Posted on 01/06/2011 1:13:26 AM PST by speciallybland
First, it was birds falling from the sky, then thousands of dead fish washing up on shore.
Now, more than 40,000 Velvet swimming crabs have wound up dead on England beaches. The possible reason? Hypothermia.
The Thanet shoreline is littered with the crabs, along with dead starfish, lobsters, sponges and anemones.
The crabs benefit from warm seas, but when winter hits and snow covers the beaches, they just cant handle the freezing temperatures, Tony Child, Thanet Coast Project manager, told the Star.
It is a horrendous crash in the population, he said, adding similar crab deaths happened in the same place two years and five years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestar.com ...
Global warming.
Yeahhh... damn that sun and it’s “global warming” for causing this unusually cold winter.
Al Gore’s fault
Yes, global warming. Clearly, it is time to award billions of dollars worth of “grants” to “scientists” so they can... study it... and a few zillion more to the UN so they can... whatever they do with money confiscated from working taxpayers.
Flash Freezing from ice age.
40,000 Velvet swimming crabs couldn’t make me change my mind,...
Martian Death Ray.
It’s actually more Global Weirding — weird weather like the enormous floods in normally dry australia, like hotter summers and colder winters. As the world heats us, it disrupts the Gulf stream, the current of warm water that goes from the Gulf of Mexico, along the east coast, up past the UK and the west coast of europe, touching at Murmansk in Russia. Because of this warm current, those regions don’t experience the freezing temperatures of say North Dakota or Poland or Siberia. But if the current weakens or breaks down...
What are the chances that all these dead creatures were dumped into the oceans already dead? I'm thinking these were lab experiment crabs, fish, birds. The deaths were planned.
The reason for this would be to blame BP or other oil spills.
Considering that they're mysteriously able to come up with a "body count" on short notice, especially such a large count, does raise suspicions. I mean, who's going to go out and count 40,000 dead crabs?
Paging Mark Levin. Please pick up thered Animals-Not-Persons-Rescue courtesy phone.
yeah,Gore’s fault...they didn’t provide little zip up thermal suits for the critters.....on the manatee!
The mass-animal-death reporting craze continues. Ok, now the media’s down to reporting about crab deaths. Up next, “Amoeba Population in Puddle in Front of Brooklyn Townhouse Crashes.”
Hire this magic man from the island of Siquijor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md7f3w5giNs&feature=&p=3A26537C104A8670&index=0&playnext=1
Too bad that none of the cadavers displayed even only traces of crude oil.
So much for your conspiracy theory.
Regards,
I'm sure that the figure of 40,000 was only an estimate. The scientists probably made a quick estimate of the body count based on the area covered with dead animals, and the average number of dead animals per square meter. The reporter may have also simplified the actual findings (which might have sounded something like "approx. 38,750 crabs +/- 2,500").
Trust reporters to mangle the facts.
Regards,
Marine Scotland Science Internal Report 16/09
CRAB AND LOBSTER FISHERIES IN SCOTLAND:AN OVERVIEW AND RESULTS OF STOCK ASSESSMENTS,2002-2005
Aileen Mill, Helen Dobby, Anne McLay and Carlos Mesquita
October 2009
The combined crab and lobster creel fishery, which was the 6th most economically important fishery in Scotland in 2006 (Scottish Government, 2006) takes several species of commercial value. The most important crab, in terms of weight and value, landed in Scotland is the edible or brown crab (Cancer pagurus) which is found all around the Scottish coast. The second most important crab species, by landed weight, is the velvet swimmer crab (Necora puber). Velvet crabs were once considered to be a pest species, and only asmall scale fishery existed for a few months in the winter. The Scottish fishery expanded in the early 1980s following the collapse of the Spanish fishery (MacMullen, 1983), to becomethe largest in Europe (Tallack, 2002), although few fishermen solely fish for velvets. Other crabs landed include red crab (Geryon quinquedens), the spinous crab (Lithodes maja) and the shore or green crab (Carcinus maenas) but these species only comprise a small proportion of the total landings (Table 1) which are often market driven and irregular(Napier, 2002).
Table 1
Species * Ave. Landings 2002-05 (tonnes) * Ave. value 2002-05 (£/kg)
Brown crab * 7702.8 * 1.09
Velvet crab * 1903.5 * 1.61
Red crab * 178.7 * 1.51
Spinous crab * 0.9 * 0.36
Green crab * 287.6 * 0.50
Lobster * 376.9 * 10.67
Crawfish * 4.7 * 18.08
Norway lobster * 22535.9 * 2.60
40,000 velvet crabs have a weight of approx. 10 tons; the number of dead velvet crabs recently discovered thus represents approx. 1/2% of the annual catch in Scottish waters, alone.
Regards,
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