Please note that experts at have reported that Mass Bird, Fish Deaths Occur Regularly
First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas. In recent days, wildlife have mysteriously died in big numbers: 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the "aflockalypse" while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental.
The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated.
Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don't notice them and don't try to link them to each other.
"They generally fly under the radar," said ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science.
And Madison lab does NOT believe it is related to anything out of regular occurrences
Since the 1970s, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin has tracked mass deaths among birds, fish and other critters, said wildlife disease specialist LeAnn White. At times the sky and the streams just turn deadly. Sometimes it's disease, sometimes pollution. Other times it's just a mystery.
"Depending on the species, these things don't even get reported," White said.
Weather - cold and wet weather like in Arkansas New Year's Eve when the birds fell out of the sky - is often associated with mass bird deaths, ornithologists say. Pollution, parasites and disease also cause mass deaths. Some are even blaming fireworks for the blackbird deaths.
So what's happening this time?
Blame technology, says famed Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. With the Internet, cell phones and worldwide communications, people are noticing events, connecting the dots more.
"This instant and global communication, it's just a human instinct to read mystery and portents of dangers and wondrous things in events that are unusual," Wilson told The Associated Press on Thursday. "Not to worry, these are not portents that the world is about to come to an end."
Wilson and the others say instant communications - especially when people can whip out smart phones to take pictures of critter carcasses and then post them on the Internet - is giving a skewed view of what is happening in the environment.
The irony is that mass die-offs - usually of animals with large populations - are getting the attention while a larger but slower mass extinction of thousands of species because of human activity is ignored, Wilson said.
USGS: http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/mortality_events/ongoing.jsp
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I left a little comment on the Boing2
I can't be the only scientist correlating these mass migratory animal deaths to the recent increase in sun spot and earths magnetic field activity? Am I?
Really "earth science 101" stuff : -)
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/animals.html
Solar flares and magnetic (pole) fluctuations can control and disrupt migratory animal patterns
The first thing I thought of when I heard of the recent Mass Animal Deaths .... was "I hope that doesn't have anything to do with the solar/earth pole shift stuff going on."
NOTE: The Correlation between migratory animals deaths, Earth's Magnetic North Pole and sun spot as a theory was actually reported back in 2005. And in 1940/50's a scientist recorded mass animals deaths due to "Massive Magnetic Test" - Haase