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A nationwide scare involving mass deaths of fish and birds has now hit ground locally.
A giant fish kill has occurred at Folly Beach, and according to a report by The Post and Courier, one standing at the end of the pier can see a seemingly never ending line of dead fish in both directions.
Officials with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (DNR) have confirmed that thousands of dead fish washed ashore behind the former Holiday Inn at Folly Beach and say the fish are all of the same species -- Menhaden.
"We're still waiting to see if DNR can come up with some kind of a clue as to why this happened." Folly Beach Mayor Tim Goodwin said.
If the Fish are not washed away by the tide, Folly Officials will be responsible for the clean up.
Bill Troy was out for his morning jog when he noticed thousands of the silver sided fish washed up on the shore.
" I came down this morning and right now I cam back and saw a bunch of dead bait fish," He said.
Thursday morning's discovery on Folly Beach adds to a nationwide mystery involving similar occurrences of mass fish and bird deaths.
The incident joins recent wildlife deaths at Chesapeake Bay and Lebanon, Tennessee -- adding to a steady growing list of similar incident across the nation.
In the Chesapeake Bay incident, as many as 2-million fish were found dead in what wildlife experts have attributed to cold water stress. In Lebanon more than 100 birds were discovered dead along a highway.
DNR officials believe the incident at Folly to also be cold related as we are experiencing ocean temperatures off the Carolina coast that are below average.
DNR biologist Phil Maier said the fish generally school in groups of 100,000 or more so the kill was relatively small. The fish are about 6 inches long.
Two weeks ago Isle of Palms beaches were also littered with dead sea life. Dead starfish and jellyfish washed ashore in what experts also attributed to cold weather and cold water temperature.
What's going on? Birds, fish, crabs, star fish, jelly fish? What in the world is happening?
Originally posted by Agent_USA_Supporter
reply to post by Quadrivium
What's going on? Birds, fish, crabs, star fish, jelly fish? What in the world is happening?
Its all normal, nothing to worry about.
FACT CHECK: Mass bird, fish deaths occur regularly
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Jan 6, 8:28 PM (ET)
By SETH BORENSTEIN
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WASHINGTON (AP) - First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas. In recent days, wildlife have mysteriously died in big numbers: 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the "aflockalypse" while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental.
The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated.
Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don't notice them and don't try to link them to each other.
"They generally fly under the radar," said ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin has tracked mass deaths among birds, fish and other critters, said wildlife disease specialist LeAnn White. At times the sky and the streams just turn deadly. Sometimes it's disease, sometimes pollution. Other times it's just a mystery.
In the past eight months, the USGS has logged 95 mass wildlife die-offs in North America and that's probably a dramatic undercount, White said. The list includes 900 some turkey vultures that seemed to drown and starve in the Florida Keys, 4,300 ducks killed by parasites in Minnesota, 1,500 salamanders done in by a virus in Idaho, 2,000 bats that died of rabies in Texas, and the still mysterious death of 2,750 sea birds in California.
On average, 163 such events are reported to the federal government each year, according to USGS records. And there have been much larger die-offs than the 3,000 blackbirds in Arkansas. Twice in the summer of 1996, more than 100,000 ducks died of botulism in Canada.
"Depending on the species, these things don't even get reported," White said.
Weather - cold and wet weather like in Arkansas New Year's Eve when the birds fell out of the sky - is often associated with mass bird deaths, ornithologists say. Pollution, parasites and disease also cause mass deaths. Some are even blaming fireworks for the blackbird deaths.
So what's happening this time?
Blame technology, says famed Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. With the Internet, cell phones and worldwide communications, people are noticing events, connecting the dots more.
"This instant and global communication, it's just a human instinct to read mystery and portents of dangers and wondrous things in events that are unusual," Wilson told The Associated Press on Thursday. "Not to worry, these are not portents that the world is about to come to an end."
Wilson and the others say instant communications - especially when people can whip out smart phones to take pictures of critter carcasses and then post them on the Internet - is giving a skewed view of what is happening in the environment.
The irony is that mass die-offs - usually of animals with large populations - are getting the attention while a larger but slower mass extinction of thousands of species because of human activity is ignored, Wilson said.
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AP Researcher Julie Reed Bell contributed to this report.