The Energy Mix

Top Menu

  • About
  • Latest Digest/Archive
  • Partners
  • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Contact

Main Menu

  • News Archive by Category
    • Climate & Society
      • Carbon Levels & Measurement
      • Carbon-Free Transition
      • Climate Action/”Blockadia”
      • Climate Denial & Greenwashing
      • Climate Policy/Meetings/Negotiations
      • Culture, Curiosities, & Humour
      • Demographics
      • Energy Politics
      • Energy Subsidies
      • Energy/Carbon Pricing & Economics
      • Finance & Investment
      • First Peoples
      • Insurance & Liability
      • International Agencies & Studies
      • Jobs & Training
      • Legal & Regulatory
      • Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion
      • Methane
      • Travel, Leisure & Recreation
    • Climate Impacts & Adaptation
      • Biodiversity & Habitat
      • Drought, Famine & Wildfires
      • Food Security
      • Forests & Deforestation
      • Health & Safety
      • Heat & Temperature
      • Human Rights & Migration
      • Ice Loss & Sea Level Rise
      • International Security & War
      • Severe Storms & Flooding
      • Soil & Natural Sequestration
      • Water
    • Demand & Distribution
      • Air & Marine
      • Auto & Alternative Vehicles
      • Batteries/Storage
      • Buildings
      • Cities
      • Electricity Grid
      • Energy Access & Equity
      • Off-Grid
      • Petrochemicals & Plastics
      • Supply Chains & Consumption
      • Transit
      • Walking & Biking
    • Jurisdictions
      • Africa
      • Arctic & Antarctica
      • Asia
      • Australia
      • Brazil
      • Canada
      • China
      • Europe
      • India
      • International
      • Mexico, Caribbean & Latin America
      • Middle East
      • Oceans
      • Small Island States
      • South & Central America
      • Sub-National Governments
      • United States
    • Non-Renewable Energy
      • CCS & Negative Emissions
      • Coal
      • Nuclear
      • Oil & Gas
      • Pipelines/Rail Transport
      • Shale & Fracking
      • Tar Sands/Oil Sands
    • Opinion & Analysis
    • Renewable Energy
      • Bioenergy
      • Demand & Efficiency
      • General Renewables
      • Geothermal
      • Hydrogen
      • Hydropower
      • Research & Development
      • Solar
      • Wave & Tidal
      • Wind
  • Special Reports
    • Alberta’s Bitumen Pipe Dream
    • Canada’s Drive to Net Zero
    • Carbon Farming
    • City and Sub-National Action
    • Drawdown
    • Drive to 1.5
    • 26-Week Climate Transition Program for Canada
    • America’s Electoral Climate 2020
    • Canada’s Climate Change Election 2019
    • The Energy Mix Yearbook 2018
      • Climate Extremes
      • Fossils Go For Broke
      • Renewables (R)Evolution
      • Electric Vehicles
      • Canada’s Contradiction
      • COP24
      • Pipeline Politics
      • Jobs and Just Transition
      • Cities and Sub-Nationals
      • Finance and Divestment
      • Climate Litigation
  • Webinars & Podcasts
  • About
  • Latest Digest/Archive
  • Partners
  • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Donate

