Dying birds and fish: Are we living in an M. Night Shyamalan movie?
Posted: January 5, 2011 Filed under: Environment, The Media SUCKS | Tags: Anderson Cooper, Bird and Fish deaths, infotainment killed the news, Kirk Cameron, M. Night Shyamalan, Unexplained phenomenon 62 Comments
M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening
Just saw this headline from Raw Story… “Mass bird and fish deaths becoming worldwide phenomenon.”
From the link…
Birds:
The mysterious deaths of thousands of birds and fish is no longer confined to the US.
About 50 to 100 dead birds were discovered on a highway in central Sweden Tuesday. Scientists don’t know what killed the jackdaws but one veterinarian suspects they may have been frightened by fireworks and then run over by a car.
Fish:
The Brazillian site Paraná-Online noted that 100 tons of fish have turned up dead off the coast of Paraná since last Thursday.
“We will wait to see what happened, but speculations suggest that fish may have died due to an environmental imbalance, dropping a fishing boat or leakage of chemicals,” Captain Edson Oliveira Avila, regional coordinator of Civil Defense in the Paraná region, told Paraná-Online.
Then I saw this in the comments at the Raw Story link — from the Baltimore Sun — “Frigid water blamed for 2 million dead fish in Chesapeake Bay“:
An estimated 2 million fish have been reported dead from the Bay Bridge south to Tangier Sound, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment, which investigates fish kills. The dead fish are primarily adult spot, with some juvenile croakers.
One of the blackbirds that fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve lies on the ground in Beebe, AR. (Arkansas Game and Fish Commission/Handout/Reuters)
This of course is all on the heels of the mass bird deaths in AR and LA, as the Christian Science Monitor sums up:
Thousands of red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, starlings, and grackles dead in Arkansas. Five hundred more in Louisiana. Fifty jackdaws fall on a street in Stockholm. And around the world, millions of fish floating belly-up.
The CS Monitor article goes on to say:
It’s the stuff of apocalyptic novels. Scientists have not yet ruled out pollution or chemical toxins as the cause of nearly a dozen mass animal die-offs, from Arkansas to Brazil, in the last week. But as officials investigate, both the mundane and the intriguing are emerging as potential causes.
Because birds are considered indicator species that reflect the health of the surrounding environment, the spate of mass deaths has unsettled many Americans.
Over in Sweden, via thelocal.se — “Swedish birds ‘scared to death’: veterinarian“:
Shortly before midnight on Tuesday, residents found 50 to 100 jackdaws on a street in Falköping southeast of Skövde. The incident echoed a number of unexplained incidents earlier this week across the southern US.
County veterinarian Robert ter Horst believes that the birds may have been literally scared to death by fireworks set off on Tuesday night.
“We have received information from local residents last night. Our main theory is that the birds were scared away because of the fireworks and landed on the road, but couldn’t fly away from the stress and were hit by a car,” he explained to The Local on Wednesday.
I skimmed through Huffpo’s reporting on the bird and fish deaths real quick and looks like New Zealand is joining the unfortunate club.
From the NZ Herald — “Hundreds of snapper dead on beaches“:
Fisheries officials are investigating the death of hundreds of snapper washed up on Coromandel Peninsula beaches.
Beachgoers at Little Bay and Waikawau Bay found the fish – many with their eyes missing – dead on the sand yesterday.
A Department of Conservation official told Mr Hughes fish in the Coromandel area were starving because of weather conditions.
I don’t want to jump to any rash conclusions or bypass the work of experts to tease out what’s really going on here using the scientific method, but I have to say that thus far all these “official” attempts to explain what happened are sounding even hokier than the apocalyptic and government conspiracy scenarios.
I glanced over at the Scientific American to see if by chance there was anything there yet that could shed some light on what in the world is happening. I didn’t find anything on the current spate of deaths, but I found this entry on SciAm’s Extinction Countdown blog, from a week ago:
Frigid waters off the coast of Florida have killed a record number of endangered manatees this year, according to state wildlife officials. The manatee—full name, the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus)—has been protected by the Endangered Species Act since 1974.
