Dead birds: A volcano and a point cause mass death
In 2013, short-tailed dead shear water appeared en masse on the east coast of Australia. Later, it was also washed by the sea on the shores of Lord Howe Island and even New Zealand. All in all, zoologists have estimated the number of driven animals as three million specimens. Countless others remained dead at sea. Lauren Roman of CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere in Hobart and her team presented a study in the “Marine Ecology Progress Series”Which links the death of animals to two catastrophic events in the Pacific Ocean.
Early in 2013, biologists determined that the seabirds that had been found were in ruins. Many were so weak that they did not even eat the food provided by the rescuers to the animals and died quickly. In addition to the shear waters, there were also other debris on the beaches that caught the attention of Scott Brian, who was co-author of the study: The shoreline was littered with volcanic pumice, a light and thriving material with many gas-filled pores so it doesn’t sink. After volcanic eruptions under the sea, thick carpets can spread over the sea, which has already misled some sailors – they were afraid to run to islands or coral reefs that were not marked on the map.
An autopsy of 172 corpses collected showed that nearly all animals had previously eaten pumice. Some samples even contained more than 30 fragments. At the same time, the shear water had barely any muscle mass, which was also a sign of a lack of food. Short-tailed shear waters migrate every year from the wintering regions of the Bering Sea, where they spend summers in the Northern Hemisphere, to the waters around Tasmania and between Australia and New Zealand to breed there. Undernourished seabirds have arrived from the Winter Area, only to find pumice carpets in the breeding area.
In fact, a volcano erupted northeast of New Zealand’s coast in 2012, and eruption drifted into seabird feeding areas in time, Brian discovered. But that does not explain why the arrival of shear waters in the South Pacific is already so weak. However, biologist Roman already has an explanation for this: Before the birds erupted, hot water dominated the Bering Sea in the northern Pacific Ocean, the so-called point – a clear warm-water bubble that occurred frequently in recent years and is causing mass extinctions at the site for birds. Marine and hungry marine mammals.
Fortunately, no such disaster has occurred off Australia since 2013. Roman told the Guardian. During the last breeding season, the mowing waters arrived well fed in the south.
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