Plagues
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Blackbox

Queensland: Mysterious disease killing marine life in Gladstone Harbour?

An unprecedented number of fish with red spots, lesions and parasites, as well as dead dugongs and turtles, have been found this year.

Fishermen and conservationists blame the state of the marine life on dredging to widen Gladstone Harbour to accommodate carrier ships servicing the booming liquefied natural gas and coal seam gas industries.
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© Trevor FalzonA bull shark with red marks on it caught in the Calliope River, Gladstone in October.
But the Gladstone Port Corporation does not believe the dredging is causing the disease in fish, and authorities say last year's wet summer may be a factor in the poor health of the harbour.

Water testing shows a number of sites within the harbour exceeded national guidelines for aluminium, copper and chromium. Experts say the levels pose a minimal risk to marine life; however, the Queensland Government has appointed an independent scientific panel to conduct more research.

View a gallery of photos of diseased marine life found in Gladstone waters, interspersed with quotes from local fishermen and stakeholders.

Bizarro Earth

Researcher Links Fungus To Dropping Bat Population

Bats
© redOrbit
A University of Tennessee researcher helped confirm the link between the fungus Geomyces destructans and the dropping bat population.

Over a million bats were killed in North American in 2006, and little has been done to try and save them due to lack of evidence for the alleged killer.

However, a new study has discovered that the fungus Geomyces destructans is the agent of White-noise Syndrome (WNS), which is the fungal disease decimating the bat population.

The fungus has been thought to be the likely culprit because the skin lesions found on the bats are associated with colonization of the fungus.

"Many assumed that fungal infections in mammals only occur if some other pathogen has already weakened the immune system," Justin Boyles, a post-doctoral research associate in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said in a statement. "Additionally, the recent discovery that G. destructans commonly colonizes the skin of bats in Europe with no major die-offs generated speculation that other unidentified factors are the primary cause of WNS."

Info

Canada: A Mysterious Virus Threatens Salmon in the West

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© Getty Images
A virus that devastated farm-raised salmon populations in the Atlantic may be appearing among wild fish in the Pacific, a potentially devastating threat to fisheries there.

Scientists reported on Friday that the virus, infectious salmon anemia, had been found for the second time among wild salmon in British Columbia. That could suggest that the disease, now found among farmed salmon in Atlantic waters, has made the jump to wild fish populations, The New York Times reports.

There is no cure.

Bug

US: Knot of Worry Tightens for Fishermen as Infectious Salmon Anemia Spreads

salmon fishing
© Matthew Ryan Williams/NYTSean O'Donnell worked on the nets in Seattle after salmon fishing Wednesday.
Seattle - The scientist in Canada got the results from a respected lab and held a news conference. The ice and bait man at a fish processor in Sitka, Alaska, heard the news on Facebook. Vardon Tremain read it in the newspaper while working on his trolling boat docked here in Salmon Bay.

More scientists in Washington started talking, and 24 hours later everyone is asking more questions. As word spread that infectious salmon anemia, a deadly virus that has devastated farmed fish in Chile, had been found for the first time in prized wild Pacific salmon, there remained much uncertainty about the finding and what its potential impact could be.

So far it has been found in just two wild sockeye salmon in British Columbia and not in an active state. Nevertheless the reaction from fishermen has echoed that of some scientists: this is the last thing salmon need.

"On top of everything else, that would just be murder here," said Mr. Tremain, aboard his 40-foot boat, Heidi, at Fishermen's Terminal here.

Bizarro Earth

US: Mysterious Disease Killed Scores of Seals in Alaska

Diseased Seal
© Reuters/North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management/HandoutA diseased ringed seal in Alaska is shown in this handout photo released to Reuters October 13, 2011.
A mysterious disease, possibly a virus, has killed scores of ring seals along Alaska's coast, according to local and federal agencies.

The diseased seals have been beaching themselves on the Arctic coastline since July, with numbers picking up in subsequent months, biologists with the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management and other agencies said on Thursday.

About 100 of the diseased animals have been found near Barrow, the nation's northernmost community, and half of those have died, the borough biologists reported.

Elsewhere in the sprawling borough, villagers have reported 146 ringed seals hauling themselves onto beaches, and many of those were diseased, the biologists said.

Ringed seals rarely come ashore, spending most of the year in the water or on floating ice, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service.

