Earth ChangesS


Eye 1

Farmer wants to know what's killing his buffalo

Image
© Yellowstone National Park
Dozens of buffalo on a Sempronius farm have died mysteriously over the last four months, and veterinary examinations provide no clue to what happened.

"We're going nuts down here trying to figure out what's going on," farm owner Peter Head said. "This is going to put me out of business."

Beginning in October, the buffalo have been dying off sporadically - as many as six on some days. Of the original 110 animals, 55 have died, including 17 of 23 calves and many of the older animals, Head said.

"They just stand around like they have stomach cramps," Head said of the sick buffalo. "Like something's bothering them on the inside."

Bizarro Earth

24 Stranded New Zealand Whales Die

Beached Whales
© Department of Conservation / AFP / Getty ImagesOne of 25 pilot whales that died after beaching themselves in the sand at Spirits Bay, New Zealand.

Wellington - New Zealand conservation officials on Friday euthanized 10 pilot whales, the only survivors of a 24-strong pod that became stranded in a mangrove swamp.

The whales had been found earlier in the day trapped in the shallow water and mud in Parengarenga Harbor on North Island, with 14 already dead.

The mammals had been there for some time and the 10 survivors were in poor shape, said Department of Conservation area manager Jonathan Maxwell.

With worsening weather and a high tide more than eight hours away, "the chance of successfully refloating the whales was virtually nil," Maxwell said.

"Sadly, the current conditions were against these animals. The kindest thing was to end their suffering," he said. "If we felt there was a real chance we could have successfully rescued them, we would have."

Bizarro Earth

Violent Seismic Activity is Tearing Africa in Two

volcano Africa
© University of Bristol / Lorraine FieldIndeed, Africa is starting to split apart. The first tear came in the last million years, resulting in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. And now the earth is opening up in a massive expanse of land stretching south from Ethiopia to Mozambique.
High-Speed Geology

The fissures began appearing years ago. But in recent months, seismic activity has accelerated in northeastern Africa as the continent breaks apart in slow motion. Researchers say that lava in the region is consistent with magma normally seen on the sea floor -- and that water will ultimately cover the desert.

Cynthia Ebinger, a geologist from the University of Rochester in New York, could hardly believe what the caller from the deserts of Ethiopia was saying. It was an employee at a mineralogy company -- and he reported that the famous Erta Ale volcano in northeastern Ethiopia was erupting. Ebinger, who has studied the volcano for years, was taken aback. The volcano's crater had always been filled with a bubbling soup of silver-black lava, but it had been decades since its last eruption.

The call came last November. And Ebinger immediately flew to Ethiopia with some fellow researchers. "The volcano was bubbling over; flaming-red lava was shooting up into the sky," Ebinger told Spiegel Online.

The earth is in upheaval in northeastern Africa, and the region is changing quickly. The desert floor is quaking and splitting open, volcanoes are boiling over, and seawaters are encroaching upon the land. Africa, researchers are certain, is splitting apart at a rate rarely seen in geology.

Fish

Trapped in ice, 'thousands' of fish die in Detroit River

Image
© Nick BrancaccioFish appear to be trapped by ice flows on the Detroit River near Windsor's Alexander Park at Riverside Drive East and George Avenue Thursday Jan. 20, 2011. Dead fish can be seen with thousands of live fish schooling just below the surface.

Residents in Riverside are concerned about what they say is a major fish kill in the Detroit River.

Andre Mailhot was out walking his Jack Russell terrier in Alexander Park - a municipal park that runs along Riverside Drive roughly between Strabane and George Avenues - on Tuesday when he saw "thousands and thousands" of dead fish floating in the water.

"I couldn't believe it. As far as I could see, I could see all those little white spots," Mailhot said. "They were just coming down the river like somebody threw them in the water."

Hourglass

First dead birds, then dead fish ... now crickets

dead crickets
© Unknown

A virus has killed millions of crickets raised to feed pet reptiles and those kept in zoos.

The cricket paralysis virus has disrupted supplies to pet shops across North America as a handful of operators have seen millions of their insects killed.

Some operations have gone bankrupt and others have closed indefinitely until they can rid their facilities of the virus.

Cricket farms started in the 1940s as a source of fish bait, but the bulk of sales now are to pet supply companies, reptile owners and zoos, although people also eat some.

Most U.S. farms are in the South, but suppliers from Pennsylvania to California also raise crickets.

