may not slow until at least 2015, when an ice wall around the damaged reactors is supposed to be completed.

And that same article explained that cesium-137 is entering the Pacific at a rate that is “about three times as high” as last year…

The magnitude of the recent spike in radiation, and the amounts of groundwater involved, have led Michio Aoyama, an oceanographer at a government research institute who is considered an authority on radiation in the sea, to conclude that radioactive cesium 137 may now be leaking into the Pacific at a rate of about 30 billion becquerels per year, or about three times as high as last year. He estimates that strontium 90 may be entering the Pacific at a similar rate.

Right now, approximately 300 tons of contaminated water is pouring into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima every 24 hours.
But apparently we are not supposed to ask any questions about this and we are just supposed to blindly accept that this is not having any significant impact on our environment even though sea life in the Pacific appears to be dying in unprecedented numbers.

I don’t know about you, but I really think that the people of the world deserve to know the truth about what is happening out there.

Biologists Search for Cause of Sea Star Deaths
Amy Moreno/ KING 5 News
(October 26, 2013) — Divers were out in Puget Sound waters Saturday to see if they can help solve a mystery. Scientists are trying to figure out what’s causing one species of starfish to die in parts of Puget Sound and the waters off of Canada.
Seattle Aquarium biologists Jeff Christiansen and Joel Hollander suited up in scuba gear in their search for answers. “We’re going to look for both healthy and potentially diseased sea stars,” Christiansen explained. “We’ve got some sea stars that look like they’re melting on the bottom.”
The same thing is happening in the waters near Canada and nobody’s sure why. The cause could be environmental or perhaps driven by disease.
“We often think viral when we think of sea star disease,” Veterinarian Lesanna Lahner explained. “At this time, we don’t have a good idea of what’s causing it, so we’re going to look for everything.”
Just a few weeks ago, the populations in Puget Sound waters near the aquarium looked healthy. Saturday, biologists were surprised by what they saw.
“There are a lot of melting seas tars out there, more than even a couple days ago” Christiansen said. “There would be a healthy animal in really close proximity to a sick animal; there was no concentration of sick ones and concentration of good ones.”
Lahner took the healthy and sick animals that were gathered into the lab so they could gather samples.
“It’s concerning to hear in a short time period we’re seeing 60% of this species diseased in this area,” she said.
The samples will go to Cornell University and another lab in New York where the samples from Canada are already being analyzed. They hope to have results within a few weeks.
So far it’s only impacting the sunflower species of sea star, but biologists say there is a delicate balance in these waters and when one species is hurting, it threatens to impact the entire ecosystem.
So far, the diseased starfish have not been reported in other parts of Puget Sound. The aquarium is asking divers to take photos and give them a call, if they spot any.
‘Troubling Mystery’: Complete Collapse of Sardine Population on West Coast of Canada:
Humpback Whales Rarely Seen, They’re Telling Us Something Changed… Nobody Lnows What’s Going On
ENENews & The Oregononian
(October 15, 2013) — […] a fascinating, troubling mystery: the disappearance of the sardine in waters around British Columbia. The Vancouver Sun fills in the details on the collapsed $32-million commercial fishery this year on the B.C. coast. The consequences of the loss of the tiny fish […] could be dire.
Vancouver Sun, October 15, 2013: Sardine fishery […] has inexplicably and completely collapsed this year on the B.C. coast. […] failing to catch a single fish. And the commercial disappearance […] is having repercussions all the way up the food chain […] Peter Schultze, a senior guide and driver with Ocean Outfitters, said humpbacks are normally found seven to 10 kilometres or closer to shore, but this year were about 18 to 32 kilometres out […] if they were observed at all.
“There were a lot of days where people got skunked.” […] scientists today attribute the overriding cause to changes in ocean conditions that proved unfavourable to sardines. […] “This year was unexpected,” said Lisa Mijacika, a resource manager with Fisheries and Oceans Canada […] Scientists from Canada, the US, and Mexico will meet in December to try to find answers to the sardine’s movements. […]
Jim Darling, whale biologist with the Pacific Wildlife Foundation interviewed by The Sun: Humpbacks typically number in the hundreds near the west coast of Vancouver Island in summer […] They were observed only sporadically this year […] “Humpbacks are telling us that something has changed” […] “I don’t think anyone really has a bead on what’s going on” […] “[The sardines are] driving the whole system and supporting virtually everything” […] “There are some important questions to be asked about the sardine fishery.”
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