Expert: Disease outbreak on US West Coast is largest ever seen in any population of animals — Tens of millions dead — Official: Gov’t needs to declare emergency before extinction occurs — Many scientists believed radiation from Fukushima to blame (VIDEO)
ENENews.com
March 14th, 2015
McClatchy, Mar 13, 2015 (emphasis added): With millions of starfish dying all along the West Coast [and] disintegrating into mush [Congressman Denny Heck wants NOAA] to declare “sea star wasting syndrome” an emergency before the starfish becomes extinct.
National Geographic, Jan 23, 2015: [It’s killed] tens of millions of sea stars.
Cornell Prof. Drew Harvell, sea star researcher, Mar 13, 2015: “There has never been an outbreak of disease in natural populations of animals that I know that’s been this large.”
Newport Beach official Michelle Clemente: “All of our area’s sea stars have disintegrated”
Russian gov’t news service (Sputnik), Mar 12, 2015: Many researchers initially believed radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster could be at the heart of the disease… Dr. Peter Raimondi of the University of California at Santa Cruz [believed] the power plant contaminated the water, propagating the disease which the simple immune system of the starfish would not be able to fight off… “One of the byproducts is obviously nuclear radiation discharge…” he added. Today, scientists are less convinced that Fukushima is to blame, citing the fact that [1] awareness of the disease predates the disaster, [2] the die-offs are observable on both US coasts, and [3] other marine life doesn’t appear to be affected.
The Rest…HERE