On Crooks and Liars, I caught a mention of Anderson Cooper interviewing actor-turn-godfreak Kirk Cameron to discuss the bird deaths in Arkansas. WTF?
There’s a transcript at the C&L link. Anderson Cooper sounds embarrassed, even in print:
COOPER: Kirk, there’s a lot of chatter out there on the Internet about these thousands of birds and fish dying. Some people saying this is a sign of the end of days. You obviously starred in a series of films based on the idea of the “Left Behind” series. When you hear that, what do you think?
Hell, even Kirk Cameron himself sounds embarrassed:
KIRK CAMERON, ACTOR: Well, I first think that they ought to call a veterinarian, not me. You know, I’m not the religious conspiracy theorist go-to guy particularly. But I think it’s — it’s really kind of silly to try to equate birds falling out of the sky with some time — some kind of an end-times theory.
COOPER: But it is interesting the whole notion of end of times and the whole “Left Behind” series which deals with Jesus coming back to take his people to heaven, the believers and nonbelievers. Why do you think there’s such fascination in that and when something like this happens, people kind of turn to those thoughts?
I guess you can take Rick Sanchez off the CNN airwaves, but you can’t take Rick Sanchez’s mindless sensationalism out of the CNN coverage!
All of these strange events feel like a creepy ass movie script, except there’s no M. Night Shyamalan directing the nightmare we’re living. What struck me while trying to get to the bottom of things is that our zombie press really is not in the business of trying to investigate or get to the bottom of anything anymore. All we get is the run-around and freaking Kirk Cameron.
I’ll cut off my rant on infotainment right there, even though I could go on forever on that subject. I’d rather open up the floor to anyone who can provide some insight on what is going on with the birds and the fishies in the deep blue sea. I’d love to hear a wonkish explanation, but carefully measured tinfoil is also welcome at this point.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
I’m beginning to think that ‘the fireworks did it’ is the new ‘the dog ate my homework’
A couple of years back, there was another mass bird die off in the same area as the most recent one, around Mer Rouge.
I think the seeming nature of this all happening at the same time is the difference here. The fireworks explanation doesn’t really cut the mustard. This isn’t the first time we’ve had fireworks around the world.
On an ironic note – I just looked at my Popcorn Park Zoo calendar and today is National Bird Day.
Quite possibly. Trauma was another “explanation” and a patently ridiculous ridiculous one – the birds no doubt suffered the body trauma when they fell out of the sky and hit the ground.
Whoops, this should have been nested under Dak’s comment.
Tin foil hat on – the oil from the BP spill, not visible due to its coupling with the dispersant molecules, have spread up the east coast and across the Atlantic ocean causing a poisoning of water and the sea life which many of these animals use for food? In that case, maybe something will show up in lab and toxicology tests, or maybe not.
The MD who runs this site is spearheading the constructive use of the new technologies. Birds, fish & animals are extremely sensitive to other frequencies than humans. Who knows what experimental/secret/destructive use the new technologies are being used for, there simply is no accountability and no way to get accountability.
http://www.theorionproject.org/en/index.html
I think it’s kind of like how fundies say that “the end is near” because there are “more earthquakes” when in reality, there is only more information about earthquakes that occur.
Then there’s evidence that the dolphin and whale beaching is from sonar used from the navy in their submarines, etc. There could possibly be something tested flying around that’s using frequencies that are causing these kill offs too … maybe I should consider making my new tinfoil hat.
Where is SOD when you need her?
So True Dak, where is SOD. I hope she is okay.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, not in the least, but I’ve been seeing some very odd things this year that involve birds and small animals. Species who should have migrated south in october/november, are still here. It’s disturbing. Why did they not migrate?
SOD was having family issues last time I heard from her. I should really try to email her and see if she’s okay. The migration patterns are odd. I’m waiting for the Audubon’s christmas day bird count analysis.
