Fish kills are actually very common.

[MineralMan]

Seriously. Every year in Minnesota, there are several that get reported in our local papers. Often, thousands of fish die. The reasons are many, ranging from fish diseases and reduced oxygen levels in the water to seasonal turnover events which can cause massive kills of fish. Sometimes, of course, they're caused by pollution or the deliberate poisoning of a body of water.

They're not new. They're not that unusual. The current grouping of fish kills in a number of places may well be a news event, rather than some sort of nefarious thing. Every once in a while, a fish kill occurs at a time when something else is going on. This sends the news reporters off to Google, where they can always find numerous stories of fish kills somewhere that happened about the same time.

Check this link, which is a Google image search for fish kill. Hover over the images to get links to the stories of each image. It's clear that fish kills are a common enough phenomenon and occur regularly. They are not necessarily a sign of something dire and man-made. It takes some time to investigate one of these events to find out what actually caused it.

http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1366&bih=653&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=fish+kills&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Here's a chart that shows some of the reasons for these disturbing fish kills. Note: DO means Dissolved Oxygen.

[RandomThoughts]

1. Even if fish and bird kills are common.

Then they should be in the news often if that is the case. That would still be a news issue if out of perspective reports on them.

[MineralMan]

3. They are frequently in the news, but locally. You can do a news search

on Google and keep looking further back in time, and you'll see that they are indeed covered. They rarely make national news, unless one is connected to some unusual event. Then, it's easy enough for reporters to find other ones to talk about, as has happened just now.

Here in Minnesota, we have numerous ones associated with shallow lakes and Winter. Then, we have some that kill one species of fish. Those are almost always caused by some fish disease.

Something as simple as a cold snap in a body of water that is already under stress for other reasons can cause massive fish die-offs.

The way to find out why a fish kill happened is to study the dead fish. That's happening right now in the recent cases, as it does in most fish kills. They're of interest to fish and wildlife departments everywhere. That's their job.

[jdlh8894]

5. Why doesn't the news report

How many people were killed yesterday? How many died naturaly? Put that on the news,and then compare percenteges.

[MineralMan]

8. Well, it does, but in individual local newspapers.

The obituary pages in my local Saint Paul Pioneer Press is fairly large each day. The thing is that it's a commonplace that people die every day. They die in large numbers, nationwide, every day. It's not really news. Things like bird kills and fish kills are somewhat more unusual, so they tend to get a bigger play in the news. People dying is a normal occurrence.

[jdlh8894]

21. When the word "kill" or "killed" is used to make a point

Then I guess people who died of natural causes were "killed"eom

[MineralMan]

22. English has many different meanings for many words.

Kill is one of them. The noun form, which is used in the expression "fish kill" is almost never used with regard to human beings. It is, however, often used in expressions like "fish kill," to indicated numerous animals killed by anything.

It's a mistake to apply a single meaning to a word which has multiple meanings. When you do, you're pushing something beyond its logical edge.

For example, if I kill the engine on my boat, it dies, but a pull on the starter rope brings it back to life. So, it's not dead in the same sense is an animal is if I kill the animal. I'm a writer, and have had a few articles "killed" by an editor. They were not dead, though, since I sold them to someone else.

Too narrow an interpretation of a common word like this, which has many meanings, is a mistake.

"You're killing me," when used in reference to someone telling a joke, is another example.
"She killed the ball," when used in reference to a volleyball game, has nothing to do with death.

A "kill" is also a regional name for a creek or river, particularly in New York state. (from the Dutch language)

[Celebration]

2. Yes, they are

But bird kills of the magnitude in Arkansas are not at all common. They are quite puzzling.

[MineralMan]

4. Yup. The death of those birds in a small area is

interesting. I'm sure the reason will be determined after studying the dead animals. It could take a couple of weeks, though.

[OneGrassRoot]

9. And in multiple locations...

with seemingly new reports by the hour. That's what seems especially puzzling.

:shrug:

[MineralMan]

11. I don't know. There's been some pretty unusual weather in the

southern states lately. That could well be the answer. The bottom line is that it's impossible to figure out without doing whatever research is needed. That's going on now. Lots of things are puzzling until you find out what's behind them.

