2015 seabird die off explained

[Catherine]

In 2015 it is estimated that over a million sea birds died in the north Pacific Ocean.
More specifically, it was common Murres that died. They starved to death.

So it was the ocean heat wave called the Blob that triggered the deaths. It altered the food chain. It reduced the food supply. At  the came time it triggered the larger fish to eat more. This left the common murres with little or no food. They are a high metabolism bird so even a few days with out enough food proved fatal.


https://www.latimes.com/environment/stor...rres-study

The Blob was  a stretch of warmer ocean water. It wasn't a lot warmer, but even a slight change in water temperature can seriously alter an ecosystem. That means the climate change that we are experiencing now could have some drastic effects. We can speculate, but we don't know. We are watching the effects of climate change on Australia and it is not pretty.  If large patches of warmer ocean water becomes more common we are going to see populations of birds crashing and who knows what else.

There was never any doubt that climate change was a bad thing. I think few realized how bad it could be.