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Sea cucumber die-off near Vancouver Island prompts fears of wasting disease that nearly wiped out sea stars – CBC.ca

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When Kathleen Reed descended for her usual weekly dive off the coast of Nanaimo, B.C., last Saturday she was shocked by how many dead sea cucumbers she saw.

Reed has completed more than 500 dives and says she’d never seen so many of the deep red echinoderms turned pale, limp and slimy.

“There were hundreds of them. They were just white and dead in various states of decay, littered all over the sea floor. It was shocking and really disturbing to see,” said Reed.

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Experts and harvesters fear that sea cucumbers found off the coast of Vancouver Island are being hit by an illness similar to sea star wasting disease, which swept through the B.C. population in 2015 and 2016, killing 96 per cent of the creatures.

A healthy sunflower sea star sits on cold water coral formations in Puget Sound. Research shows 5.75 billion sea stars along the West Coast have died in recent years. (Greg Amptman/Shutterstock)

Sunflower sea stars were hit particularly hard. It’s estimated that some 5.7 billion sunflower sea stars died, bringing the species close to extinction. 

Symptoms first appeared as pale blotchy lesions or white spots on the skin and ended with the animal dissolving. 

The symptoms are similar to those now affecting sea cucumbers along the B.C. coast. 

Sea stars and sea cucumbers are both echinoderms or spiny-skinned creatures. While sea stars hunt, sea cucumbers are bottom feeders; they act like a garbage truck, eating organic detritus — or waste — found in the sea floor sediment.

Biologists are studying why hundreds of sea cucumbers appear to be dying off near the coast of Vancouver Island. Some fear the echinoderms have been stricken with a wasting disease similar to that which killed off billions of sea stars in the last decade. (Kathleen Reed)

Sea cucumbers perform an important ecological role and could help clean up aquaculture sites, according to Emaline Montgomery, a research scientist at the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo.

More study is needed to determine what’s causing this mass mortality event, but climate change is likely part of the explanation. 

Montgomery said that warmer water temperatures could play a role in stressing the animals, which may make them more susceptible to pathogens or viruses.

“Usually when sea cucumbers get stressed they might start to exhibit these bizarre symptoms where their outer body wall turns white. It gets kind of mucousy. It literally looks like their skin is disintegrating or melting,” she said.

A sea star consumes the remains of a sea cucumber that appears to be wasting or melting off the shores of Nanaimo, B.C. (Kathleen Reed)

Seven years ago, sea cucumber wasting was reported in Friday Harbour in Washington state and near Admiralty Island in Alaska. Since then it’s been noticed near one Washington aquaculture farm as well as in Howe Sound, near Sechelt, B.C.

A study last year led by Ian Hewson, a Cornell University biological oceanographer and expert in viruses of the sea, described an Alaskan outbreak.

Those sea cucumbers were stricken with “lesions and fissures and sloughing of epidermal tissues,” then rapid “liquefaction.”

Global market for sea cucumbers

Canada does about $30-million in sea cucumber trade. B.C. has about a one-third share of that market.

Thom Liptrot, president of the Pacific Sea Cucumber Harvesters Association, says divers pick the prickled creatures along about half the B.C. coast. 

B.C. has approved 85 licensed fishers who are allowed to take 16,000 pounds or 7,200 kilograms each, according to Liptrot.

Dried sea cucumber is shipped to China where it is used to treat everything from arthritis to heart disease and boost virility. Fresh sea cucumber can be flash-fried in garlic and butter and tastes “somewhere between a clam and a squid,” Liptrot said.

Otters and sea stars also enjoy eating sea cucumbers, which sometimes escape by rolling.

This sea cucumber has turned partially white instead of its usual deep brick-red hue. It’s not yet clear why this is happening. (Kathleen Reed)

Liptrot has had reports of dead sea cucumbers near Comox and Sechelt and now fears the elongated echinoderms are being hit by a wasting disease similar the one that nearly wiped out sea stars along the B.C. coast. 

“[The wasting disease] has been around a long time and it’s taken out sea cucumbers before — but never a mass extinction like the sun star,” he said.

‘If we lose the vacuum cleaners of the sea … we are in trouble’

Reed, an avid naturalist and diver, recalls seeing a few sea stars stricken with wasting disease, but said last Saturday’s discovery was more devastating. 

