Thousands of dead fish washed up in a town’s harbor.

Thousands of dead fish fill harbor in Germany

Officials in Germany are attempting to get to the bottom of a weird incident in which thousands of dead fish washed up in a town’s harbor.

The red tide in Florida kills THOUSANDS of tons of marine life

Don't believe the phoney hype! Officials in Florida claim red tide killed 267 tons of marine life, when the actual total is thousands of tons, (links provided)

Photo Fox13Now

the Big Wobble, 

5 January, 2019

"This was Florida's Deep Water Horizon!" An incredible 408 marine life die-off's, almost one every day from July 2016 to November 2018 and is the biggest marine disaster in Florida's history and today the Coastal Conservation Association Florida and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have come up with an official number of deaths during that period, they are claiming the red tide killed 267 tons of marine life along the Southwest coast of Florida. Full story

On December the 6th 2018, Fox13 claimed red tide blamed for the massive fish kill at Robinson Preserve Full story here

On 30th of October, 2018 AJC reported 10 tons of dead fish removed from Brevard County beaches Florida. Full story

On the same day in Pinellas County, tons of dead fish, killed by red tide, continue to wash inshore in Pinellas County. Full story

USA Today reported on 16th of Oct, 2018 of the red tide fish kill littering Indian River Shores beaches with 60,000 dead fish, police say. Full story

15th of October 2018, CBS Miami reported 14 tons of dead fish removed from Naples Bay Full story

Sept 2018, WJHG reported red tide causes thousands of fish to wash up in Panama City Beach. Full story

Bradenton Herald, 27th of August reported the county had already collected about 241 tons of red tide-related debris left on Manatee County beaches, parks and waterways, cleaning up the majority of fish kills, officials announced during a news conference. Full story

On the 16th of August 2018, WinkNews.com reported 309 tons of dead fish were cleared from Sanibel beaches. Full story here

On the same day, Fox4 reported Over 3 million pounds (1360 tons) of dead fish cleaned up from Lee County waters, Full story here

On the 6th of August Fox13 reported, tons of dead fish cleared from beaches on Anne Marie Island. Full story here

The end of July, Miami Herald reported dead fish, birds, manatees, even a whale shark. As the toll from worst red tide in decade grows. Report here 

in April 2018, Spectrum News 13show a video of thousands of fish coming up dead in the Indian River Lagoon again. Brevard County officials think the warmer weather and algae blooms are to blame Full story

Nov 2017, Fox news, reports, red tide causing thousands of dead fish to wash up on Sanibel Full story

Sept 2017, CBS reports,  South Florida Water Management District crew arrived early Wednesday to start cleaning up thousands of dead fish, full story

Aug 2017, News Channel 8 reported, thousands of dead fish causing foul smell near Safety Harbor, Clearwater. Full story 

This is only part of the story, there have been many many more fish die off's around the shores of Florida which I have not added because they are smaller and I would be here forever if I did.

Riverbeds dry up and water supplies run out in middle New Zealand

NZ: Running out of water in Makara

I am a strong believer in anecdotal evidence and citizen science.

I have a story from the local community of Makara where Pam and I keep our horses.

We heard from a local who lives on the beach.   His house was condemned because it was basically destroyed by ex-cyclone Gita in February, 2018.

Now, with 5 days left until he moves out from his property he has completely run out of water. Fortunately the owner of the land where we kept our horses offered him some water from the stream that runs through the property.

Another Makara neighbour has discovered his rain tank is completely empty and has gone over to town supply.

Just a few weeks ago I thought things looked better than they had and we might might avoid the worst in Makara this year.

However, the above story and the state of our stream (one of my litmus tests) has persuaded me otherwise.

The first photo was from last year which was very dry.

Now compare it with this taken looking in the opposite direction (because of the shade from setting sun.

In the public discourse on cliamte change there is little mention of drought (until crisis I upon us) any more than there is of the speed and severity of the problem.

Official statistics tend to hide the nature and severity of the problem.

****

Meanwhile...

The high rainfall within the Rai and Pelorus catchments is essential to the surrounding communities, providing irrigation and recreation.

The Rai River attracts guided fishing trips on the hunt for rainbow and brown trout, providing tourism and recreational opportunities for the small community. It is also popular with Outward Bound as an outdoor classroom, while others use it for kayaking.....

Rai farmers contend with a high annual rainfall of about 2m that can saturate paddocks, with run-off ending up in the river. They have the added problem of substantial flooding along the valley floor, also affecting water quality.

https://www.ruraldelivery.net.nz/stories/Rai-Valley-Water-Quality

Several fish found dead after riverbeds dry up in wider Marlborough region

1News,

2 Febraury, 2019

A number of fish have shown up dead as a result of drying up riverbeds in the wider Marlborough region.

