Tens of thousands of Sea Lions starve and die as Pacific marine ecosystem succumbs to radioactive contamination

The Canadian Pacific coastline has been looking eerily deserted, almost completely devoid of the usually abundant marine life supported by the tides...

Pacific Coast Line Dead Zone Devoid of 99% Of All Life, Almost All Tidal Zone Species Missing Entirely

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The entire north coast of Canada is missing it's mussel population and the 1,000's of other species. This naked coastline with almost no life left on it, should be shocking to everyone. The mass media doesn't try to blame it on anything, the media just ignore it completely. Soon it will come back and haunt them.

A starfish "virus"

Already in 2013 and all through 2014, there has been an indication something was amiss. A mass die-off decimated starfish on the Pacific West Coast. That should have raised the alarm, but the crisis was "de-fused" by scientists finding that a virus had killed the starfish.

The scientists isolated a virus that was present in the dying critters and, true to our medical wisdom that every illness has its pathogenic microbe, they decreed that the problem was an unusual, wide-spread viral infection that made the starfish shrivel up and die.

Of course nothing could be done about that, but that was quite ok. There was an explanation. National Geographic reported on it:

Why Are Millions of Starfish 'Melting'?

After isolating the virus, which is quite common in starfish and even in other species like sea urchins and sea cucumbers, the question remained open as to what triggered the virus to all of a sudden become active and to cause widespread damage. The question was asked, but apparently no one dared speak up about the plume of contamination from Fukushima that had by now reached the Pacific West Coast.

Why such a pervasive virus is suddenly killing millions of animals is still up for debate.

"We've seen big outbreaks in sea stars before," said Pete Raimondi, a marine ecologist with the University of California, Santa Cruz, earlier this year, "but they've been very regional."

This current outbreak stretches from southern Alaska down through Canada and the U.S. West Coast, into Baja California.

Collapse of sardine and bird populations

Another, more recent piece of news that fits into this is the collapse of the population of sardines in the Pacific coastal waters. With the sardines decimated, it is no wonder the sea lions are starving. They can't find any food!

Pacific sardine industry shutdown looms as species collapses

Pacific coast sardines are facing a population collapse so severe that Oregon's multimillion-dollar sardine industry almost certainly will be shut down this summer.

The latest figures indicate there are somewhere between 97,000 and 133,000 metric tons of adult sardines in the ocean from northern Mexico to British Columbia. That's a 90 percent dip since sardines peaked in 2007, and it puts the population below a mandatory fishing cutoff of 150,000 metric tons.

Although sardine populations are known to boom and bust, the species' downward spiral in spite of favorable water conditions has ocean-watchers worried there's more to this collapse than cyclical population trends.

Sea birds are also having a hard time.

AP: Marine birds disappearing in Pacific Northwest -- Significant ecological shift, crashes in many species -- "Something's happening on a big level, but what is it" -- Herring problem may be far worse than revealed... result of contamination? Mexico suddenly bans bluefin tuna fishing, US may be next

Top-of-the-food-chain fish, such as tuna, is apparently accumulating a lot of radioactivity as well:

Radioactive Bluefin Tuna Caught Off California Coast

Every bluefin tuna tested in the waters off California has shown to be contaminated with radiation that originated in Fukushima. Every single one.

Over a year ago, in May of 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported on a Stanford University study. Daniel Madigan, a marine ecologist who led the study, was quoted as saying, "The tuna packaged it up (the radiation) and brought it across the world's largest ocean. We were definitely surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we measured."

Another member of the study group, Marine biologist Nicholas Fisher at Stony Brook University in New York State reported, "We found that absolutely every one of them had comparable concentrations of cesium 134 and cesium 137."

The radioactive contamination we can't turn off

The Canadian investigation cited earlier lays the blame on the radioactive elements that have been continually released into the waters of the Pacific off Japan, since the nuclear disaster in March 2011, forming a plume of contaminated water which has had time to reach the North American shores and wreak havoc with the marine life there.

Here is their video:

Even today, Fukushima is a continuous source of radioactive contamination.

Four years after a tsunami heavily damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant, contaminated water continues to pour into the Pacific Ocean.

And to round off the bad news, the chief of the Fukushima nuclear power station has recently admitted that the technology needed to decommission three melted-down reactors does not exist, and he has no idea how it will be developed.

Containing Fukushima Is "Beyond Current Technology". Worldwide Radiation is the Unspoken Consequence

So we have a nuclear and environmental disaster of unprecedented dimensions and we have no idea how to turn off the primary contamination.

In addition, the mainstream media does not seem to be able to put two and two together and so there have been only scant reports, and only on seemingly disrelated incidents.

I believe it is time we figured out what what exactly is causing the die-off and what to do about this, instead of arguing whether new nuclear reactors or (fracked) natural gas wells are the better option for generating "clean" electricity...

Related:

Dead Dolphins In Fukushima Stranding Found With White Radiated Lungs

Japanese scientists are saying they have never seen anything like what they discovered after autopsying a massive group of dolphins that ended up dead after being discovered stranded on a beach near the site of the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

Their lungs were white, which, according to scientists is an indication of loss of blood flow to the organs which is an indication of radiation poisoning.

Fukushima Uni "800,000,000,000,000 Bq of Cs-137 to reach West coast of North America by 2016″

Prof. Aoyama from Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity reported that 800 tera Bq (800,000,000,000,000 Bq) of Cesium-137 is going to reach West Coast of North America by 2016. This is 5% of the total Cs-137 amount discharged to the Pacific.