Animals
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Igloo

Ice Age Cometh: Snowy Owl invasion coming in North America?

Scott Kruitbosch
rtpi.org
Wed, 27 Nov 2013 06:41 UTC
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Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus) are one of the most magnificent and well-recognized species on the entire planet. This would be part of the reason why we chose them to be our new logo, and the Snowy pictured within it is adapted from Roger Tory Peterson's "Arctic Glow". As a raptor lover in general they are one of my favorites, and living on the Connecticut coast for nearly my entire life I had the chance to enjoy them during fall and winter seasons as Roger did throughout his as he often lived and worked in the same areas.

After seeing a sudden burst of eBird entries and list serv reports of Snowy Owls across southern Canada and the upper United States in the last week I could not resist commenting on them on Facebook and Twitter yesterday. When I did I got a tremendous reaction from excited people contacting me telling me they would be looking for them or sharing photos of birds they had seen in the last few days. Here's a screen capture of the eBird map of Snowy Owls for November 2013 as of today.

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Cloud Lightning

Hundreds of dead seabirds wash ashore on Alaska island in Bering Sea

Alex Demarban
Alaska Dispatch
Tue, 26 Nov 2013 15:27 UTC
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© Joanne Goldby / cc via flickrThe common murre was among the species of dead seabirds that recently washed ashore on St. Lawrence Island.

Nature's cold brutality apparently marked hundreds -- and perhaps thousands -- of seabirds for death following storms that slammed into Western Alaska earlier this month and littered stretches of St. Lawrence Island with the carcasses of crested auklets, murres, ducks and other birds.

Facebook alarmists feared Fukushima radiation was to blame for the deaths that began appearing last week, but an expert said the island between Russia and the Alaska mainland is too far north for that to be possible. And Savoonga residents who walked the beaches to calculate the carnage said they're convinced this fall's powerful winter storms are the real culprit.

Residents in the village of Gambell -- about 40 miles west of Savoonga on the island -- also found dead birds near their village, said Peter Bente, a wildlife biologist with the state Fish and Game.
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Info

16 migrating dolphins wash up dead in northeast Florida


NBC Miami
Wed, 27 Nov 2013 14:37 UTC
Dead dolphins were found on beaches from Volusia County to Jacksonville between Saturday and Monday.

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© SeaWorldWildlife officials say at least 16 dead dolphins have washed up on northeast Florida beaches.
Wildlife officials say at least 16 dead dolphins have washed up on northeast Florida beaches.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported dead dolphins were found on beaches from Volusia County to Jacksonville between Saturday and Monday.

Volusia County Beach Safety and Ocean Rescue spokeswoman Tammy Marris says five dolphins were collected Monday, including two in Volusia County. She says the water was "pretty rough" because of high winds in the area.

In addition, NOAA fisheries spokeswoman Allison Garrett says 11 other dolphins were recovered over the weekend.

Federal officials fear the morbillivirus would make its way to Florida as dolphins migrate south. Garrett says all the dolphins found over the weekend appeared to have symptoms of the virus.
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Attention

Giant deepwater oarfish washing up on California shores: Harbingers of death!

TheKajaMartin
Youtube
Thu, 07 Nov 2013 14:24 UTC
Rare Giant Oarfish are washing up on California shores. Now, according to the Japanese, these fish are warnings of impending earthquakes! Which California is definitely past due for!


Comment: See also:

Waiting for the big one: giant oarfish start shock waves in LA

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Fish

Against the advice of experts, Canada approves world's first genetically modified salmon destined for consumption in the U.S.

Marco Torres
Prevent Disease
Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:18 UTC
It seems the level of corruption at the hands of politicians and power hungry investors is no different in Canada than anywhere else in the world. Environment Canada has approved the commercial production of GM Atlantic salmon eggs which grow to market-size twice as fast as other farmed salmon. The biotech company responsible, Aquabounty, has revealed that it is no longer asking for approval to grow the fish in the US but plans to produce all of the GM salmon eggs in Canada and then sell "table-ready" GM salmon into the US consumer market. It is an alarming decision that sets Canada up to be the source of global environmental risk, says the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network.
GMO Salmon
© PreventDisease
A U.S. company who has lobbied to commercially produce genetically modified salmon eggs in Canada says it has cleared a major hurdle in its proposal to make the fish available for human consumption, a possibility that has critics worried about the prospect of "frankenfish" escaping and endangering wild Atlantic salmon around the world.

