wildcoast 11 Sep 2007No Comments 181 views Print Email

  Green

Recently hundreds of dead seabirds were found washed ashore dead by Baja Malibu. WiLDCOAST received reports of the mass die-off and helped coordinate the pickup of the dead animals for laboratory tests with the US Department of Fish and Game. Biologists believe the birds are Brandt’s cormorants, a common seabird found off the coast of North America.

Sad sight on Baja California beaches. Do you still want to buy property off the coast of Baja California?

While dead seabirds do wash up on shores occasionally, 78 dead birds were found washed up on less than a mile of beach. In addition the birds were washed ashore in less than eight hours. Past seabird standings have been due to shortages in food off the coasts due to weird weather. Other possible causes include red tide blooms poisoning the animal’s food sources. A disease outbreak could be another possible cause since all the dead birds were the same species.

Seabirds are indicator species of the health of the environment and this is not a very good sign.

Like marine mammals, the health of seabirds is a significant indicator of the health of our oceans. If the ocean ecosystem collapses the predators at the top of the food web suffer the most. Since we are also part of the food chain, we will suffer as well too.

Whatever the case is, this die-off is just another piece of evidence that there is something wrong with our oceans. Massive die-offs such as these are a clear warning that something is very wrong out there. Whether it is due to natural or unnatural causes such as global warming, wastewater runoff, overfishing, etc. there needs to be a real change in the way we treat our oceans. We all have a stake in how we treat the ocean and it’s time we all take responsibility for what’s happening to it.

Calvin Lee

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