Animals
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Igloo

Guinea: Record cold snap destroys crops, kills hundreds of animals


Reuters
Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:28 UTC
Near-freezing temperatures in north-central Guinea in January destroyed crops and livestock on which thousands of people depend for food as well as cash.

Elderly locals told IRIN they had never seen cold this intense in Mali, a town in Guinea's Labé region.

"The vegetation looks as if it was burned in a fire," Hannibal Barry of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told IRIN from Mali on 19 February during a joint evaluation by UN agencies, local authorities and NGOs.

Temperatures dropped to 1.4 degrees Celsius from 17 to 26 January, according to a preliminary report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP).

The cold wiped out crops - mainly potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, onions and bananas - across five districts in Mali. It is not yet known how many hectares were destroyed, Mamadou Saliou III Diallo, head of agricultural operations at the Mali prefecture, told IRIN after visiting the affected areas.
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Igloo

Fruits freeze, iguanas drop from trees in Freezing Florida


MSNBC
Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:51 UTC
Image
© Wilfredo Lee/APA stunned iguana lies on the sidewalk after having fallen from a tree Wednesday in Surfside, Florida. The non-native species becomes immobilized in the cold.
Tourist beachgoers wrap up as Arctic blast hits so-called Sunshine State

Across the so-called Sunshine State, oranges and strawberries are freezing, icicles are hanging off palm fronds, and iguanas paralyzed by the cold are falling out of trees.

Temperatures have plunged as low as the 20s in recent days, forcing people used to wearing flip-flops year-round to put on earmuffs.

"I am a warm-weather boy. There's no way I'm going out there," laughed Archie Adkins of Pensacola Beach as he pointed at bundled-up beachgoers.
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Compass

San Francisco's famous sea lions relocate to Oregon

Keely Chalmers
KGW.com
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:28 UTC
Thousands of San Francisco's famous sea lions now calling the Oregon Coast home after their mysterious disappearance from San Francisco's famous Pier 39.

Marine experts now believe the sea mammals headed 500 miles north to the Sea Lion Caves near Florence, beginning in October, about the same time San Francisco's population began to dwindle.

Pier 39 is well known for the sea lions that crowd its docks. But those docks are now empty - and the El Nino weather pattern is likely to blame, scientists believe.
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Fish

Great Lakes Threatened by Carp Invasion

Philip Sherwell
The Daily Telegraph
Sat, 09 Jan 2010 13:00 UTC

They are the voracious Asian invaders that have evaded poisoning, lock gates and hi-tech electronic barriers as they penetrated thousands of miles of American rivers and canals, devouring most of the food in their path.

Now the silver and bighead carp, originally imported from Taiwan, face the might of the US Army in a last-ditch effort to prevent them from reaching the largest freshwater system in the world - the Great Lakes and their connecting rivers that straddle the Canadian border.
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Hourglass

Massive octopus kill still a mystery

Lisa Abend
Time
Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:44 UTC
more_dead_octopus
© William Manning / CorbisDead octopuses have been washing up on shore in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal
What is killing the octopus of Vila Nova de Gaia? That question has obsessed the Portuguese city - located just across the Douro River from Porto - since Jan. 2, when 1,100 lb. (500 kg) of dead octopus were found on a 1.8-mile (3 km) stretch of local beach. The following day, another 110 lb. (50 kg) appeared; later there was just one expired creature. "It's very strange that so many should be killed, and in such a confined area," says Nuno Oliveira, director of the Gaia Biological Park, a nature refuge on the outskirts of Vila Nova de Gaia. "There's nothing in the scientific literature for this kind of mass mortality among octopus."

Twelve hundred pounds is a lot of dead cephalopod, especially when no one seems to know for sure what killed them. Local biologists have ruled out pollution or contamination because no other species were affected. And although some suggest that perhaps a boat, illegally fishing the multilegged creatures, threw them overboard in a panicked attempt to avoid detection, that possibility also seems unlikely. "The sea has been very rough," says Oliveira. "No one has been out fishing for days."
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Bizarro Earth

Thousands of dead octopuses wash up on Portugal beach


BBC News
Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:51 UTC
Dead octopus Portugal
© BBC News
Thousands of dead octopuses have washed up on a beach in northern Portugal, in what is being called an environmental disaster.

