Earth ChangesS


Fish

Hundreds of dead fish surface in Kings River fishing spot, California

Rick Montanez
abclocal.go.com
Wed, 29 Jan 2014 04:02 UTC
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Hundreds of dead fish are surfacing in a popular fishing spot in the Kings River. The dead fish began showing up earlier this week. California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials think it may be something missing from the water.

Several clusters of dead, decomposing carp line a segment of the Kings River south of Stratford. The rotting fish are leaving a strong, disgusting odor in the air.

Tony Gonzalez and his nephew picked a different spot to fish Wednesday, after finding the fish kill. They say the area is very popular to catch fish year round.

The dead fish began getting attention after a video posted to YouTube. Chango Thao was stunned to see so many fish just floating on the surface of the water. He recorded the video to show his fishing buddies. "Oh, it was horrible," Thao said. "Just the stench of it, I couldn't stick around too long. Getting home I still smelled it in my nose, seriously."
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Bizarro Earth

Mysterious undersea 'crop circles' finally explained

Nadia Drake
Wired.com
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 15:34 UTC
Undersea crop circles
© Jacob T. JohansenUndersea crop circles spotted off the coast of Denmark.
Mysterious undersea circles spotted off the coast of Denmark are not the work of aliens, or spiders. Or alien spiders, unfortunately. Rather, the rings are the result of poisonous sulfides tucked into the mud coating the seafloor.

Photos of the underwater rings first surfaced in 2008. Since then, people have compared the mysterious things to crop circles or fairy rings - those enchanting little fungal designs that can sometimes spring up on your lawn. But nobody knew what the aquatic rings were, or why they were there. Some of them measured nearly 50 feet across - were they World War II-era bomb craters?

In 2011, scientists determined that the rings themselves were made of eelgrass, a native type of seagrass that hosts small fish and other crustaceans.
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Bizarro Earth

Decapitated silver sea blob washes up in the Philippines

Rie Takumi/VC
GMA News
Sat, 25 Jan 2014 19:08 UTC
Like the unholy offspring of a giant squid and a mollusk without its shell, a mysterious creature washed up the shore of a village in Aparri, Cagayan Thursday, prompting residents to seek help - and take pictures.

24 Oras showed pictures of the silver creature on the beach decomposing, fraying at the ends, and absolutely headless.


At five to six meters long, the creature was never weighed; it is now buried under the sand it was found in, after two days of residents enduring its rotten stench.

In a phone interview with GMA News Online, Leonarda Labugen of Region II's Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) said the creature had been stewing in the ocean for a week before washing up on Aparri's shores. Its prolonged decomposition, she said, made it necessary for the local government and BFAR to bury its corpse.

She said there was no time to take samples from the corpse, though a technical report is due to be issued within the week.
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Fish

More than 500 deep-sea lanternfish, squid found dead or dying in Hawaii


Star Advertiser
Wed, 29 Jan 2014 21:02 UTC
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© Susan ScottLantern fish are food for whales and other creatures.
Between 500 and 800 lanternfish and squid were found dead or dying in the Nawiliwili Harbor area on Monday, prompting in investigation by state and federal officials into what caused the die-off.

The lanternfish and squid are typically found in the deep ocean, but are also known for their nightly vertical migrations to shallower depths, the Department of Land and Natural Resources said in a press release issued today.
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Snowflake Cold

A pro trucker's guide to navigating the snow

Alan Wrobel
Esquire
Wed, 29 Jan 2014 08:00 UTC
This is how you drive 810,000 miles across 45 states and one Canadian province without ever getting in an accident. Here are his tips. Inertia is everything.

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© Getty images

In eight years as a truck driver, Alan Wrobel has driven 810,000 miles (accident-free) in 45 states and Ontario. He now covers Ohio, Michigan, Ontario, and Wisconsin for a beverage distributor. Here's his advice on how to handle yourself when the snow starts falling:

When you face a nasty winter storm, use your best judgment. Don't go out unless you have to, and always make sure you have an emergency kit, warm blankets, and rations in the car.

Now, here are some tips, basic and advanced, to help ensure you won't need to use that emergency kit.
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Bizarro Earth

Yellowstone geyser erupts for first time in years

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 13:59 UTC
Giantess Geyser
© Bill WhetstoneGiantess Geyser erupts on the morning of Jan. 30, 2014, after starting the day before. The photographer was about 600 yards away from the geyser.
Yellowstone National Park's Giantess Geyser is erupting for the first time in two-and-a-half years, park rangers said today.

The usually quiet geyser is shooting off bursts of water that reach 50 feet (15 meters) into the air, said Annie Carlson, the supervisory park ranger at the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center. Giantess Geyser is nearby the more famous Old Faithful, but it is far less regular.

"We don't know when it will stop, and we don't know when it will go again in the future," Carlson told Live Science's Our Amazing Planet.