It comes after concerns from Fish and Game Nelson Marlborough earlier this week over the effects of warmer temperatures on freshwater species.

Earlier this week, Fish and Game Nelson Marlborough expressed concerns over the effects of warmer temperatures on freshwater species. Source: Fish and Game New Zealand

Fish and Game regional manager Rhys Barrier told 1 NEWS as water levels recede, fish are becoming trapped in small pools of water with nowhere to go.

"26C will end up killing brown trout if they're in it too long," Mr Barrier said.

On Friday, Fish and Game staff visited the Opouri tributary of the Rai River, where they spotted several dead fish which were being "cleaned up" by hawks and shags.

The Rai River has been below its minimum flow levels for the past week.

***

We generally have to go by anecdote and reports like in this article to get a true sense of the picture. I believe the statistics from NIWA conceal as much as they reveal

Rainfall deficit

Soil moisture deficit

Swimmers warned to take care after toxic algae found in Wellington region's rivers

SUPPLIED

Toxic to people and fatal to dogs, toxic algae is blooming in the Wellington region's rivers.

Stuff.co.nz

2 February, 2019

It is more deadly than cobra venom and it has returned to the Wellington region's rivers.

Toxic algae has pushed some of the region's rivers over the safe swimming limit and the Greater Wellington Regional Council says people should stay out of some altogether.

Swimmers should avoid the Hutt River between Moonshine Bridge and Fairway Drive Bridge, and the Pakuratahi River from SH2 to its confluence with the Hutt River in Kaitoke Regional Park, the council says.

Children should be kept away from water in these sites and dogs should be kept on a lead.

NICHOLAS BOYACK/STUFF

Swimmers have been warned to look out for toxic algae in the Wellington region's rivers before taking a dip. (File photo)

It becomes dangerous when it comes loose from the riverbed and brown or black mats wash up on the banks or form floating rafts. A coin sized piece of algae could kill a 20kg dog.

Toxic algae cover is also rising at Greater Wellington's Waipoua, Waingawa and Ruamahanga river monitoring sites in Wairarapa, and in the Otaki and Waikanae rivers in Kāpiti, although these sites are currently below the council's "no swim" trigger levels.

Senior Environmental Scientist Mark Heath said no detached mats of toxic algae had yet been seen at any of the monitored sites.

SUPPLIED

Swimmers and dogs should keep away from sections of the Hutt River.

"However this could change rapidly, especially during warm weather, so we are urging people to be careful near all waterways throughout the region."

The algae was more deadly than cobra venom.

Given the rapid growth of toxic algae, and its potential change in coverage between weekly monitoring points, the council urged people to know learn it looks like.

They should check information signs around popular swimming holes and visit Greater Wellington's Is it Safe to Swim? website and Facebook page for more information about toxic algae, as well as images.

WHERE IS THE TOXIC ALGAE?*

Kāpiti Coast: The Ōtaki and Waikanae Rivers both remain below guideline levels at approximately 5 per cent cover but council monitoring officers have noticed a significant increase in toxic algae coverage (approximately 15 per cent) and it has become concentrated in some areas.

Hutt River: Toxic algae exceed the 20 per cent cover guideline level at the Silverstream Bridge site. All other monitoring sites were below guideline levels.

Ruamahanga River: Toxic algae cover is at approximately 10 per cent cover at the Waipoua and Waingawa monitoring sites, while toxic algae at Ruamahanga River sites are at approximately 5 per cent cover.

Pakuratahi River: The Pakuratahi River at Kaitoke Forest Park has a significant toxic algal bloom (20 per cent cover).

Waipapa Stream: The Waipapa Stream near Red Rocks on Wellington's South Coast also has a significant bloom.

*Monitored January 29 to

The devastation of a prolonged marine heatwave

The language is changing and a more realistic tone is being used compared with last year when a similar, but more serious, marine heatwave was simply put down to la-Nina.

Warm New Zealand seas could be 'devastating', NIWA warns

Newshub,

27 January, 2019

Craig Stevens and Ben Noll for The Conversation

Signs of another marine heat wave should direct attention to the serious impact of warming oceans, write Craig Stevens and Ben Noll of NIWA.

As New Zealanders are enjoying their days at the beach, unusually warm ocean temperatures look to be a harbinger of another marine heatwave.

Despite the exceptional conditions during last year's heatwave in the Tasman Sea, this summer's sea surface temperatures to the north and east of New Zealand are even warmer.

