What have we done to cause this?
About 20 dead sea turtles have washed ashore in Pinellas County in the past three days, an extremely high number that has doctors and scientists puzzled.
One of the two survivors that’s being kept at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium is a large, loggerhead turtle named Siratti Sam.
“I still don’t know if he’ll make it,” said Dr. Janine Cianciolo. “It’s little movements. Yesterday, he wasn’t moving at all. [He's] still not in water because he’s not keeping his head above water for long enough periods of time.”
It’s not clear why the various kinds of sea turtles are washing ashore.
“It may or may not be associated with red tide,” said Cianciolo. “They tend to show symptoms of what’s called a red tide intoxication, but you have to take a lot of samples and they must go through testing to actually determine that.”
Dive instructor Michael Miller took underwater video to try to figure out the mystery.
“Right now, anywhere we go from shore to 20 miles offshore, from Sarasota to Tarpon Springs, we can’t find a single creature alive on the bottom right now,” said Miller.
Miller says he’s never seen such death and devastation under water in his 20 years of diving.
“All the coral, all the sponges, all the crabs, not a single living thing, all the star fish, the brittle stars, everything’s dead,” said Miller.
Too fine a point doesn’t cut through the apathy.
So here’s the blunt point.
We live in our own toilet.
As we humans continue to absolutely overwhelm the resources of this spinning orb of ours, we move beyond living within nature to living in an artificially constructed environment. A terraformed environment. Terraformed by sloppy amateurs. As we’ve expanded — to every available niche on the planet — it’s become a closer and closer environment.
And we are eating, breathing and drinking and excreting in that close environment.
We are living in our own toilet.
And we aren’t cleaning it.
Wow, that’s just like the beginning of Soylent Green when they tell you that global warming destroyed all life in the ocean.
It could also be from the runoff from the Mississippi, which is loaded with pesticides. There is a huge dead zone south of Louisiana created by all of those mythologized farmer.
Not a Single Living Thing …. damn that scares the hell out of me ….
Not a Single Living Thing
Several sea turtles have washed up dead in an area of the Florida coast where all the marine life has died. … “Right now, anywhere we go from shore to 20 miles offshore, from Sarasota to Tarpon Springs, we canÂ’t…