CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Vampire Planet: When the Oceans Die

Image by Pierre Bamin.

This week in the Anthropocene

I’ve seen dead birds. Dozens of them. Washed ashore in various stages of decay, lining the beaches of Southern California.

Seagulls, cormorants, pelicans, puffins, loons. All of the most glorious of California’s seabirds. They are often emaciated and frail, as if they’ve starved. This week, we began to understand what may be causing these deaths.

Researchers at Scripps in La Jolla have a theory. Warmer ocean temperatures reduce what’s called upwelling, the process by which nutrients rise from the depths. Fewer nutrients at the ocean’s surface mean there are fewer nutrients for krill to consume. In turn, krill must go deeper to find food.

With fewer krill near the water’s surface, there aren’t many krill for seabirds to munch upon. With little to eat, these birds are dying of malnutrition.

It’s a deadly cycle, and man-made climate chaos is to blame.

Ocean temperatures have been steadily rising. As someone who spends a lot of time in the ocean, I can attest that it has been exceptionally warm this year. And the data backs it up. Surface temperatures are up 3 to 7 degrees above average in parts of Southern California. This marine heat wave is about to worsen.

Record-breaking El Niño conditions are predicted to further warm the Pacific in the months ahead, peaking through next fall and winter. Every El Niño that’s hit in recent decades has been hotter than the last, and this one will no doubt be on trend. Scientists are worried that this 9,000-mile freight train of warm water will be the most severe we’ve seen in over 150 years, when El Niño conditions in the late 1870s led to the deaths of 50 million people.

What this current........

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