40,000 crabs join slew of animal-death mysteries

The Toronto Star ^ | 01/06/2011 | Jenni Dunning

[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 can’t 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.

[alexander_busek]

1_Rain_Drop: The reason for this would be to blame BP or other oil spills.

alexander_busek: Too bad that none of the cadavers displayed even only traces of crude oil. So much for your conspiracy theory.

1_Rain_Drop: Actually it helps my theory if there is no crude oil on them or in them. The higher ups won't be able to blame BP. [italics my emphasis]

alexander_busek: I don't understand. In your first post, you advanced your theory that this mass dying of velvet crabs had been "staged" in order to incriminate "BP or other oil spills." Why wouldn't any such conspirators want to "prepare" the faked evidence with traces of oil and thus make it seem more plausible that the crabs had, indeed, been killed by oil?

Regards,

[goat granny]

Lots of us in Michigan have been wishing for global warming for years...For the past 2 years my AC rarely was on..last year I think I clicked it on about a dozen times all summer..