On her Aug. 28 dive Reed said that every sea cucumber she saw between the depths of 10 and 25 metres appeared dead. She checked three spots that day: Dolphin Beach, Tyee Cove and Wall Beach, near Parksville.

Hundreds of sea cucumbers stricken with some affliction appear to be turning white and dying off the coast near Nanaim,o all the way to Nanoose Bay and Parksville, B.C. (Kathleen Reed)

While Reed did see some mottled animals after the heat waves earlier this summer, she said they now appear to be “just kind of melting in place” and littering the sea from Madrona Point all the way to Blueback Community Park — spanning the entire Nanoose Bay Peninsula.

“It was really, really concerning. I don’t think I’ve ever been so concerned while diving. If those guys go — if we lose the vacuum cleaners of the sea — we are really in trouble,” she said. 

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The total solar eclipse in North America could shed light on a persistent puzzle about the sun – Phys.org

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The total solar eclipse in North America could shed light on a persistent puzzle about the sun

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The path of eclipse totality passes through Mexico, the US and Canada. Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

A total solar eclipse takes place on April 8 across North America. These events occur when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, completely blocking the sun’s face. This plunges observers into a darkness similar to dawn or dusk.

During the upcoming eclipse, the path of totality, where observers experience the darkest part of the moon’s shadow (the umbra), crosses Mexico, arcing north-east through Texas, the Midwest and briefly entering Canada before ending in Maine.

Total solar eclipses occur roughly every 18 months at some location on Earth. The last that crossed the US took place on August 21 2017.

An international team of scientists, led by Aberystwyth University, will be conducting experiments from near Dallas, at a location in the path of totality. The team consists of Ph.D. students and researchers from Aberystwyth University, Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena.

There is valuable science to be done during eclipses that is comparable to or better than what we can achieve via space-based missions. Our experiments may also shed light on a longstanding puzzle about the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere—its corona.

The sun’s intense light is blocked by the moon during a total solar eclipse. This means that we can observe the sun’s faint corona with incredible clarity, from distances very close to the sun, out to several solar radii. One radius is the distance equivalent to half the sun’s diameter, about 696,000km (432,000 miles).

Measuring the corona is extremely difficult without an eclipse. It requires a special telescope called a coronagraph that is designed to block out direct light from the sun. This allows fainter light from the corona to be resolved. The clarity of eclipse measurements surpasses even coronagraphs based in space.

We can also observe the corona on a relatively small budget, compared to, for example, spacecraft missions. A persistent puzzle about the corona is the observation that it is much hotter than the photosphere (the visible surface of the sun). As we move away from a hot object, the surrounding temperature should decrease, not increase. How the corona is heated to such high temperatures is one question we will investigate.

We have two main scientific instruments. The first of these is Cip (coronal imaging polarimeter). Cip is also the Welsh word for “glance,” or “quick look.” The instrument takes images of the sun’s corona with a polariser.

The light we want to measure from the corona is highly polarized, which means it is made up of waves that vibrate in a single geometric plane. A polarizer is a filter that lets light with a particular polarization pass through it, while blocking light with other polarizations.

The Cip images will allow us to measure fundamental properties of the corona, such as its density. It will also shed light on phenomena such as the solar wind. This is a stream of sub-atomic particles in the form of plasma—superheated matter—flowing continuously outward from the sun. Cip could help us identify sources in the sun’s atmosphere for certain solar wind streams.

Direct measurements of the magnetic field in the sun’s atmosphere are difficult. But the eclipse data should allow us to study its fine-scale structure and trace the field’s direction. We’ll be able to see how far magnetic structures called large “closed” magnetic loops extend from the sun. This in turn will give us information about large-scale magnetic conditions in the corona.

The second instrument is Chils (coronal high-resolution line spectrometer). It collects high-resolution spectra, where light is separated into its component colors. Here, we are looking for a particular spectral signature of iron emitted from the corona.

It comprises three , where light is emitted or absorbed in a narrow frequency range. These are each generated at a different range of temperatures (in the millions of degrees), so their relative brightness tells us about the coronal temperature in different regions.

