‘There’s a really high likelihood that the pack is just gone altogether’
Underwater camera captured ‘a wasteland, covered in brown sediment.’
Major sea lice epidemics have erupted on Atlantic salmon fish farms on Vancouver Island’s west coast over the last three months, according to industry, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and independent reports.
Scientists are baffled by a wave of whale deaths - which saw more carcasses wash up on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland in the past month than in the previous decade.
Salmon rivers like the Exploits River were closed to anglers around the province by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans earlier this week because of low water levels.
The counts of fall Chinook at Bonneville Dam are 29 percent below preseason forecasts, and ongoing fisheries are approaching the allowable catch limits under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The Kootenay populations, a fixture on the landscape for thousands of years, succumbed to industrial disturbances and other human activity in their critical habitat.
Researchers say their absence is a stark reminder that the orcas are slowly starving to death because there is not enough Chinook salmon to sustain them.
Air quality index at 12 times US government-recommended level and visibility low
Ecologist fears the Macleay River may take decades to recover, with heavy rains likely to affect other waterways
Biologists struggle to single out a leading cause of the caribou population’s decline. Increased wolf predation, changed migration patterns and climate warming affecting food sources can all influence the herd. “It’s going to be another rough winter again this year without caribou,” Selawik resident Norma Ballot said.
More than 1,000 domestic poultry and hundreds of wild birds have died or needed to be euthanized in the state since early spring. Since the first case of a deadly strain of avian flu was detected in Alaska in May, more than 1,000 domestic poultry and hundreds of wild birds have died or needed to be euthanized.
A second whale has been found dead floating in the middle of Turnagain Arm, just two weeks after a juvenile humpback whale was found dead on the Arm after stranding itself twice.
Carcasses examined so far have shown no indication of disease, and tests are pending for harmful algal toxins. Seabirds have been found emaciated and starved, and changed ocean conditions may have affected prey.
A pilot first spotted the whale last week. What caused the whale’s death isn’t yet known.
The beluga had a ruptured intestine probably related to parasites, which were found in the whale’s abdomen, lungs and kidneys, Burek said. The parasites likely led to an entanglement within a section of the intestines, leading it to rupture. “Very unusual,” Burek said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
A total of 94 brown bears, five black bears and five wolves were killed in the program that began May 10 and ended June 4, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said this week. That’s more than four times the number biologists predicted would be taken. State biologists also say disease and changing food supplies might be a bigger factor overall.
Reports are coming in about hundreds of dead birds from Hammerfest in the west to Murmansk in the east. A zone with a radius of five kilometers is closed and guards are in place round-the-clock.
A moose that was killed in Teller last week had been infected with rabies, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game confirmed.
Village wildlife observers worry that the unusual warmth of oceans off Alaska is causing problems throughout the ecosystem.
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