Thousands of seabirds starved to death in the Bering Sea — and scientists see evidence of climate change
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“Every person in our community knew something was wrong,” says one local official.
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“Part of the mystery is what in the heck were those guys doing there? Why hadn’t they left? ... That means there’s something going on in the system that’s not too good," said Julia Parrish, a professor at the University of Washington who also runs a large citizen-science project known as the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, or COASST. “We know month in and month out what is normal, what to expect.”
The mass die-off of the widely beloved birds off Alaska was anything but normal -- even as it is one of a growing number of “mass mortality events” affecting seabirds in recent years.
Parrish and a group of colleagues used weather data to estimate that between 3,150 and 8,500 birds likely died, most likely from starvation. And in a paper published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, the authors argue the die-off is at least partially attributable to the changing climate.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/05/29/thousands-seabirds-starved-death-bering-sea-scientists-see-fingerprint-climate-change/?utm_term=.81d7498e5509
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