I tended to dismiss conspiracy theories too until I saw Stephen Colbert’s recent interview of journalist Leslie Kean which led me to the work of Dr Steven Greer. I’ve been reading Dr Greer’s books and sites for several months now and admire his pioneering bridge between spirituality and the new physics (along with Dr Edgar Mitchell’s Noetics Institute) and his commitment to forcing open the door on the new technologies to make them available to the world at large. Tin foiley or not, advances in solar, wind, magnetic and other energy sources we cannot conceive of will eventually transform the world as we know it, not to mention our fast sinking medical system.
Exactly. I wonder if using excessive numbers of huge wind mills will impact weather patterns.
Well, it’s pretty much certain that they’ll make migratory bird sushi, uglify the landscape, and make really creepy woom-woom noises.
Yet, it’s rather difficult to imagine that masses of dead birds have been falling out of the skies regularly since forever, but have only begun to be reported on in the last few days.
Good rant Wonk – thanks for all the links. As everyone else I am curious as to the source of these deaths. I went looking for an ornithologist online – came up with this link below. Maybe in has been posted before since he is from Dak’s territory and was working up a report on the bird deaths from the BP spill. Sorry if it has. Dr. Geoffrey Gardner, has disappeared mysteriously in Nov. He was arrested in the middle of his research for possession of a controlled substance back in July. He was highly esteemed and used by the Queen of England for her swans.
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/gulf-swan-doctor-disappearance
The creepy ass movie script ‘feel’ is right on. The Zombie press reports all come directly from ….the WH. No research and no questions asked. Wonder if they would disappear if they did report facts?
Is that the same scientist that said if the spill continued it would have an impact on the whole planet and then someone else did a simulation of the ocean currents to show how we are all interconnected?
One theory discussed over dinner last night was a weapon test via a satellite in a trajectory from each pole, and this morning it moved to core movement reduction causing or going into a pole reversal (which has been written in the Mayan spiritual tradition too).
Could we be going into a pole reversal? Also what did that Vatican message say, and why did they send up a satellite?
Wow, so I guess we really are connected after all and its a ‘Small World’. The bees were the first to go missing…
Latest thinking on honeybees is that it’s a combination of factors: stress from being transported long distances to pollinate crops, infestations of various mites and other pre-existing bee diseases, then just more and more pesticides. Finally the next incidence will be the last straw. The honeybees seem to die of exhaustion when working away from the hive.
(Used to keep honeybees when I had the space to do so; I still read up on the craft.)
There are now beekeepers and researchers working with some strains of bees with more resistance, with some success. Time will tell.
In my tinfoilly moments I think it’s pesticides and GM crop pollen.
You know, our hummingbirds won’t drink nectar made from sugar beets? It’s very strange. I had ‘sugar’ from the store, the store brand. Perfectly ok, you’d think. Made up a batch of nectar. The birds wouldn’t drink it. They tasted it, and left. Took the feeder down, cleaned it, made a new batch. They tasted and left. Took it down, went and got good old C&H sugar (sugarcane sugar) and made up a batch of nectar. Cleaned the feeders, put up the new nectar. Feeders were all 1/2 or more empty by nightfall.
Somehow, they know. They know it’s artificial and been genetically screwed with. They know.
More thoughts – colder winter temps than usual due to the melting of the polar ice caps. Also, HT mentioned that the birds who usually migrate south in the winter from Canada are still hanging around, so unusual bird behavior has been going on for a while now. Or maybe a combination of all the different factors already mentioned, or factors not yet known.
Oh sheesh, there’s been another school shooting. This time its Omaha and the school district that my kids attended. Not their school, however.
http://www.omaha.com/article/20110105/NEWS97/110109863
Something about the mindless suburbs that kills kids’ souls.
