Niagara Falls Freezes Over And Sharks Are Freezing To Death In The Atlantic

Niagara Falls has frozen over because it’s so cold in America

America is experiencing one of the coldest weekends of the year as Niagara Falls has frozen over and sharks are freezing to death in the Atlantic.

The US is currently gripped by an arctic blast of air that has kept temperatures below freezing and brought record cold to some spots.

A huge swathe of the country is facing numbing cold as forecasters warn New Year’s revelers from Memphis to Maine to expect freezing conditions on Sunday.

As far south as Charleston, South Carolina, freezing rain coated the city’s landmark church steeples, while brutally cold weather has iced plans for scores of events in the Northeast from New Year’s Eve through New Year’s Day.

Authorities are warning revelers in New York City that it could be one of the coldest New Year’s Eve ball drops on record while in Boston the weather has cracked railway tracks, causing chaos for commuters.

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Thousands of Sharks, Other Sea Life Mysteriously Die in San Francisco Bay

Thousands of Sharks, Other Sea Life Mysteriously Die in San Francisco Bay:

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife isn’t dedicating any funding toward determining the cause, says resources are needed elsewhere

H/t reader kevin a.

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Mass die-off in the Pacific as hundreds of sharks wash up on the shores of San Francisco

Mass die-off in the Pacific as hundreds of sharks wash up on the shores of San Francisco:

Ohia.org reminds us that sharks are both scavengers and super -predators, who greatly assist in keeping the ocean’s ecosystem balanced. Sharks eat fish that are the “weakest, sick or dead,” and also “maintain prey species diversity” by keeping other predator species in check. A decline in shark populations not only threatens fishery operations, but can also indicate deeper problems within our ecosystem. This may be the case in the waters of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Francisco, where for more than seven weeks, hundreds of Leopard sharks have been found dying, or dead, as reported by the San Francisco Gate.

Read moreMass die-off in the Pacific as hundreds of sharks wash up on the shores of San Francisco

Flashback: The Pacific Is Broken

The Pacific Is Broken: ‘After We Left Japan, It Felt As If The Ocean itself Was Dead’ – ‘I’m Used To Seeing Turtles, Dolphins, Sharks And Big Flurries Of Feeding Birds’ – ‘But This Time For 3000 Nautical Miles There Was Nothing Alive To Be Seen’

CBC News: Something Very Odd Is Happening In Pacific; Sea Creatures Acting Strangely

CBC News: Something very odd is happening in Pacific; Sea creatures acting strangely, species turning up where rarely seen — Related to Fukushima crisis? — L.A. Lifeguard: Used to be 2 shark sightings a year, now it’s 2 a day (VIDEOS) (ENENews, Nov 27, 2013):

CBC News Vancouver at 6, Nov. 4, 2013: What’s going on in B.C.’s weird ocean waters? Scientists are just as puzzled as the rest of us […] There’s something very odd happening in the ocean and in the waters around B.C. — sea creatures are behaving strangely. And species are turning up where they are rarely seen. […] Extraordinary marine activity […] From California all the way to Alaska […] Others point to disasters like Japan’s tsunami that triggered a nuclear crisis, but no one knows for sure. […] the ecosystem is such an intricate web of combinations and permutations and relationships so any disturbance in one side of it can have bi ramifications all through it. Only monitoring and reporting, experts say, will tell us what’s going on.  >> Watch the broadcast here

CBC News, Nov. 27, 2013: Curious humpback encounter dazzles whale watchers — Captain recalls whale encounter […] We turned around and there was this humpback with his head completely out of the water , about 6 feet of it lookin at us […] There it was, just starin at us maybe 10 feet from the boat. The rest of a full hour it swam under the boat, around the boat […] everybody was ecstatic […] I’ve been on these waters since 1988 and nothing like this has ever happened to me before.[…] It’s a once in a lifetime event. >> Watch the humpback encounter here

Read moreCBC News: Something Very Odd Is Happening In Pacific; Sea Creatures Acting Strangely

The Pacific Is Broken: ‘After We Left Japan, It Felt As If The Ocean itself Was Dead’ – ‘I’m Used To Seeing Turtles, Dolphins, Sharks And Big Flurries Of Feeding Birds’ – ‘But This Time For 3000 Nautical Miles There Was Nothing Alive To Be Seen’

From the article:

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.

“After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead,” Macfadyen said.

“We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

“I’ve done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I’m used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen.”

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.

And something else. The boat’s vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.


The ocean is broken

The ocean is broken (The Herald, Oct 18, 2013):

IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.

Not the absence of sound, exactly.

The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.

Read moreThe Pacific Is Broken: ‘After We Left Japan, It Felt As If The Ocean itself Was Dead’ – ‘I’m Used To Seeing Turtles, Dolphins, Sharks And Big Flurries Of Feeding Birds’ – ‘But This Time For 3000 Nautical Miles There Was Nothing Alive To Be Seen’

Sharks Dying in San Francisco Bay, Cause Unknown

Sharks are dying in San Francisco Bay, with volunteers having rescued and removed about a dozen dead and dying leopard sharks in small waterways in Redwood City over the past few days in what is rapidly becoming a common occurrence, an expert said.

Redwood City resident Catherine Greer and her 13-year-old son, Lorenzo, were the first to discover the dying sharks at a lagoon near Redwood Shores off Radio Road earlier this week.

Greer, an avid fisher, said what she saw upset her. “It looked like they were trying to beach themselves,” she said.

Read moreSharks Dying in San Francisco Bay, Cause Unknown

More Than 100,000 Sharks Mass Off Florida’s Beaches


Added: 4. February 2011

Pilot Steve Irwin was astonished after spotting a mass of more than 100,000 sharks swimming just 100 yards off Florida’s sandy beaches.

The long-time fisherman and marine technology expert was cruising 300ft above the clear waters in his helicopter on Sunday when he came across the astonishing scene.

The 50-year-old – who shares his name with the late Australian ‘Crocodile Hunter’ – whipped out his smartphone to capture the masses of deadly predators, which spanned a 20-mile stretch of water.

Read moreMore Than 100,000 Sharks Mass Off Florida’s Beaches