Fish

US: In Alaska's Arctic, mysterious outbreak kills dozens of ringed seals

Ill ring seal
© North Slope BoroughAn ill ringed seal on the North Slope.
A mysterious and potentially widespread disease is thought to have contributed to the deaths of dozens of ringed seals along Alaska's Arctic coast. Scores more are sickened, some so ill that skin lesions bleed when touched.

The animals are an important subsistence food, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has proposed listing them as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

In July, biologists with the North Slope Borough's Department of Wildlife Management began receiving reports of ringed seals hauled out on beaches, an unusual behavior since the animals usually prefer the water or ice. Since then, they've found at least 100 seals with telltale mangy hair and skin lesions, mostly while traveling by four-wheeler along 30 miles of Beaufort and Chukchi sea coastline outside Barrow.

At least 46 of those seals have been found dead, and experts aren't sure if the disease is killing them or if other infections and polar bears are proving fatal once the seals become feeble.

Bizarro Earth

Two million sick from Pakistan floods

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© AFP, Rizwan TabassumA Pakistani youth carries a water pot through floodwaters in Mirpur Khas district
Two million Pakistanis have fallen ill from diseases since monsoon rains left the southern region under several feet of water, the country's disaster authority said Thursday.

More than 350 people have been killed and over eight million people have been affected this year by floods that officials say are worse in parts of Sindh province than last year, when the country saw its worst ever disaster.

Malaria, diarrhoea, skin disease and snake bites were among the health problems facing two million people across 23 Sindh districts, said Irshad Bhatti, spokesman of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

"In some areas, diseases also spread out because of dead animals but there is no major break-out of any epidemic," Bhatti added, calling for the donation of mosquito nets and medicines to help the aid effort.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said there is a desperate shortage of clean drinking water in the south which has also triggered outbreaks of acute diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases.

Fish

Georgia, US: New Ogeechee Swim Advisory After Report s of "Skin Sores"

New concerns in the Ogeechee River tonight. This comes just a few months after a fish kill wiped out tens of thousands of fish.


X

US: Devastating Tree-Killing Pathogen Traced to California

A new study by UC Berkeley and Italian researchers may have solved a decades-long mystery behind the source of a tree-killing fungus that affected six of the world's seven continents.

Genetic sleuthing by an international team of researchers has fingered California as the source of the pathogen, Seiridium cardinale, which is the cause of cypress canker disease and has killed as much as 95 percent of native trees in the cypress family, including junipers and some cedars.

The findings were published Thursday in the journal Phytopathology.

"The fungus was likely introduced from California either in the South of France or in Central Italy 60 to 80 years ago, and that introduction resulted in a global pandemic that has devastated the region's iconic Italian cypress trees," Matteo Garbelotto, adjunct associate professor and cooperative extension specialist in ecosystem sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a university release.

Sun

SOTT Focus: Connecting the Dots: Cosmic Changes, Planetary Instability and Extreme Weather

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© NASA / SDOThe Solar Dynamics Observatory's view of the coronal mass ejection of June 7, 2011.
With Earth Changes now clearly happening and time pressing, the editors of Sott.net are faced with the urgency of catching up with an avalanche of significant news items and trying to make sense of things! Recent weather events have been unprecedented: both spring and early summer have been bizarre across the globe, to say the least.

You name the weather or geological type of phenomenon; someone in the world had it: volcanoes, earthquakes, torrential rain, floods, sinkholes, tornadoes, droughts, wildfires ... even summertime snow! Let's review them all as best as we can, starting from the top: the cosmic factor.

Solar Activity
© Mike BormanImage Taken: Jun 4, 2011
Location: Evansville, Indiana, USA
Cosmic Changes Are Under Way

Changes on planet Earth comprise such a wide variety of phenomena, from extreme weather anomalies to volcanoes and earthquakes, so perhaps it's a good idea to zoom back and see if we can make sense of any changes in the cosmic climate that may be affecting us. Yes, we are aware that this approach goes against the sanctioned narrative claiming that these changes are caused by carbon-burning human beings living in an isolated bubble that can only grow warmer. But the pieces of the puzzle on the table point to a different, larger picture.

A huge central piece is our sun, which is not surprising, since this ongoing explosion in space is what brings order to our corner of the universe and to life to Earth. For the last couple of years the sun was expected to go into high activity in accordance with its usual 11-year sunspot cycle. But scientists were left scratching their heads as our local star remained quiet. Now it's giving off such a display of flares that it has NASA scientists going 'ooh and ahh'.