logo

  • News Archive by Category
    • Climate & Society
      • Carbon Levels & Measurement
      • Carbon-Free Transition
      • Climate Action/”Blockadia”
      • Climate Denial & Greenwashing
      • Climate Policy/Meetings/Negotiations
      • Culture, Curiosities, & Humour
      • Demographics
      • Energy Politics
      • Energy Subsidies
      • Energy/Carbon Pricing & Economics
      • Finance & Investment
      • First Peoples
      • Insurance & Liability
      • International Agencies & Studies
      • Jobs & Training
      • Legal & Regulatory
      • Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion
      • Methane
      • Travel, Leisure & Recreation
    • Climate Impacts & Adaptation
      • Biodiversity & Habitat
      • Drought, Famine & Wildfires
      • Food Security
      • Forests & Deforestation
      • Health & Safety
      • Heat & Temperature
      • Human Rights & Migration
      • Ice Loss & Sea Level Rise
      • International Security & War
      • Severe Storms & Flooding
      • Soil & Natural Sequestration
      • Water
    • Demand & Distribution
      • Air & Marine
      • Auto & Alternative Vehicles
      • Batteries/Storage
      • Buildings
      • Cities
      • Electricity Grid
      • Energy Access & Equity
      • Off-Grid
      • Petrochemicals & Plastics
      • Supply Chains & Consumption
      • Transit
      • Walking & Biking
    • Jurisdictions
      • Africa
      • Arctic & Antarctica
      • Asia
      • Australia
      • Brazil
      • Canada
      • China
      • Europe
      • India
      • International
      • Mexico, Caribbean & Latin America
      • Middle East
      • Oceans
      • Small Island States
      • South & Central America
      • Sub-National Governments
      • United States
    • Non-Renewable Energy
      • CCS & Negative Emissions
      • Coal
      • Nuclear
      • Oil & Gas
      • Pipelines/Rail Transport
      • Shale & Fracking
      • Tar Sands/Oil Sands
    • Opinion & Analysis
    • Renewable Energy
      • Bioenergy
      • Demand & Efficiency
      • General Renewables
      • Geothermal
      • Hydrogen
      • Hydropower
      • Research & Development
      • Solar
      • Wave & Tidal
      • Wind
  • Special Reports
    • Alberta’s Bitumen Pipe Dream
    • Canada’s Drive to Net Zero
    • Carbon Farming
    • City and Sub-National Action
    • Drawdown
    • Drive to 1.5
    • 26-Week Climate Transition Program for Canada
    • America’s Electoral Climate 2020
    • Canada’s Climate Change Election 2019
    • The Energy Mix Yearbook 2018
      • Climate Extremes
      • Fossils Go For Broke
      • Renewables (R)Evolution
      • Electric Vehicles
      • Canada’s Contradiction
      • COP24
      • Pipeline Politics
      • Jobs and Just Transition
      • Cities and Sub-Nationals
      • Finance and Divestment
      • Climate Litigation
  • Webinars & Podcasts
Advanced Search
Biodiversity & HabitatDrive to 1.5Heat & TemperatureOceans
Home›Climate Impacts & Adaptation›Biodiversity & Habitat›2015-16 Ocean Heat Wave Drove Mass Starvation, Death for a Million North Pacific Seabirds

2015-16 Ocean Heat Wave Drove Mass Starvation, Death for a Million North Pacific Seabirds

January 24, 2020
January 24, 2020
 
35
0
Share:
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  Print This Story
JJ Harrison/Wikimedia Commons

An ocean heat wave in 2015-16 produced the biggest-ever mass mortality event for an avian species, disrupting food supplies for common murres in the North Pacific and killing as many as 1.2 million of them.

The increased frequency of ocean heat waves appears to be a “relatively new” phenomenon linked to climate change, said University of Washington ecologist Julia Parrish, co-author of a paper published earlier this month in the journal PLOS ONE.

Like this story? Subscribe to The Energy Mix and never miss an edition of our free e-digest.

SUBSCRIBE

“During the period from summer 2015 to spring 2016, around 62,000 emaciated murres washed ashore dead or dying along the North American Pacific coastline—in Alaska alone the rate of die-off was a thousand times higher than normal,” Agence France-Presse reports, in a dispatched published by France 24. “Since only a tiny fraction of birds that die wash ashore in areas that are accessible, they estimated the total number of deaths was between half a million to 1.2 million.”

By comparison, said lead author John Piatt, a research biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center, 30,000 bird carcasses were discovered after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster in 1989, leading researchers to estimate total mortality in the 300,000 to 600,000 range.

