12 miles of dead squid wash ashore (Santa Cruz Cty CA)

[struggle4progress]

By Kiet Do

APTOS, Calif. (KPIX/CNN) - Scientists are investigating why several hundred dead squid have washed ashore along California beaches.

The beaches of Santa Cruz County are littered with carcasses of thousands of Humboldt squid. They've stranded themselves from Aptos to Watsonville, a span of 12 miles.

"You just see them essentially killing themselves and it's just really weird to see," said Hannah Rosen with Hopkins Marine Station.

It happened during high tide. Some people actually tried to put them back in the water, but Rosen says the deepwater creatures swam right back to shore ...

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/351801/28/12-miles-of-dead-squid-wash-ashore

[wtmusic]

1. Sounds like a toxic runoff/dumping incident nt

[Nihil]

4. Sounds very likely (unfortunately) ...

... and it's pretty unlikely that they'll be able to identify (much less punish) the culprit.

[2naSalit]

2. I wonder if it has anything to do

with the raft of radioactive stuff that's still working its way over from Japan. But the toxic runoff or maybe some pathogen from all the fish farms or a strange algae bloom. Or acidic ocean conditions... lots of possibilities.

[wtmusic]

5. Not radioactivity, all of the others are possible culprits.

"But now that the first unlikely items have reached us, we're also beginning to worry: Will the debris be radioactive? Will human remains turn up? Will mountains of scrap cover our beaches? One blogger callously suggested the Japanese government should pay for the cleanup.

Such reactions reveal a torrent of misconception.

First, there is no giant carpet of items making its way across the ocean. Immediately after the disaster, there were large rafts of debris — roofs and lumber and upturned boats clustered together — but these rapidly broke up. Just five weeks after the tsunami, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration monitors reported that debris fields could no longer be detected by satellite.

The debris is now dispersed across an area more than 4,500 miles long, and, according to Jan Hafner of the International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii, it's "very sparse, very patchy."

Experts also say the debris is not likely to be radioactive. Most of the material entered the sea days before the Fukushima reactor started leaking radioactive water. A 20-foot-long Japanese boat discovered floating north of Midway Atoll last fall contained no traces of radiation. As for human remains coming ashore? Possible but highly unlikely, according to Washington state officials."

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/27/opinion/la-oe-mcfarling-tsunami-debris-20120527

[staffjam]

7. 2

I don't think we need to look as far as Japan - god only knows what's dumped in the oceans nowadays.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

3. a whale beached itself at Malibu yesterday

not sure if it was already dead. I expect we'll see more.

[oldhippie]

6. The story variously says several hundred, thousands, and "12 miles" ......

... of squids. Gawd, what awful "journalism."

In any case, it's a sure sign of the impending Apocalypse. (I'll bet there were actually 666.)

[AtheistCrusader]

8. cthulhu is rising.