#fish kill

[redrcs]

Home with the kill.

Osprey with catch, Caboolture

[cryptidcraab]

getting fish killed in TF2 is HUMILIATING. I didn't even get fish killed today. I just remembered it. And it was so bad I had to put my head down on my desk for a minute

[environmentalwatch]

River Dolphins Dying in Hot Water

River dolphins are dying by the dozens in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest over the past week, along with thousands of fish. Experts warn that worse could follow if water temperatures remain elevated due to a severe drought in the region. The Mamiraua Institute, part of Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, reported the discovery of over 100 dead river dolphins over the past…

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[earthstory]

The Salton Sea

In 1905, workers were constructing a canal to carry water from the Colorado River on the eastern border of California to the fertile agricultural areas in the Imperial Valley when something when wrong. The waters of the Colorado broke free and almost the entire volume of the river poured into the low ground at the bottom of the Valley. The Salton Trough sits over 70 meters below sea level, only a tiny bit above the elevation of Badwater Basin in Death Valley, so water easily poured into the basin when the canal walls broke.

This wasn’t the first time in geologic history that the river had filled the Imperial Valley. The valley floor is filled by Colorado River sediments; for the last several million years the river has bounced back and forth between flooding the Imperial Valley and entering the Gulf of Mexico, with its direction determined by which flow path was easiest. As sediment built up in the delta, the river would naturally shift its course to flood the imperial valley, and as sediment blocked that spot it would shift again back to the Gulf of California and its delta.

The river flowed into the basin for more than 2 years before engineers could finally send its huge flow back to the Gulf of Mexico. The flood gave birth to an inland lake known as the Salton Sea.

For decades, the Salton Sea actually stayed mostly fresh. Tourists from the nearby cities of Los Angeles and San Diego would visit the shores to swim in the waters and migrating birds found a delightful water source on their route. But over time, the chemistry of the water changed.

The Salton Sea was flooded by the Colorado, but the water in the local area was able to sustain it. Flood irrigation from nearby farmlands and input from local streams kept the Salton Sea water level close to constant, but those waters also carried salts and fertilizers into the Sea, increasing the salt content and eventually leading to algal blooms that would kill huge numbers of fish.

The Salton Sea’s tourism industry died decades ago as the waters changed, but the situation is more worrisome today. California spent years in drought, and beyond that water for farming in this valley has become gradually more precious due to increased demand and climate change.

The decline in water supplied to the Salton Sea risks turning the waters into a desert or a disaster like Owens Lake to the North (see here:http://on.fb.me/1ytht1g) or Lake Urmia in Iran (http://on.fb.me/1BvJUjE). If the waters of even part of the lake dry up, it will expose bare, salt-covered sediment that will easily be picked up by the wind. These sediments could easily turn into a major source of air pollution throughout the southwestern United States if they’re allowed into the air. That level of air pollution would likely turn into a multi-billion dollar environmental disaster.

The lake has been gradually contracting for the past several years, exposing dry and salty ground particularly at the southern tip where the polluted "New River" enters the lake after flowing through agricultural areas in Mexico and the US. The State of California was originally supposed to develop a remediation plan for this area as early as 2003, but no one wants to spend money or give up their access to water supplies, so more than a decade passed with no agreement between the various agencies and landowners who would have to participate in controlling pollution in this area. Finally, just last month several stakeholders struck an agreement to begin diverting some water and developing wetlands on areas that are being exposed as the lake shrinks - a first step towards managing the drying of this basin.

-JBB

Image credits: EPA/NBC News/NASA http://nbcnews.to/1L5sobA

Read more: http://desert.sn/1uqqnvY http://desert.sn/1L5snEm http://www.fws.gov/refuge/sonny_bono_salton_sea/ http://saltonsea.ca.gov/ http://saltonseamuseum.org/salton_sea_history.html https://bit.ly/2YeFcay

[lunyashko]

Just some patches i made  :)

[earthstory]

Video exploration of California’s Salton Sea, including some of its history and how it looks today - basically an abandoned, desert, environmental disaster. Original caption:

Deep in the desert of southern California sits one of the worst environmental sites in America—a former tourist destination that has turned into a toxic soup: the Salton Sea.

The sea was born by accident 100 years ago, when the Colorado River breached an irrigation canal; for the next two years the entire volume of the river flowed into the Salton Sink, one of the lowest places on Earth. The new lake became a major tourist attraction, with resort towns springing up along its shores. Yet with no outflow, and with agricultural runoff serving as its only inflow, the sea’s waters grew increasingly toxic. Farm chemicals and ever-increasing salinity caused massive fish and bird die-offs. Use of the sea for recreational activities plummeted, and by the 1980s its tourist towns were all but abandoned.

The skeletons of these structures are still there; ghost towns encrusted in salt. California officials acknowledge that if billions of dollars are not spent to save it, the sea could shrink another 60 percent in the next 20 years, exposing soil contaminated with arsenic and other cancerous chemicals to strong winds. Should that dust become airborne, it would blow across much of southern California, creating an environmental calamity.

[drag-tween]

We finally know what caused Florida fish to spin in circles until they died

A new breakthrough points to toxins, yet the mystery of what sparked this bizarre phenomenon continues to puzzle experts

(article may be behind paywall)