The latest NIWA climate assessment shows that sea surface temperatures in coastal waters around New Zealand are well above average. Marine heatwave conditions are already occurring in parts of the Tasman Sea and the ocean around New Zealand and looking to become the new normal.

What's in a name

Currently, marine heatwaves are defined as periods that last for five or more days with temperatures warmer than the 90th percentile based on a 30-year historical baseline. Given we are likely to experience many more such events as the oceans continue to warm, it is time to understand and categorise the intensity of marine heat.

The names Hurricane Katrina, tropical cyclone Giselle (which sank the ferry Wahine 50 years ago), tropical cyclone Winston give a malevolent personality to geophysical phenomena. Importantly they get graded into categories, so we can rapidly assess their potential impact.

An Australian team has developed a classification scheme for marine heatwaves. The team used an approach similar to that used for hurricanes and cyclones – changing conditions can be slotted into to a sequence of categories. 

At the moment it looks like we are in marine heat wave category one conditions, but potentially entering category two if it continues to warm

Turning the heat up on marine life

A marine heatwave is potentially devastating for marine ecosystems. It is also an indication that the hidden buffer in the climate system – the fact that the oceans have absorbed 93% of the excess heat – is starting to change. Individual warm seasons have always occurred, but in future there will be more of them and they will keep getting warmer.

The Great Barrier Reef has already been hit hard by a succession of marine heatwave events, bleaching the iconic corals and changing the structure of the ecosystem it supports.

Further south, off Tasmania's east coast, a number of species that normally occur in tropical waters have extended their range further south. A number of fish species, lobster and octopus species have also taken up residence along the Tasmanian coast, displacing some of the species that call this coast home. Mobile species can escape the warmer temperatures, but sedentary plants and animals are hardest hit.

In New Zealand, aquaculture industries will find it more difficult to grow fish or mussels as coastal waters continue to warm. If the same trends seen off Tasmania occur here, areas with substantial kelp canopies will struggle and start to be replaced by species normally seen further north. But the impacts will likely be very variable because the warming will be heavily influenced by wind and ocean currents and different locations will feel changes to a greater or lesser extent.

Predicting the seasons

As important as it is to identify a marine heatwave at the time, reliable predictions of developing conditions would help fishers, aquaculture companies and local authorities – and in fact anyone living and working around the ocean.

Seasonal forecasting a few months ahead is difficult. It falls between weather and climate predictions. In a collaboration between the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, we are examining how well long-term forecasts of ocean conditions around New Zealand stack up. Early forecasts suggested this summer would not be as warm as last year. But it now looks like this summer will again be very warm in the ocean.

One of the important points to keep in mind is that when we are at the beach, we are sampling only the surface temperature. The same is true of satellites – they monitor less than the top millimetre of the ocean.

Sea surface temperatures are several degrees above normal at the moment. But in deeper waters, because of the high heat content of water, even a tenth of a degree is significant. Temperature in the deeper ocean is monitored by a network of moored buoys on and off the continental shelf along the Australian coast. New Zealand has almost nothing that would be comparable.

Measuring temperature in real time

What we can look to, in the absence of moored buoys, is a fleet of ocean robots that monitor temperature in real time. Argo floats drift with ocean currents, sink to two kilometres every ten days and then collect data as they return to the surface.

These data allowed us to identify that the 2017/18 marine heatwave around New Zealand remained shallow. Most of the warmer water was in the upper 30 metres. Looking at the present summer conditions, one Argo robot off New Zealand’s west coast shows it is almost four degrees above normal in the upper 40 metres of the ocean. On the east coast, near the Chatham Islands, another float shows warmed layers to 20 metres deep. To the south, the warming goes deeper, down to almost 80 metres.

Our work using the Australian Bureau of Meteorology forecast model highlights how variable the ocean around New Zealand is. Different issues emerge in different regions, even if they are geographically close.

The research on categories of marine heatwaves shows we will have to keep shifting what we regard as a heat wave as the ocean continues to warm. None of this should come as a surprise. We have known for some time that the world’s oceans are storing most of the additional heat and the impacts of a warming ocean will be serious.

The Conversation.

Craig Stevens is Associate Professor in Ocean Physics, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and Ben Noll is Meteorologist/forecaster, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Top NZ scientists on the effects of the heatwave

If I had to unpack this I'd summarise it thus: "this heatwave is damaging, far beyond anything we might have imagined but don't worry – it will get a little hotter in the next 80 years.

James Renwick was the one who attacked Guy McPherson and said polar ice melt in the  Arctic was in a different part of the world (so presumably, according to him, doesn't matter)

What the heatwave is actually doing to New Zealand

Newshub,

30 January, 2019 

Jim Salinger and James Renwick for The Conversation

As the Australian heatwave spills across the Tasman pushing up temperatures in New Zealand, we take a look at the conditions that caused a similar event last year and the impacts it had.

