Be: Toxin kills birds, sea lions

Friday, April 27, 2007
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Toxin kills birds, sea lions

Thursday, April 26, 2007
Domoic acid, released by blooming diatoms, is behind dozens of sick mammals and birds washing up on O.C. beaches.

By RYAN HAMMILL and CINDY CARCAMO
The Orange County Register

NEWPORT BEACH – The state issued a quarantine Thursday night on locally harvested shellfish, sardines, lobster and other seafood after a toxic offshore sea algae bloom killed and disabled dozens of ocean birds, sea lions and dolphins along local beaches and up and down the Pacific Coast.

The state's Department of Health Services issued the warning as experts called the bloom the worst of such seasonal fluctuations in recent years.

Sea and bird life have washed up along beaches from San Diego to San Francisco's bay, mirroring the start of an outbreak in 2002-03 that sickened or killed more than a thousand sea lions and 50 dolphins, said Joe Cordaro, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Services.

Authorities have collected sick and dying animals from county beaches since the weekend, when the results of poisoning from domoic acid, a toxin released yearly by blooming diatoms, began.

"This is the worst day for dead and dying birds I've encountered in 5½ years of this job," Valerie Schomburg, a Newport Beach animal-control officer, said Thursday.

The water is still safe for surfers and swimmers because the toxin affects mammals only when it is consumed in large concentrations, said Gregg Langlois, a biologist with the state Department of Health Services.

That is why the agency is advising people not to eat sport-harvested shellfish, sardines and anchovies, and sport-harvested and commercially caught crab and lobster, officials said. The newest advisory came on the heels of a quarantine on mussels issued a week ago.

The causes for the release of the toxin are unknown and under research, but experts agree that it enters the food chain through fish and shellfish that are in turn eaten by larger animals, said Lisa Birkle, an assistant director at the Wetland and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach.

But unlike years past, the speed and severity of the toxin's onset has overwhelmed rescue groups who care for the poisoned animals.

"The concentration of the toxin is so great this year that we haven't had a chance to react to it," Birkle said. "Normally we're able to flush out the toxin with a treatment regimen to the birds we care for. This year they're just coming in dead."

Since Sunday the center has received 73 sick or dead birds. Eleven are still being cared for.

Also hard hit in the recent bloom are sea lions, 14 of which have been treated for domoic acid poisoning at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach. Seven of the animals in treatment have died, said Michele Hunter, the center's director.

The center treated 40 sea lions in 2006 for the poisoning; 19 of the animals died.

Thursday, Newport Beach officials reported a pair of sick sea lions on the beach near the Wedge, and center officials recovered the pair.

Newport Beach police animal-control officers also collected seven pelicans, five dead, and seven other types of dead birds along city beaches.

Seal Beach reported a pair of sickened sea lions Wednesday and a juvenile Sunday, and a dead sea lion washed up on the city's jetty Sunday, lifeguard Nick Bolin said.

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