Sea Turtle Dieoff In El Salvador Puzzles Biologists - LA Times

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SAN SALVADOR — More than 100 dead and dying sea turtles have washed up on the beaches of El Salvador in the last 10 days, and marine biologists can't explain what is killing them, officials said Friday. Celina Dueñas, an official with El Salvador's Environment Ministry, said it was feared that the number of dead turtles could rise to 600 in the coming days.

An estimated 2,000 adult sea turtles live in the waters off El Salvador, said Carlos Drews, a sea turtle specialist with the World Wildlife Fund in neighboring Costa Rica. The current outbreak could become one of the worst calamities to strike sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean, Drews said. "The international conservation community is watching this and is very worried," he said in a telephone interview.

A Salvadoran American fisherman first noticed "hundreds" of dead turtles floating in the water 40 miles off the Salvadoran coast on Dec. 30. After returning to shore, he sent an e-mail to environmentalists, Drew said. The fisherman wrote that the turtle carcasses drifted by his boat for eight hours.

The first 31 carcasses found on shore washed up Jan. 4 in the eastern Salvadoran province of La Union, according to news reports. The animals weighed 70 to 150 pounds and had been dead at least four days, officials said.

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-seaturtles14jan14,0,6010179.story?coll=la-news-a_section

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1. That is a sad thing.

I wonder where life is thriving these days.

It sounds like it's bad everywhere. :(