Sleeping giantess

There are more than 500 geysers in Yellowstone. Geysers occur when geothermally heated water gets trapped and pressurized in underground hot springs. The recurrence rate of geyser eruptions varies wildly.

Old Faithful erupts, on average, every 92 minutes, according to the National Park Service, though the exact timing varies between every 35 minutes and every 120 minutes. It shoots water 90 to 184 feet (27-55 m) into the air.

Yellowstone also boasts the world's tallest active geyser, the Steamboat Geyser. It has a major eruption only rarely, but when it does, the water rises as high as 300 feet (90 m).

Giantess is another infrequent erupter. It averages two to three episodes per year, with as many as 41 per year in the 1980s, Carlson said, but in recent years has slowed down, perhaps as a result of small earthquakes that continuously rearrange the underground plumbing of the park's geysers. The last time Giantess erupted was Sept. 13, 2011.
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Attention

Best of the Web: Dead whales are showing up bringing us a message the entire world should see

R & S
xposethereal.com
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 10:39 UTC
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More people are starting to look at what we've done to this planet, especially since the birth of the technological revolution. Our oceans have been suffering for a very long time, with countless oil spills and toxic waste dumped into them every single day from industrial practices and more. Despite having numerous ways to operate in a fashion that is more harmonious with the planet, we continue to choose to destroy our planet on a daily basis, and we can't afford to do that anymore. Despite how much our planet is suffering, people everyday are starting wake up and realize that we really do need to look at, question, and change the way we operate here on planet Earth. This shift in perception alone can help springboard us towards change, and creating a new experience for us and other beings who we share the planet with.

Whales have been showing up dead on multiple beaches, bringing us a message with stomachs full of plastic. This has happened multiple times. In the summer of july 2013, a sperm whale was stranded on Tershelling, a Northern island in the Netherlands. The whale swallowed 56 different plastic items that totalled over 37 pounds. In april 2010, a gray whale died after stranding itself on a West Seattle beach, it was found to have over 20 plastic bags, small towels, surgical gloves, plastic pieces, duct tape, and more in its system. In March of 2013 a dead sperm whale washed up on Spain's South coast which swallowed 17kg of plastic waste.
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Attention

Rare whale species found dead on Cornish beach, UK


news.uk.msn.com
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 10:16 UTC
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A rare beaked whale has been found on a Cornish beach - only the second time the species has been recorded in the UK.

The Blainville's whale, usually found in temperate and tropical waters, was discovered stranded on Kenneggy Beach, near Praa Sands.

Records from 1913 show the only other Blainville's beaked whale to reach UK shores was at Aberaeron in West Wales in 1993.

However, experts believe Blainville's will start stranding more frequently in Britain as water temperatures increase due to climate change.

A member of the public reported the stranding to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust Marine Strandings Network as a porpoise on December 30 2013.

But when the Network's data officer, Niki Clear, received photographs of the animal, measuring 3.8m (12ft 5in) long, she recognised it as an elusive Blainville.
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Attention

Dead pilot whale removed from Chatham beach, Massachusetts


wcvb.com
Wed, 29 Jan 2014 10:25 UTC
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© Cape Cod Times/Merrily Cassid
Necropsy planned for 3,000 lb. animal

A dead pilot whale was removed with heavy equipment from a Cape Cod beach on Wednesday.

The whale stranded on Hardings Beach in Chatham on Monday. Researchers tried unsuccessfully to return the whale to the water, but ultimately, it had to be euthanized.

IFAW officials said the 18-foot whale weighed about 3,000 pounds.

According to IFAW, pilot whale strandings are not uncommon on Cape Cod. Generally when a single whale comes ashore, it is likely sick or injured, IFAW said.

International Fund for Animal Welfare researchers brought the animal to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for a necropsy.
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Cloud Precipitation

UK weather: wettest January since records began

Alice Philipson
The Telegraph, UK
Thu, 30 Jan 2014 09:57 UTC
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Parts of southern England have seen the wettest January since records began in 1910, statistics from the Met Office show.

Large swathes of the country from East Devon to Kent and inland across parts of the Midlands have already seen twice the average rainfall for the month.

More than 175.2mm has fallen between January 1 and 28 this year in the South East and Central Southern England, beating the previous record of 158.2 mm set in January 1988.

Rainfall in South West England - where villages have been left devastated by persistant flooding since Christmas - and South Wales, reached 222.6 mm this month - making January 2014 the fifth wettest on record and the wettest since 1995, when 224.4 mm fell.

It comes just a day after the Government agreed to send the Army into Somerset amid fears of a further storm on Friday.

On Wednesday, following a meeting of the Cabinet Office's emergency Cobra committee, Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, agreed to send in the army to help families hit by the flooding on the Somerset levels.
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