No it has nothing to do with the mindless suburbs per se, it is all about the mindless parents and neighbors. Kids need meaning in their life. If they don’t get it from their parents and their social circle, they will go to the internet and find it. A lot of time, the internet is not a healthy environment for very young people who have little or no concept of right versus wrong. The fact that this youngster’s parent was a police official is of interest. What happened – I’m not trying to excuse the kid, he was 17, however I wouldn’t blame the suburbs either. I raised the gruesome twosome in the suburbs, and all of their friends and lovers were raised in the suburbs. Someday soon, , I will come on this site, and proclaim very proudly that gruesome male is marrying his beloved, and has a record deal. Someday, I will come on this site and proclaim that Gruesome female has negotiated gruesome male’s record deal. See – Suburbia is not the evil.
He put his suicide note up on facebook: http://twitpic.com/3ncbae
I have to say, Omaha is a deeply depressing place to live.
Gee – you had skiing and ranches to go to. Also had the football team which is joining the Big Ten.
May I ask – was it a dude or working ranch?
Actually, it was a real ranch that also bunked kids for the summer to help work. It was my mother’s way of unloading us for the summer. Football is one of the things in life I try to avoid. It and christmas are tied for top place.
In re his note, it doesn’t help that most public schools are over-glorified jails.
Yup. The fundies completely have overtaken that school district and made it pretty miserable.
It’s hard to describe the inner essence of suburbs. I think the major effect is that they cut kids off from any REAL experience of life and substitute real living for being jailed (er, schooled) all day and picking up their social cues from people just as dumb as they are (other kids) and having all of their out of school activity either scheduled or filled with pre-packaged entertainment. Suburbs are the living environment version of soylent green.
Kids in the country get to see things get born, live, and die, and can roam wherever they please. I did that. Kids in the city can see things that are different from what they’re used to, unless they’re stuck in a hell of crime, poverty, and drugs. In the rural areas, you learn about freedom. In the city, you learn about difference. In the suburbs, you learn about what? How xanax can help one to maintain a veneer of respectability? I mean, yea, not everyone is like that, but most of the suburban kids that I grew up with used more drugs than Jerry Garcia and their parents never had the slightest idea.
I mean, hell, their major response to boredom was getting “fucked up,” and several of them either wound up dead or burnt out by their early 20s.
And that’s leaving aside the fact that suburbs are the wellspring of most of the hardcore tyrannical attitudes we see these days, which I think happens because they atrophy the ability to deal with threats in a realistic manner and the ability to understand that people can make different yet equally valid choices in life, and also because they take away all real threats or challenges, leaving people afraid of their own shadows.
-rant over- :-p
The alcoholism in teens there is astounding. They drink themselves to oblivion from what I could tell. My youngest ran with a wild crowd. I told my ex we needed to get out of there before they hit middle school, but he didn’t care about anything but his perpetual hamster wheel.
So Dak – if not the suburbs, what would be ideal? I guess the quesion would be referenced to when you were looking at leaving and now. In my experinece alchohol and drugs are every where.
Isn’t it a matter of keeping close and busy? That can happen many places. Key has to be a good educaiton being available (basics).
FL,
That’s precisely the situation I described. Everyone was busy. Problem is, no-one can stay busy 24 hours a day, and the more used one is to always being busy, the more glaring an aberration the periods of non-busyness become. And everyone had a relatively good education. The high school I went to was one of the best in the state, and that didn’t stop a lot of them from trying heroin, and it stopped very few of them from doing really dumb stuff like mixing alcohol and xanax.
“You can shine your shoes and wear a suit
You can comb your hair and look quite cute
You can hide your face behind a smile
One thing you can’t hide
Is when you’re crippled inside”
FL,
Back in the days when most people were basically psychologically healthy, almost everyone lived either in the city or in the country. Why do you think the first anti-anxiety agents came into wide use in the 1950s?
I don’t know what to make of this. The thought of something like this happening at my kid’s school is frightening. I feel for those students that had to deal with that experience. I think that this incident also goes along with our discussions about the psychotic nature of people. Here you have a suicidal person that wants to make a splash and take a few innocent people with him. I would like to hear BB’s take on it.
