Downplaying Death
As mass animal die-offs continue, the claim that it's business as usual becomes harder to swallow. Fish and birds are dying off in extreme numbers, all over the globe. On March 8, 2011 it was reported that over a million sardine fish were found dead in Redondo Beach, California. A similar event occurred exactly a month ago in Florida, and in both of these cases the believed cause of death were from the fish congregating too closely and exhausting the oxygen supply in the water, but why does this keep occurring? Also around that time about a million jellyfish were found dead on Florida beaches.
The die-offs seemed to have started with the thousands of bird deaths in Arkansas last year, and despite the lack of mainstream media coverage, they have not stopped. For instance, around the same time as the Florida fish deaths, hundreds of birds have been found dead in Lake Charles, Louisiana, as well as Rotorua, New Zealand.
According to some experts, these deaths are not out of the norm and we are simply being made aware of all of them by the power of the internet--but is this really the case? It would be fine to say that if this was simply a matter of one-or-two coincidental events, but these clearly are not. Something is causing them, and more likely than not it's something we are doing, as in the case of the Arkansas earthquake surge, but instead of commencing with a more exacting investigation, we're neglecting the matter entirely, believing that our problems do not go beyond the scope of our own species. As the BP Oil disaster nears its first anniversary are we going to continue to ignore the signs that our behavior is destructive, or at the very least, that the Earth is going through profound changes?
Image: "Redondo dead sardines 25" by scpr.kpcc on Flickr courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing.
- 3-9-11
- Chris Kaplan's blog
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"these deaths are not out of the norm and we are simply being made aware of all of them by the power of the internet--but is this really the case?"
Crazy talk.
As though massive widespread deaths just never made the news ever before...
Here's a timeline of "mysterious" animal deaths.
More Data
There's more here than meets the senses...
Reviewing Real Data
According to some experts, these deaths are not out of the norm and we are simply being made aware of all of them by the power of the internet--but is this really the case? It would be fine to say that if this was simply a matter of one-or-two coincidental events, but these clearly are not.
Um -- why not check the experts' data?
If experts say there are regular die-offs over the last 50 years, and that this is an ordinary thing, then, if they are genuine experts, they should be able to generate the data.
Hypothesis A: For some reason (plausibly pollution to the environment), this is more common lately, and we're hearing about it because it's happening.
Hypothesis B: These die-offs are ordinary and happen regularly, only we're hearing about them more often because (A) there is the Internet, and (B) people are sensitized to this type of story now.
Which is true?
All we need to know to make an informed opinion is the data.
So... Here's some quick research:
- google: Birds Falling from the Sky Not That Unusual
-- cites a source: the United States Geological Survey list at least
16 die-offs of more than 1,000 blackbirds or starlings over the past 30
years. This leads me to look at USGS data.
- USGS: Wildlife Die-Offs are Relatively Common, Recent Bird Deaths Caused by Impact Trauma
-- interesting: various different cases, various different causes.
(starvation, avian cholera, Newcastle disease, parasites, ...) There
are notes here on different times in history, when there are different
disease outbreaks causing various populations to just suddenly die. So:
I still don't have the data on which die offs happened when, but I am
very much getting the picture that this kind of thing happens
regularly. I read in the prior link, also, that we have records dating
back to the 19th century of this kind of thing happening, and causing
people to freak out about supernatural causes. The last link directs
people to the National Wildlife Health Center.
- NWHC: Mortality Events --There's a whole section of the site dedicated to just "Mortality Events." Now I click on...
- NWH: Quarterly Mortality Reports
-- Great! This is looking like the data we were looking for. Let's
see what we have here... Well, just poking through the data, it looks
like the experts were right: This stuff really does happen every
quarter of every year. The recorded years are 1995-2010. It's not on
the website right now, but they say they have data recorded from 1975,
and I'm inclined to trust that they know what they are talking about.
So: Looks good. Research!Still Doesn't Add Up
You're absolutely right that die-offs have happened in the past, do happen, and will happen (especially with the way we humans go about treating the planet).
I personally don't like the hypothesis that these events have only appeared to escalate due to over exposure, and the accessibility of the Internet. Yes, we are more globally connected. Yes, our access to information has increased tenfold. But I think we're forgetting that we still had forms of global communication prior to the Internet, although not as efficient. Such events would still cause alarm enough for the sensationalist person to tell the tale -- we all love a good story, seeing that that is a past-time older than prostitution, and "word does get around." Of course like you said, we may not have been as "sensitized" to the matter as after the environmental movement kicked off the last half of the century, but we weren't blind to our environment.
That was a great source from the USGS, and I don't think anyone was arguing the fact that these events do occur "naturally," though technically we couldn't trace just how much our involvement has effected the numbers without extensive long-term analysis, but searching through these records alone says nothing about how, and why there are deaths in the millions on multiple occasions, of multiple species, and in close proximity of time to each other. These are not deaths in the hundreds. Or in the thousands. And yes they may be vulnerable species, but perhaps their vulnerabilities are early warning signs of a more drastic change in the ecosystem, perhaps one caused by our own synthetic material consumption/production cycle.