Last summer's heatwave gave New Zealand its warmest summer and the warmest January on record.

It covered an area of four million square kilometres (comparable to the Indian subcontinent), including the land, the eastern Tasman Sea and the Pacific east of New Zealand to the Chatham Islands.

• New Zealanders make fun of 'lukewarm' heatwave
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• Weather: Scorching hot 30degC+ temperatures to hit parts of NZ

In our research, we looked at what happened and why, and found that the heatwave affected many sectors, leading to early grape harvests and killing farmed fish in parts of the country.

Drivers of warmer than average conditions

 

We used a combination of land and ocean temperature observations, large-scale analyses of the atmospheric circulation, and ocean modelling to understand the drivers of the 2017/18 summer heatwave.

It was memorable for a number of extreme events and statistics.

The average air temperature was 2.2degC above the 1981-2010 normal of 16.7degC, and it was the warmest summer ever recorded in more than 150 years.

The number of extreme warm days and warm nights was also the highest recorded, going back several decades.

The peak month was January 2018, 3.2degC above normal and the warmest month recorded in observations as far back as 1867.

Ocean surface temperatures were similarly extreme, with a marine heatwave that lasted about five months, at 2.0degC above normal at its peak.

The warming was mostly the result of very settled conditions over the country, especially to the east, bringing light winds, plenty of sun, and warm air from the subtropics.

Such conditions in summer are associated with the positive phase of a polar ring of climate variability known as the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), which brings high pressures (anticyclones) to New Zealand and parts of other southern hemisphere countries in the mid-latitudes, including southern Australia and Tasmania, southern Chile and Argentina.

The SAM was strongly positive throughout last summer, especially in January, and weak La Niña conditions were prevalent in the tropics.

The light winds in the New Zealand region allowed the ocean surface to warm rapidly, without the usual turbulent mixing to transport the heat away.

The warmest waters in the Tasman Sea formed an unusually thin layer near the surface.

Impacts and repercussions

 

New Zealand was affected by more than its normal share of ex-tropical cyclones, notably Fehi and Gita.

They brought strong winds, storm surges and heavy rainfalls that caused flooding as they passed through.

The warm ocean waters around New Zealand would have helped maintain the intensity of the storms and supply moisture to drive the heavy downpours.

The warm conditions caused massive ice loss in South Island glaciers, estimated to be the largest annual loss of glacier ice in nearly 60 years of records for the Southern Alps.

Satellite data from end-of-summer snowline measurements at the Tasman Glacier suggest that the Southern Alps lost 9 percent of glacier ice during last summer alone.

Warm air temperatures had a marked effect on managed and natural ecosystems. The Marlborough grape harvest was unusually early in 2018, two to three weeks ahead of the normal maturation time. Marine ecosystems were significantly disrupted.

Coastal kelp forests struggled to grow in the warm sea. In southern New Zealand, the temperature threshold was breached three times, resulting in substantial losses of kelp canopies.

For the first time, Atlantic salmon had to be imported as farmed fish died in salmon farms in the Marlborough Sounds.

Commercial fishers reported that snapper was spawning approximately six weeks early off the South Island coast, and Queensland groper was reported in northern New Zealand, 3000km out of range.

Past and future

 

The summer of 2017/18 shared some characteristics with another hot summer, way back in 1934/35. That season was so warm that it prompted a special report by the New Zealand Meteorological Service.

Conditions were similar: persistent high-pressure systems in the New Zealand region, positive SAM conditions, light winds over and around New Zealand, warm ocean surface and air temperatures.

While those two summers shared some natural variations in the local climate, the recent summer was warmer for two reasons.

First, climate in the region is now more than half a degree warmer now than in the 1930s.

Second, the SAM has been trending towards its positive phase over the last few decades, making settled conditions over New Zealand more frequent now than in the 1930s.

That trend is mostly related to the ozone hole that occurs in spring and early summer, cooling the polar atmosphere and driving the strongest winds farther south towards Antarctica, leaving lighter winds and higher pressures over New Zealand.

Looking to the future, we can compare the conditions experienced in 2017/18 with what climate models predict for the future.

We estimate that the extreme warm conditions of New Zealand's last summer would be typical summer conditions by the end of the century, for an emissions scenario associated with a couple of degrees of global warming above pre-industrial temperatures.

If emissions keep increasing as they have done in recent years, last summer will seem cool by the standards of 2100.

A discussion with Guy McPherson on James Renwick

Jim Salinger interviewed