America: Birds and marine animals poisoning mass

This spring, many southern California marine animals died massively due to poisoning of domoic acid, found in a small seaweed.

Every year, in the spring, many Southern California marine animals die mass, especially brown pelicans. This spring, the situation became even worse. Not only birds but also whales are destroyed. The beach is full of corpses of seabirds, seals, dolphins, otters . and on the Santa Barbara coast, a whale appears every 29 minutes.

The cause of this phenomenon is still unknown.

A pelican dies on a dump (Photo: SC)

However, many animals were tested, claiming to have been infected with domoic acid. Jay Holcomb, IBRRC manager (International Bird Search and Rescue Center), said: 'I've been working in the center for 35 years but I've never seen so many species affected like this. . It is more than "oil spill".

What happened to seabirds and how their numbers were affected? Especially spring is the strongest breeding season of California brown pelicans.

Domoic acid is known to be a powerful natural toxin found in a very small seaweed. It poisoned the brain for any animal to eat.

Domoic acid-infected pelicans can fall at any time while flying in the sky. Some crash into the windshield of cars. Sometimes they fall into places that many people consider harmful: runways at airports and highways - two places with the most traffic.

Holcomb was convinced that the number of sea birds died on the sea so much that it could not be counted. Currently the IBRRC and Caron Laboratory in USC are working hard to find a solution to prevent this situation.

Nguyen Thi Ninh