Comment: A virus?
"However, biologists say these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated"
The above article certainly does it's best to alleviate any concerns people may have with these animal mass-death events, but are they all unrelated? With more information and study, time will surely tell..

Dead birds rain down on towns half a world apart

Dead birds found in Koroneia Lake, Greece

Dead Birds in China: Birds continue to fall around the world - may be a precursor to reversal of poles

Mystery as thousands of dead birds fall from sky in Australia

Romania: A Second Wave of Dead Birds

New Zealand: Mystery as sparrows drop dead

Hundreds of dead penguins wash up on Brazil shores

More mass animal deaths: Hundreds of fish meet an icy end in a frozen pond in Manchester


Bad Guys

Japanese Dolphin Slaughter Caught on Video

Dolphin Slaughter
© 3 News, New ZealandIn this screenshot from YouTube, a fisherman is seen wrestling a bleeding dolphin.

New footage shot in the small Japanese town of Taiji shows dolphins are still being slaughtered inhumanely and in mass quantities, despite assurances from authorities the annual hunt no longer used such techniques.

The video, shot by US group Save Japan Dolphins, was shot on Tuesday and uploaded to YouTube.

It appears to disprove claims dolphin hunting was made more humane in the wake of 2009's documentary on the hunt, The Cove, which exposed the brutal methods used to kill around 1500 dolphins every year.

The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Australian marine science student Nicole McLachlan, who is in Taiji: "One of the hardest things I have witnessed here is the distress and anguish of these animals during a slaughter... ''And today some were taken under the tarps and killed while the rest of their family remained in the waters nearby.


Camera

New Yorker Searches for Owner of Remarkable Blizzard Photos

A New Yorker who writes and directs comedy videos is on a quest to find the people who shot a roll of striking black-and-white photos of the city that he found in a park.

Todd Bieber stumbled upon the roll of film while cross-country skiing in Brooklyn's Prospect Park after the Christmas blizzard that dumped 12 to 18 inches of snow in the area. Bieber developed the film and was captivated by the photos, which show what he surmises to be some out-of-towners taking a snowy and beautiful journey from Central Park, across the Brooklyn Bridge to an empty Coney Island amusement park, and then to Prospect Park, where they must have accidentally dropped the film canister.


Bieber made a video that he hopes will help him track down the people who took the photos. He notes that the men look "European" in their photos (giveaway: fancy scarves) and imagines that they are visiting New York on a vacation. In one photo, they're shown having a snowball fight.

Bomb

Best of the Web: Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells

Yellowstone
© Mark Thiessen, National GeographicSteam rises from Castle Geyser in Yellowstone National Park
Some places saw the ground rise by ten inches, experts report.

Yellowstone National Park's supervolcano just took a deep "breath," causing miles of ground to rise dramatically, scientists report.

The simmering volcano has produced major eruptions - each a thousand times more powerful than Mount St. Helens's 1980 eruption - three times in the past 2.1 million years. Yellowstone's caldera, which covers a 25- by 37-mile (40- by 60-kilometer) swath of Wyoming, is an ancient crater formed after the last big blast, some 640,000 years ago.

(See "When Yellowstone Explodes" in National Geographic magazine.)

Since then, about 30 smaller eruptions - including one as recent as 70,000 years ago - have filled the caldera with lava and ash, producing the relatively flat landscape we see today.

Eye 1

12 Pelicans Dead, 100 Sick In Mayport

pelican
© news4jax.com

Mayport, Florida -- Bird experts in Jacksonville are trying to figure out what killed a dozen pelicans in Mayport and sickened more than 100 others.

The recent deaths come just weeks after the mysterious deaths of thousands of birds falling from the sky in Arkansas.

Cindy Moseling, who's been caring for and rehabilitating birds at Bird Emergency Aid and Kare Sanctuary on Big Talbot Island for decades, said she has seen her feathered friends die for various reasons, but is especially concerned this time.

Black Cat

Mysterious Bird Deaths Investigated Near Dacono

dead,bird,colorado
© credit: Stacia ShaneDead Bird Found Near Dacono

Dacono, Colorado - Colorado is now on the list of states where birds are mysteriously dying.

CBS4 You Reporter Stacia Shane sent in pictures of dozens of dead birds she found on I-25.

The birds were found near Dacono.

More than one hundred birds were found and most of them were under trees.

Health investigators picked up the birds and will try to determine how they died.