A 'blob' of warm ocean water killed 1 million seabirds in the Pacific, study says

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The birds – a species known as the common murre – likely died of starvation due to the warm water, which severely disrupted the birds' food supply.

A"blob" of unusually warm sea water in the Pacific Ocean was responsible for the deaths of about 1 million seabirds in 2015 and 2016, a study released Wednesday said.

"The magnitude and scale of this failure has no precedent," said study lead author John Piatt, a research biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center, in a statement."It was astonishing and alarming, and a red-flag warning about the tremendous impact sustained ocean warming can have on the marine ecosystem."

At one point, the blob of ocean water was 2 to 7 degrees above average and about 1,000 miles across and 300 feet deep. It covered some 4.5 million square miles of ocean. "We believe that the smoking gun for common murres – beyond the marine heat wave itself – was an ecosystem squeeze: fewer forage fish and smaller prey in general, at the same time that competition from big fish predators like walleye, pollock and Pacific cod greatly increased," said study co-author Julia Parrish, a University of Washington professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.

 

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