"Texas dolphin die-off puzzles scientists"

[Petey of Lone Tree]

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1931699220070320?

DALLAS (Reuters) - The stranding deaths of about 60 bottlenose dolphins on Texas beaches over the past three weeks has puzzled researchers and is a cause for concern during the calving season, a senior scientist said on Monday.

"This is the calving season so we often have strandings at this time of the year. It's tough to be an air-breather born in the water," said Dr. Daniel F. Cowan, professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

"But over the last few weeks we have had about 3 to 4 times the usual mortality," he told Reuters.

Most of the carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, suggesting that they were carried to Texas beaches from areas further off or up the shore.

Suspected causes include parasites, an outbreak of infectious diseases or red tide, an algal bloom prompted by fertilizers or other excess nutrients.

Most of the dolphins have been too decomposed for a necropsy -- the animal version of an autopsy -- and so volunteers have been burying them on the beaches.

Several of the dolphins which have washed up on shore have been young with umbilical cords still attached.

 

[stardust]

They don't mention an other possibility which is more and more suspected in this kind of collective death : the military's sonars for what the dolphins and whales are hypersensitives. But it is more the case when they beach voluntarily.
If the navy was on manoeuvres near the area, it could be a track.

 

[Petey of Lone Tree]

From the Navy Times:
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/03/ntsonar070316/

PETA urges Navy to end active sonar tests

By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Mar 16, 2007 11:45:26 EDT

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent an open letter to Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter on Thursday urging him to end Navy sonar testing, which it claims afflicts marine mammals so much that they beach and kill themselves.

“Evidence continues to mount linking sonar tests to many whale strandings around the world, and therefore, it’s time for the Navy to discontinue these deadly tests, scrap plans for a sonar-training range near Camp Lejeune, and develop a sonar system that detects enemy vessels without harming innocent animals,ᾠ wrote Stephanie Boyles, a PETA wildlife biologist.

But the Navy insists it has to train with sonar to maintain combat readiness in a time of international tensions, Adm. Gary Roughead, commander of the Pacific Fleet, told the Honolulu Advertiser earlier this month.

“The number of sophisticated submarines is growing in the Pacific,ᾠ he said. “They are quieter, and more difficult to detect. Active sonar is our most effective detection method. We must be able to train using that system if we are able to operate against these increasingly quiet and deadly submarines.ᾠ

Animal rights and environmental groups have long campaigned for the Navy to abandon its exercises with low-frequency active sonar, but Thursday’s letter was prompted by the case of a specific whale that died after beaching itself last week on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. PETA cited damage to the animal’s ears and blamed Navy sonar drills that took place in the area earlier in the month.

The Navy announced in February that it wouldn’t comply with rules on sonar use imposed by the California Costal Commission because that commission didn’t have the authority to regulate federally controlled waters. And in 2002, the Navy accepted blame for the deaths of seven marine mammals after it experimented with low-frequency sonar tests in the Bahamas.

 

[anart]

The military won't stop or self-police it's actions when innocent human beings die every day --- Peta thinks they're even going to think twice about animal deaths???

But, yeah, sonar is a likely culprit in the marine animal deaths - Earth is just a paradise these days, isn't it?

 

[JGeropoulas]

It also may be the effects of the shifting of the magnetic poles, and with that, the shifting of the entire magnetic grid surrounding earth, by which many animals navigate (e.g. birds, and whales, also prone to beaching themselves ).

 

[gangstalking]

It also may be the effects of the shifting of the magnetic poles, and with that, the shifting of the entire magnetic grid surrounding earth, by which many animals navigate (e.g. birds, and whales, also prone to beaching themselves ).

I was hoping to find a thread examining this theory more. I found a great article here about bats dying off in the thousands, and they also use the earth's magnetic poles for navigation. I have seen a few seperate posts, and was not sure if I should start a brand new post on this topic. However I would love to see it discussed. The effects a possible pole shift would have, on animals, mammals and insects that use the poles for navigation, and how it would affect our internal, or their internal clocks and could this be causing some of the dye off's that we have been seeing with, birds, bees, frogs, bats, dolphins, and other creatures.