Mapping the ‘s temperature informs advanced, computer-based models of its behavior. These models must include mechanisms for how the coronal plasma is heated to such high temperatures. Such mechanisms might include the conversion of magnetic waves to thermal plasma energy, for example. If we show that some regions are hotter than others, this can be replicated in models.

This year’s eclipse also occurs during a time of heightened solar activity, so we could observe a coronal mass ejection (CME). These are huge clouds of magnetized plasma that are ejected from the sun’s atmosphere into space. They can affect infrastructure near Earth, causing problems for vital satellites.

Many aspects of CMEs are poorly understood, including their early evolution near the sun. Spectral information on CMEs will allow us to gain information on their thermodynamics, and their velocity and expansion near the sun.

Our eclipse instruments have recently been proposed for a space mission called moon-enabled solar occultation mission (Mesom). The plan is to orbit the moon to gain more frequent and extended eclipse observations. It is being planned as a UK Space Agency mission involving several countries, but led by University College London, the University of Surrey and Aberystwyth University.

We will also have an advanced commercial 360-degree camera to collect video of the April 8 eclipse and the observing site. The video is valuable for public outreach events, where we highlight the work we do, and helps to generate public interest in our local star, the sun.

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The total solar eclipse in North America could shed light on a persistent puzzle about the sun (2024, March 28)
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How the 2024 total solar eclipse is different than the 2017 eclipse



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Mar 30: An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and more… – CBC.ca

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Quirks and Quarks54:00An Australian Atlantis and other lost landscapes, and more…


On this week’s episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald: 

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Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham Palace 

Quirks and Quarks9:04Archaeologists identify a medieval war-horse graveyard near Buckingham Palace

We know knights in shining armour rode powerful horses, but remains of those horses are rare. Now, researchers studying equine remains from a site near Buckingham Palace have built a case, based on evidence from their bones, that these animals were likely used in jousting tournaments and battle. Archaeologist Katherine Kanne says the bone analysis also revealed a complex, continent-crossing medieval horse trading network that supplied the British elite with sturdy stallions. This paper was published in Science Advances.

University of Exeter researchers analyzed horse skeletons found near Buckingham Palace and conducted isotope tests on teeth to find out more about the animals’ origins. (University of Exeter)

In an ice-free Arctic, polar bears are dining on duck eggs — and gulls are taking advantage

Quirks and Quarks9:22In an ice-free Arctic, Polar bears are dining on duck eggs — and gulls are taking advantage

Researchers using drones to study ground-nesting birds in the Arctic have observed entire colonies being devastated by marauding polar bears that would normally be out on the ice hunting seals, except the ice isn’t there. What’s more, now they’re enabling a second predator — hungry gulls that raid the nests in the bears’ wake. Andrew Barnas made the observations of this “gull tornado” by following around polar bears in East Bay Island in Nunavut. The research was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Aerial video of a polar bear on grassy, rocky terrain with white birds circling nearby.
A polar bear storms eider duck nests on East Bay island in Nunavut, while herring gulls follow closely behind to snack on any remaining eggs. (Submitted by Andrew Barnas)

A NASA mission might have the tools to detect life on Europa from space

Quirks and Quarks8:05A NASA mission might have the tools to detect life on Europa from space

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, due to launch this fall, is set to explore the jewel of our solar system: Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The mission’s focus is to determine if the icy moon, thought to harbour an ocean with more water than all of the water on Earth, is amenable to life. However, postdoctoral researcher Fabian Klenner, now at the University of Washington, demonstrated how the spacecraft may be able to detect fragments of bacterial life in a single grain of ice ejected from the surface of the moon. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

The silhouette of the spacecraft is flying over a brightly pink, blue and orange tinted moon with lots of darker coloured veins underneath with a slightly eclipsed Jupiter looming in the backdrop.
Scientists think under Europa’s icy shell, there is a global, saltwater ocean with twice the volume of Earth’s oceans combined. (NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech)

Pollution is preventing pollinators from recognizing floral plants by scent

Quirks and Quarks7:50Pollution is preventing pollinators from finding plants by scent

Our polluted air is transforming floral scents so pollinators that spread their pollen can no longer recognize them. In a new study in the journal Science, researchers found that a certain compound in air pollution reacts with the flower’s scent molecules so pollinators — like the hummingbird hawk-moths that pollinate at night — fail to recognize them. Jeremy Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples, said the change in scent made the flowers smell “less fruity and less fresh.”