[OneGrassRoot]

13. True. I'm simply going to blame Halliburton...

It's my New Year's Resolution to blame them for anything and everything that goes wrong...personal, global...it doesn't matter.

I think they're behind all of it.

:hippie:

[MineralMan]

15. There ya go! It's good to have someone to blame.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

6. From what I understand though . . .

. . . all of the dead fish at least were the same species, which would seem to rule out nearly all the causes on the chart except "infection" and "unknown."

[MineralMan]

7. That's true. All those fish were freshwater drum. That would tend

to lead to a infectious cause, but not absolutely. It could also be some particular sensitivity in that species to sudden temperature change or something like that. I'm sure there are many other species in that particular location.

[EstimatedProphet]

16. It could easily be an infection of some sort

It could be a parasite
It could also be due to a localized temperature change in the water column
It could also be due to anoxic conditions, similar to something like pond turnover. Almost all of the fish found were drum, but that doesn't mean that that's all that there were, not by a long shot. These things happen quite a lot, too.

Any of the above could be the culprit, plus several more things that haven't been mentioned. Yet many people seem to immediately settle on HAARP and/or chemtrails and/or evil government conspiracies because it's so rare - when it's actually pretty common.

[MineralMan]

19. Exactly. Some people consistently look for zebras when they

hear hoofbeats. Around Minnesota, most anglers would be cheering a die-off of freshwater drum, which they consider to be a nuisance fish, since they're perpetual bait-stealers. Not me, though. I like to fish for them and release them. They're also very good eating, oddly enough. Millions on millions of them in the Mississippi and other rivers here. Very popular food for our bald eagles, too, and they make good cut bait for catfish. I'm a big drum fan.

One thing's certain, though: the population of drum in those waters will recover pretty quickly.

[Cleita]

10. Common in our polluted industrial word would seem

a better word than natural because in the natural unpolluted world things like that wouldn't happen except when Mother Nature does a number like explode a volcano, or an asteroid falls or any other number of natural but unusual phenomena that can trigger a mass kill.

[MineralMan]

12. Maybe. Maybe not. I wouldn't make a statement like that without

some serious historical research. No doubt pollution has caused more such incidents than in the past, but natural fish kills, etc. have always happened, too. I've read about them. Each incident is unique.

[Cleita]

14. Not to contradict you, but you were talking about

the Great Lakes that are known to be more polluted that let's say the Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes in Canada's Northern Territories. Although to be more precise, every place that was relatively free from pollution yesterday is being stressed by global warming today from Antarctica to the Arctic and the rain forests of the Amazon. Man made pollution is killing our oceans too. It seems we are being royally screwed and can't do anything about it. Species die offs are the opening salvo of a planet in stress and in the throes of major change.

[MineralMan]

17. Yes, but the Great Lakes used to be much more polluted in

past decades than they are now. They're much cleaner today. That's not a great example, really. Stricter environmental laws since the 1960s have done a great deal to clean up those and other waters. It's not that simple.

[EstimatedProphet]

18. Not true at all

Mass fish kills are quite common in nature.

[MineralMan]

20. People who aren't on the water much don't realize the truth

of this. We had a big fish kill of sunfish on one of my favorite fishing lakes last year. Didn't get any other species, but kill thousands and thousands of various species of sunfish. It's OK, though, since the lake was overpopulated with stunted ones anyhow. They'll recover in a year or so.

[EstimatedProphet]

24. Exactly

And since it rarely gets noticed unless it is a gigantic fish kill, it rarely gets reported, so people don't find out about it.

I personally remember going to take samples at a catfish pond which had a complete die-off - hundreds of thousands of fish - literally overnight. The lab I worked in got calls like that every spring. There are some diseases that have that kind of mortality associated with them.

[Uncle Joe]

23. That's true, gonorrhea and syphilis are also somewhat common as well but I don't believe we should

jump to any conclusions that the U.S. government would deliberately infect people....wait a minute, I'm now being told they did.

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=222x96117

Thanks for the thread, Mineral Man.

[Cleita]

25. Common.

A word those who believe they are above common hate.