Ocean Sentry
Two months after being removed from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Endangered Service species list, California brown pelicans already find themselves in trouble again. The pesticide DDT isn’t the culprit this time around, and it remains a mystery as to why the seafaring birds are starving to death all along the Pacific coastline.
Seabird rescuers such as Julia Parker of the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network suspect that the warmer ocean currents generated by El Niño, storms culminating with heavy runoff out of creeks and rivers, are the strongest possibility.
Another theory is that there’s more competition for food, such as with the Humboldt squid that have migrated farther north from South America, also due to warmer currents… Read Full Article by Chuck Graham