A huge insect that looks like a hummingbird hovers over a vibrant pink flower with its long antenna inside one of the blooms.
Scientists found that a hummingbird hawk-moth’s ability to recognize the smell of flowers is hampered by air pollution. (Thomas Kienzle/AFP/Getty Images)

An Australian Atlantis and underwater archeological remains in the Baltic 

Quirks and Quarks17:14An Australian Atlantis and underwater archeological remains in the Baltic

During the last ice age, sea levels were more than 100 metres lower than they are today, which means vast tracts of what are currently coastal seafloor were dry land back then. Geologists and archaeologists are searching for these lost landscapes to identify places prehistoric humans might have occupied. These included a country-sized area of Australia that could have been home to half a million people. Archaeologist Kasih Norman and her colleagues published their study of this now-drowned landscape in Quaternary Science Reviews

Another example is an undersea wall off the coast of Northern Germany that preserves an underwater reindeer hunting ground, described in research led by Jacob Geersen, published in the journal PNAS.

a black-and-white depiction of a small group of caribou walking between a low stone wall and an ocean coastline.
An artist’s representation of caribou being directed by a hunters’ stone wall, as it would have appeared 8-11,000 years ago, before rising sea levels left it 20m below the surface of the Baltic Sea. (Michał Grabowski)

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Solar eclipse April 8 – South Grey News

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March 28, 2024

Graphic: Appalachian Mtn Club

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Grey Bruce Public Health is urging residents to resist the temptation to look directly at the sun during the upcoming solar eclipse and take steps to safeguard their visual health during this relatively rare celestial event.

On April 8, 2024, parts of southern and eastern Ontario will experience a total solar eclipse for the first time since 1925. Grey-Bruce will be outside of the so-called Path of Totality — a narrow area where the moon will completely block out the sun — but will still experience a partial eclipse.

The eclipse is expected to begin at about 2 pm and continue until 4:30 pm The eclipse will peak around 3:20 pm.

It is never safe to stare directly at the sun, but it may be tempting to do so during a solar eclipse.

Looking directly at the sun during an eclipse can cause retinal burns, blurred vision, and/or temporary or permanent loss of visual function, according to the Ontario Association of Optometrists. Damage to the eyes can occur without any sensation of pain.

Grey Bruce Public Health advises the following:

  • Do not look directly at the sun without proper eye protection during the solar eclipse. Looking at even a small sliver of the sun before or after the eclipse without proper eye protection can harm vision.
  • Keep a close eye on children and other vulnerable family members during the eclipse to ensure they do not inadvertently look up at the sun without proper eye protection.
  • To safely view the eclipse, ISO-certified eclipse glasses that meet the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard must be worn. Ensure these glasses are in good condition, without any wrinkles or scratches, and that they fully cover the entire field of vision. Put on the glasses when looking away from the sun, then look at the eclipse. Look away from the sun before taking the glasses off.
  • Regular sunglasses or homemade filters will not protect the eyes.
  • It is not safe to view the eclipse through a camera/phone lens, telescope, binoculars, or any other optical device.

Other ways to safely experience the solar eclipse include watching a livestream of the event or creating and using an eclipse box or pinhole projector.

Anyone experiencing temporary vision loss or blurred vision during or after the eclipse should speak with their eye care professional or healthcare provider as soon as possible.

Anyone experiencing blindness (immediate or delayed) after viewing the eclipse must seek emergency care immediately.

More information on the upcoming eclipse is available on the GBPH website.


At South Grey News, we endeavour to bring you truthful and factual, up-to-date local community news in a quick and easy-to-digest format that’s free of political bias. We believe this service is more important today than ever before, as social media has given rise to misinformation, largely unchecked by big corporations who put profits ahead of their responsibilities.

South Grey News does not have the resources of a big corporation. We are a small, locally owned-and-operated organization. Research, analysis and physical attendance at public meetings and community events requires considerable effort. But contributions from readers and advertisers, however big or small, go a long way to helping us deliver positive, open and honest journalism for this community.

Please consider supporting South Grey News with a donation in lieu of a subscription fee and let us know that our efforts are appreciated. Thank you.

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