Pacific Oceasheries populations have crashed 91 percent
(NaturalNews) With environmentalists and activists still reeling and trying to remedy the chemical annihilation of pollinator populations, they now have a new crisis to manage and investigate to prevent another important ecosystem from crashing — the West Coast fisheries.
Earlier this week, Michael Snyder sent an urgent warning that the bottom of our food chain is going through a massive collapse, with 91% of the sardine population being wiped out in just the last eight years. Due to the extremity of the decline, the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to direct the NOAA Fisheries service to halt the current season immediately, which will affect approximately 100 fishing boats with sardine permits.
Like colony collapse disorder, this is not a simple matter of managing a minor problem so that the ecosystem and benefits related to it can be enjoyed in the future. This is a NOW issue, which was reflected by the emergency closure of fisheries along the West Coast in mid-April.
Furthermore, this is not just an issue of seeing your next can of sardines explode in price. With such a dramatic change in this part of the food chain, it undoubtedly reverberates through all other creatures that are affected by the sardine population. This includes predators like the California sea lion as well as microscopic organisms that sardines feed on like various species of zooplankton.
It has been estimated that 90% of this year’s class of sea lion pups are starving due to a lack of sardines to eat. A record 2,250 sea lions, mostly pups, have washed up starving and stranded in Southern California, a 20-fold increase in the level of strandings averaged for the same three-month period over the past decade, and twice the number documented in 2013, the previous worst winter season recorded for Southern California sea lions.
Scientists blaming warm “blob”
Even more concerning, scientists appear to be baffled by the current phenomena unfolding in the Pacific ocean, or simply are not allowed to disclose the real reason behind these massive die offs. What they do know is that a 1,000-mile stretch of the Pacific Ocean has warmed up by several degrees (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit), and this giant warm “blob” was first identified in late 2013 and has been wreaking havoc with our climate and ocean population ever since.
For some, the knee-jerk reaction would indicate that this is the result of climate change and the cyclical shifts that occur regularly throughout the earth’s history. With these types of shifts come massive migrations and species die-offs.
However, there is also another glaring suspect that one could reasonably assume has caused these populations to die off and has caused such a significant warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean — Fukushima radiation.
As one contributor at ENEnews.com suggested, we need to place our attention directly on the recent Fukushima disaster and the inaction that has caused the poisoning of the Pacific Ocean to go unmitigated:
We have three cores melted out of their reactor buildings, lost in the mudrock and sandstone, which we have failed to locate and mitigate. We have an underground river running under the ruins, which we have failed to divert around the reactors. We have three empty reactors, containing nothing but corium splatter left when they blew up and melted out. We have the Pacific Ocean Ecosystem, which we have stressed beyond endurance, through ocean dumping, over fishing, agricultural runoff, and now unrestricted radiation. We have the sudden collapse of the Pacific Ocean Ecosystem, with a threatened collapse of the biosphere. We continue to allow corporate and governmental inaction. What in [the] hell did you think was going to happen?
Disturbingly, no one seems to want to talk publicly about this eyesore and its potential contribution to the current disaster unfolding in the Pacific Ocean, and even its ripple effects on other areas of day-to-day life on land. Keep in mind that the warm blob identified by scientists also means that winter air that crosses over the Pacific Ocean wasn’t cooled as much as it should have been, which in turn spelled warmer, dryer conditions for the West Coast.
So now this phenomenon is cramping the style not just of seafood lovers but also of those who enjoy food crops grown on land. With a drought in California becoming even more severe in recent years, produce lovers are also feeling the pinch, and it soon may trickle down to basic conveniences like morning showers.
Will scientists start to open up about the domino effect that Fukushima has had on our ecosystems and make a commitment to admitting and mitigating the problem, or will they continue their fishy behavior and blame it solely on climate change?
Only time will tell, but in the meantime, be prepared to pay for it while they figure it out.
Sources:
http://endoftheamericandream.com
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/049446_Pacific_Ocean_fisheries_Fukushima_radiation.html#ixzz3YSYyPOwc
Image source: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/32605
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