The Environment Canada approval is the first government approval for the company AquaBounty. The company has asked for approval of the GM Atlantic salmon for human consumption in the U.S., based on a plan to produce the GM fish eggs in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada and ship them to Panama for grow-out and processing.

"We're devastated that Prince Edward Island is now officially the home of the Frankenfish," said Leo Broderick of the Prince Edward Island (PEI) group called Islanders Say No to Frankenfish, "We don't want our Island to be the source of this dangerous living pollution."
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Bizarro Earth

Fisherman hooks monster skate off Miami Beach

Liz Fields
ABC News
Tue, 26 Nov 2013 06:00 UTC
Giant Skate
© ABC News
A Florida fisherman who hooked an 800-pound deep sea beast in the waters off Miami Beach says the mysterious fish was like "a dinosaur."

Captain Mark Quartiano, a charter boat operator who also goes by "Mark the Shark," is seen grinning next to his fearsome catch in an Instagram photo he posted over the weekend.

"I've caught one like it before, but never that size, not in the last 30 years I've been doing this," Quartiano told ABC News. "It's a very rare fish. It's like a big gigantic whipping stingray. It's a dinosaur."

The monster is better known as a Dactylobatus clarkii, a deep sea species also referred to as "hookskate" or "fingerskate." It inhabits muddy sea depths of up to 1,000 feet.
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Attention

Fukushima legacy? 'Lots of sea birds washing up dead' in Alaska


enenews.com
Sat, 23 Nov 2013 12:23 UTC
Savoonga, Alaska, Nov. 20, 2013 (h/t Facebook tip): 'Lots of sea birds washing up dead'

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Butterfly

The year the Monarch didn't appear

Jim Robbins
New York Times
Fri, 22 Nov 2013 15:00 UTC
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© Micah Lidberg
On the first of November, when Mexicans celebrate a holiday called the Day of the Dead, some also celebrate the millions of monarch butterflies that, without fail, fly to the mountainous fir forests of central Mexico on that day. They are believed to be souls of the dead, returned.

This year, for or the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn't come, at least not on the Day of the Dead. They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year's low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.

"It does not look good," said Lincoln P. Brower, a monarch expert at Sweet Briar College.

It is only the latest bad news about the dramatic decline of insect populations.

Another insect in serious trouble is the wild bee, which has thousands of species. Nicotine-based pesticides called neonicotinoids are implicated in their decline, but even if they were no longer used, experts say, bees, monarchs and many other species of insect would still be in serious trouble.
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Eye 2

Venomous snake bites sleeping girl in bed in China


Global Times
Sun, 24 Nov 2013 11:21 UTC
A 12-year-old girl has been hospitalized in Chongqing after a poisonous snake crawled into her bed and bit her as she slept on November 21.

"The doctors said it takes at least six days to work all the venom from her body," said the parent Hu Xiaoming.

The girl woke with a scream as she slept with her grandmother that night in Tongji village, Dianjiang county, who soon discovered the girl was bleeding from her right wrist.

Hu explained the next morning they found a brown snake about 60 centimeters in length coiled under their bed, which by that time the girl's hand had become completely swollen. Four distinct teeth marks were also visible.

According to Huang Yongzhao, an animal expert with Chongqing Museum of Natural History, a warm bed can be quite attractive to a snake looking to hibernate as winter approaches.

The report failed to identify the species of snake.
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Question

The Cookii monster: Huge deadly pink jellyfish rediscovered 100 years after it was last seen off the Australian coast

Sarah Griffiths
The Daily Mail, UK
Fri, 22 Nov 2013 11:35 UTC
  • The incredibly rare jellyfish was discovered off the coast of Queensland, Australia, by an aquarist who was releasing a rescued sea turtle at the time
  • The creature, called a Crambione Cookii, was last seen by American scientist Alfred Gainsborough Mayor off the coast of Cookstown, Queensland, in 1910
  • Not much is known about the mysterious creature, which measures more than two feet long and has a powerful sting
A jellyfish with a powerfully toxic sting has been rediscovered more than 100 years after the last recorded sighting of it.

The incredibly rare Crambione Cookii has not been seen since 1910 but has been recently spotted off the coast of Queensland, Australia, where it was captured.

Not much is known about the mysterious species, which measures 50cm long and has a sting so powerful that it can be felt in the water surrounding the creature.

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The incredibly rare Crambione Cookii has not been seen since 1910 but has been rediscovered off the coast of Queensland, Australia, where it was captured
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