The news story traces the heat wave back to a combination of factors—a mass of warm seawater nicknamed the “blob” combining with a strong El Niño effect to produce a marine heat wave stretching along North America’s west coast from California to Alaska.

“Parrish said the effects of the heat wave were two-fold,” AFP writes. “First, elevated temperatures reduced the quality and quantity of phytoplankton, which in turn reduced the quantity and quality of the fish eaten by common murres—prey like herring, sardines, and anchovies.”

And then, “as waters warmed, it increased the energy requirements of larger fish like salmon and Pacific cod that have the same prey as the murres.”

Those changes collided badly with what Piatt called the murres’ Achille’s heel—their need to consume half their body mass in food every day.

“Everything they do depends on that breast muscle,” he said. “And when they can’t eat three or four days, they burn up all that muscle,” and can no longer fly or dive.

The loss of murre population was that much worse because many of the birds it affected were of breeding age. The same heat wave caused mass die-offs in species like tufted puffins, Cassin’s auklets, sea lions, and baleen whales.

The cluster of mass mortalities showed that “a warmer ocean world is a very different environment and a very different coastal ecosystem for many marine species,” Parrish said, and seabirds are “bellwethers of that change.”

TagsDrive to 1.5Drive to 1.5 Failure Is Not An OptionUS Election 2020 - Global Crisis Local Impacts
Share:
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  Print This Story

Find more stories about
Biodiversity & HabitatDrive to 1.5Heat & TemperatureOceans

    Leave a reply Cancel reply

    Recent Posts

    • EXCLUSIVE: Blaming Campaigners for Rising Premiums Masks Trans Mountain’s Shoddy Safety Record, Ex-Insurance Exec Says
      EXCLUSIVE: Blaming Campaigners for Rising Premiums Masks Trans Mountain’s Shoddy Safety Record, Ex-Insurance Exec Says
      March 12, 2021
    • Time to Invest Now as Governments Devote Just 18% of COVID Spending to Green Recovery
      Time to Invest Now as Governments Devote Just 18% of COVID Spending to Green Recovery
      March 12, 2021
    • Toronto City Council Calls for Ontario Gas Phaseout
      Toronto City Council Calls for Ontario Gas Phaseout
      March 12, 2021
    • Brookfield to Supply Hydro-Generated Electricity for U.S. Green Hydrogen Plant
      Brookfield to Supply Hydro-Generated Electricity for U.S. Green Hydrogen Plant
      March 12, 2021
    • A Decade After Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Cleanup ‘Has Barely Begun’ [Sign-on]
      A Decade After Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Cleanup ‘Has Barely Begun’ [Sign-on]
      March 12, 2021

    News Feed

    Top News

    • Republican Senators Delay Haaland Confirmation in Fossil Power Play
      March 11, 2021
    • Alberta Health Whistleblower Dr. John O’Connor Wins Free Expression Award
      March 11, 2021

    Read More

    Carbon-Free Transition

    • Lost Financing Prompts Bangladesh to Cancel Nine Coal Plants
      March 11, 2021
    • Renewables Supply 88% of Portugal’s Electricity in February
      March 11, 2021

    Read More

    Canada

    • Alberta Health Whistleblower Dr. John O’Connor Wins Free Expression Award
      March 11, 2021
    • Calgary Tech Company Expands, Creates 500 Jobs
      March 11, 2021

    Read More

    U.S.

    • Republican Senators Delay Haaland Confirmation in Fossil Power Play
      March 11, 2021
    • Mississippi Regulator Forces Power Company to Shut Unneeded Coal, Gas Plants
      March 11, 2021

    Read More

    International

    • Kerala State, India Installs Solar to Turn 75,000 Homes into ‘Mini-Power Stations’
      March 11, 2021
    • Wind Moves Ahead in France as Gas Demand Lags
      March 11, 2021

    Read More

    • About the Energy Mix
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy and Copyright
    Copyright 2020 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.