She’s back in Boston and attending her nephew’s birthday dinner right now. She’ll be back shortly and full force tomorrow, I imagine.
People like that are different from the sociopaths. Think cornered animal vs Jeffrey Dahmer.
I can’t believe that fireworks are the reason for the massive bird death within a very small area. It’s not as if it’s the first year that people celebrate with firework. That the birds died from internal trauma, I think it’s an indication that something hit them. It sounds to me what a human might experience from being close to an explosion. The sonar explanation is likely to me. I tend to believe that the our great government is testing a weapon to use against humans in case of unrest. I could see a ultra-sound that would drive people and birds to death from the impact.
Tin foil stuff? Maybe, but not in my mind.
Dario, You must use the tin-foil hat to PROTECT the mind!
Nay. I just don’t trust the military. It would test what syphilis does to people if it could. Oh wait, it did.
Oh, gosh I forgot they tested on foreigner too… 😦
Pass the TinFoil …
Referring to the truly infamous Tuskegee? That was a few scumbags in the U.S. Public Health Service.
Not that the military hasn’t done Hades knows what in that line.
Guatemala
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment
What on earth would we do without bastards like them to rule us and fool us?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_United_States#Human_radiation_experiments
Dario,
The testing is what the former army dude was saying, and that maybe it is Rayguns Ray stuff since Obama is so into that, but now that it is so global, I don’t know…scratching ME head on this one.
Make room for South America… EAK!
THOUSANDS OF BIRDS FALL DEAD ( SOUTH AMERICA ) – Could it be related to 7.0 in Argentina?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdKUcF5RPoA&feature
Hemmm, at the time I thought it was whacky but at a Singularity conference, they were very concerned about getting off the planet. Hemmm….
Breaking News
h/t to Jim
Woman Voter @ 8:11
Thanks for the Google map link.
I am in the spam filter??
I don’t know. Could be like shark attacks, where suddenly news outlets start copycat reporting a spate of them and it seems like they’re rampant, but really the rate hasn’t changed. At least that was the explanation they gave after all the big earthquakes were being reported last year. With so many obstacles and chemicals in the skies and waterways, it would be surprising not to have birds and fish killed by them. Hope we haven’t reached some sort of tipping point.
*****A
Worldwide events…hope the filter lets me out.
http://bit.ly/bundles/jwarren/1
OK, so what is the rate of “mass animal deaths” on an average day? is this seeming cluster of events more than occurs any other time? The world is a big place.
*****A
From the CSM link in the post:
The fish kills are unbelievable. They frequently swim to a part of a lake to something in the water and then deplete the oxygen because they’re in shallow water It’s really weird.
At least Anderson didn’t bring Richard Dreyfuss on for his expertise in marine biology.
Okay … screen spew … still laughing… sides splitting
ROFL!
This does have me freaking out a little, though. Why aren’t we up to our knees in dead brids on July 4th? Too weird.
Lol! That’s priceless. Well hopefully bears don’t go missing, or else I guess Palin will be the go-to person for that…
…or, a better possibility– maybe Stephen Colbert.
(¯`v´¯)
`*.¸.*´Be Veg
¸.•´¸.•*¨) ¸.•*¨)Go Green
(¸.•´ (¸.•´ .•´ ¸¸.•¨¯`• Save the Planet
We pray for all died animals. May they safely reach
Amitabha Buddha Pure land.
buddhadharmaobfinternational.wordpress.com
Heritage of Mankind
I added this to BB’s Thursday reads but I’ll add it here too…
Birds in East Texas yesterday…
EAST TEXAS (KLTV) – First, it was Arkansas, then Louisiana, now hundreds of dead birds were spotted on an east Texas highway. The birds were found this morning on the highway 155 bridge at Lake O’ the Pines. It was an unsettling sight for several morning drivers along the 155 bridge, over a hundred clumps of gray feathers lining the roadway. Dead coots.