They cover a 5-mile stretch of Vila Nova de Gaia beach - no reason has yet been found for their appearance.

The authorities have warned the public not to eat them.

Comment: Something is happening in the Atlantic. This doesn't bode well.

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Bulb

Scientists Find Details of Tumors Killing Off Tasmanian Devils

Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:57 UTC
Tasmanian Devil
© Cameron Wells, Walter and Eliza Hall InstituteThis Tasmanian devil, photographed at Healesville Sanctuary, is part of the Save the Devil program that has been established to help protect Australia's Tasmanian devils which are at risk of extinction from devil facial tumor disease.
The facial cancers that are devastating populations of Tasmanian devils in Australia are a nerve tumor that escaped its original host and became a parasite of the cultural icon, passing from one devil to the next by bites when the animals are fighting or mating, researchers reported Thursday.

A genetic analysis of tumors from Tasmanian devils widely separated geographically shows that all the tumors are virtually identical and distinct from the animals' own genomes, researchers in the United States and Australia reported in the journal Science. The tumors probably arose from Schwann cells, which normally play a role in protecting and cushioning nerves.

The analysis provides clues to a way to diagnose the disease early and represents a major step toward the development of a vaccine that could protect the remaining animals in the wild, said biologist Elizabeth P. Murchison of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., and the Australian National University in Canberra, lead author of the paper.
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Fish

Famous San Francisco Sea Lions Leave in Droves

Evelyn Nieves
The Associated Press
Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:09 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Ben MargotTourists watch sea lions on boat docks at Pier 39 in San Francisco.
Two mysteries surround a huge herd of sea lions that were hanging out on a pier in San Francisco Bay: Why did so many show up, and why did so many leave at once?

Just last month, Pier 39, famous in San Francisco for its sea lions and the throngs of tourists they attract, was groaning under the weight of more than 1,500 of the animals. The record number delighted tourists and baffled experts.

Marine experts suspect the sea lions came and stayed for the food, then left largely for the same reason.

"Most likely, they left chasing a food source," said Jeff Boehm, executive director of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, which runs an information center and gift shop at Pier 39. "It's probably what kept them here in the first place."
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Life Preserver

Joy for whale rescuers in Australia after birth of stranded calf

Anne Barrowclough
Times Online
Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:02 UTC
Image
© Alex Simpson/Project Jonah/AFP/Getty ImagesVolunteers try to refloat stranded pilot whales, mainly cows with calves, at Colville Bay
Hundreds of holidaymakers witnessed the birth of a long-finned pilot whale as they struggled to rescue an entire pod stranded on a treacherous beach in New Zealand.

The mother was among 63 whales, mostly cows with calves, that were beached at Colville Bay near Coromandel township early on Sunday. About two thirds of the animals, measuring up to 12ft (3.6m) long, were saved by residents and holidaymakers who kept them wet in the low tide until they could be refloated in the afternoon.

By yesterday a Department of Conservation boat, which had kept close to the pod to ensure that it did not return, reported that the whales were at least 20 miles out to sea, according to Mike Donaghue, a senior adviser at the department.

Ingrid Visser, of the Orca Research Trust charity, watched the calf being born. "It was an amazing sight to see the calf pop like a cork out of the water. We had only just refloated the calf's mother and once the calf was born the cow took it first to the group of whales nearest her, then to the other two. Within 15 minutes she had headed out to sea with the calf and the others had followed her."
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Bizarro Earth

125 Pilot Whales Die on New Zealand Beaches, 43 Saved


The Associated Press
Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:52 UTC
Some 125 pilot whales died in New Zealand after stranding on the beach over the weekend - but vacationers and conservation workers Sunday managed to coax 43 others back out to sea.

Rescuers monitored the survivors as they swam away from Colville Beach on North Island's Coromandel peninsula, and by Monday morning they were reported well out to sea.

Department of Conservation workers and hundreds of volunteers helped re-float the 43 whales at high tide. The volunteers covered the stranded mammals in sheets and kept them wet through the day.

"Some 63 pilot whales stranded ... but it looks pretty good, we've got 43 live ones," Department of Conservation ranger Steve Bolten said as the pod swam out to sea.
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