Thursday, January 27, 2011
Environment Bird deaths explained, still no idea about fish
Posted by Gerard Matthews on Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 8:39 AM
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission says a final round of tests has shown the cause of death for nearly 5,000 black birds in Beebe over New Year's Eve was blunt force trauma. Other tests had previously shown the same. A mystery still surrounds the death of 83,000 freshwater drum that died in the Arkansas River, along with around 1,000 other fish. Release on the jump.
Cause of Arkansas River fish kill still unknown
OZARK — Despite a battery of tests conducted by the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, the exact cause of the Arkansas River fish kill that took place on Dec. 29, 2010, still eludes biologists at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
A resident of Roseville first reported the fish kill near the Roseville boat ramp of the Arkansas River. After further investigation, biologists determined the kill stretched from the Ozark-Jetta Taylor Lock and Dam to about 17 miles downstream. The incident killed approximately 83,000 freshwater drum and 1,000 other fish, including yellow bass, white bass, bluegill and sauger.
“Fish kills are not that uncommon,” said AGFC District Fisheries Supervisor Bob Limbird. “But kills of this magnitude in Arkansas are rare.”
Biologists collected several dying fish during the first few days of the kill and sent them to researchers at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
“We can say conclusively that the drum were not killed from a bacterial or viral infection, or from parasites,” said AGFC Fish Pathologist Kelly Winningham. “UAPB ran a full set of fish health tests and everything came back negative.”
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality also collected fish and water samples from the area of the kill and conducted testing. Water samples were tested for metals, nutrients and minerals to assess water quality. Fish samples were tested for metals. A drum sample was tested for toxins such as pesticides and other organic chemicals. All samples were within normal values for the Arkansas River. The drum sample did not show any toxins.
Winningham said fish kills can occur for many reasons, both natural and unnatural. Stress, starvation, water quality issues, water pollution, disease, parasites, toxic algae, and severe or extreme weather can all cause mortality. Kills also may be caused by multiple factors working in combination.
“Unfortunately, we probably will never know exactly what killed these fish,” said AGFC Assistant Chief of Fisheries Chris Racey. “But the testing has eliminated the largest public concerns of disease, parasites and toxins. We have no reason to think fish caught in the Arkansas River are unsafe to eat.”
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Comments (12)
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I know blunt force trauma by what, them falling suddenly to the ground?? What caused them to fall or what caused the "blunt force trauma"??
Link to KARK report now included. Previous autopsy reports on the birds had showed the same cause of death.
Oh, well, yeah, sure. Blunt force trauma. Good enough for me. Something in the air clubbed 5000 birds to death. What else could we possibly want to know?
Well Hell, the Airports has been doing something wrong then. They should wait until them Little Fowlers go to bed before they shoot off those cannons.
(Rowe): "It was a moonless night, they were disturbed and frantic trying to get back to their roost and figure out what was going on and they flew into objects they don't normally encounter at the height they normally fly at and people saw them collide into buildings."
(me): So, the buildings were at a different height on this moonless night?
(Rowe): "As biologists, we deal with facts all the time, that's our livelihood. For someone to tell me I'm making this up or I'm lying I take it pretty personal."
(me, but not out loud): Defensive?
(Rowe): "A normal mortality rate would be being eaten by predators or succumbing to disease birds did not evolve to have man-made structures like thousands, millions of high-rise buildings across North America that they have to maneuver between."
(me): Like all those high-rise buildings in Beebe.
(me): Shame on someone for that run-on sentence about bird evolution and man-made structures.
Gerard, have y'all looked at any of the reports about Phosgene and the supposed 'mishaps' with the sprayer planes from Little Rock Air Force Base?
I don't know if there's anything to it, but it's certainly very curious.
Everytime Ms. Rowe opens her mouth, I have less confidence in her precious "facts."
So I'll play the conspiracy theorist for a moment:
The military needs something that can be sprayed over an area (for chemical warfare) but the effects of current substances used are far too obvious (like suffocation or widespread sickness). So they come up with a chemical whose effects aren't so obvious (internal bruising, bleeding, or "blunt-force trauma" if you will) and need to test such a substance in real-world conditions before producing it en masse. If I were going to pick a location to test said chemical in situ, a red-winged blackbird/starling roost might seem a good choice. There are millions (literally) of these birds roosting together in winter in places around the state, and these roosts are awfully messy. (Imagine the bird poop on your car when one or two birds choose to roost in a tree over it. Now multiply this by the millions of birds roosting together in winter in locations like the one near Beebe.) No one wants the bird roost anyway, and hell it's New Year's Eve, so no one's gonna notice. And if they do, we'll just blame the fireworks. And then we'll send our state biologist out to repeat over and over again that the birds just flew right into all those high-rise buildings on the outskirts of Beebe, and we'll have three labs "confirm" that the birds died of blunt-force trauma. Tada -- the chemical worked exactly as hoped! The labs couldn't find any trace of it, and Cause of Death will be listed as "blunt-force trauma." Now, when our new substance is actually used, that nasty little "chemical warfare" thing can be covered up and it's victims given more traditional wartime causes of death (blunt-force trauma).
A mysterious spray plane "incident" and then 5,000+ blackbirds dead...
Nah, it's all just a coincidence.
I'm sure glad the luddites didn't influence the public's minds before the "scientific study"methods got established. It's gotten so bad to prove anything anymore that we delay action when some action needs to be taken. (Climate change, oil supply, etc.)
Here's an easy experiment for all who doubt this reports conclusions:
Find a tree or two full of starlings, the black birds that roost in flocks at sundown.
Walk quietly near the tree and clap your hands 2 or 3 times.
Observe what happens and then, if your doubting mind can handle this, imagine what this would look like in the dead of night with sleeping birds. Total mass chaos leads to collisions.
If folks would use their imagination for good purposes other than trying to find ways to debunk logical thinking, maybe we'd stop looking like idiots.
I've never understood how looking like an idiot, when your not, can impress anybody? Question the answer? Yes! That's the "scientific method".
But be ready to defend your explanation.
Let me say, Skee Hee, that I have no way of knowing for sure what happened to the birds or the fish. But I have to admit that the fireworks explanation smells like bullshit to me. If that were the case, then why do we not see the ground blanketed with dead birds *every* Fourth of July and New Years Eve? And what about other loud noises, a car backfire, transformer blowout, sirens, any number of things that might startle the birds into flight? If this is such a logical explanation, then why don't we see a lot more dead birds falling from the sky with these occurances? It just doesn't make sense to me, and most folks (who know me) would describe me as a pretty logical thinker.
Again, I don't know the answer to what caused this event. I just found it curious that there have been some reports of a couple of dangerous chemical 'mishaps' in the same timeframe as this event, as well as the fish kill, which have yet to be explained. You're certainly welcome to accept the 'official explanation' if you choose. I, for one, would like to know more and don't believe that asking the questions makes me look like an idiot, thank you very much.
You go Hard Headed Woman, Skee Hee is evidently a bird watcher. Myself I'll stand back and watch him, I don't like birdshit in my hair. But i'm sure the Airports and the world would love to know about this solution. And unlike Beebe with it's two story office buildings, for the most part these air ports set near 10,12, and higher hotels. so they might be able to get rid of a larger herd.
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