LAPUSH — Preliminary tests Tuesday showed that hundreds of birds found dead or sick on West End beaches could have died from the cold Pacific Ocean water after a soap-like substance from plankton in a brown algae bloom stripped their feathers of protective oil.
The effect of hypothermia would be temporary but deadly to many birds, said Mary Sue Brancato, a resource protection officer with Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.
“We don’t know for sure that this is what is causing it,” Brancato said. “But if this is what is happening, it would cause the feathers to lose their oil and not to be water repellent, and then the birds get wet and suffer from hypothermia.”
More than 100 birds were found dead last weekend on 25 miles of beaches stretching from Kalaloch to Rialto Beach. Several hundred more continued to be ill on Tuesday.
“About 95 percent of them are scoters, though there are a handful of other birds,” said Olympic National Park wildlife biologist Scott Gremel.
Necropsies on the birds — primarily white-winged scoters and surf scoters — had not been performed Tuesday.
The preliminary report revealed that plankton in a brown algae bloom off the West End coast is the same type that was linked to mass deaths of seabirds in 2007 in Monterey Bay, Calif., Brancato said.
If that is true, then neither the plankton nor the algae is poisonous. Instead, foam from the plankton is a soap-like substance that temporarily strips oil from the birds’ feather so that they are no longer water-repellent.
The plankton — the dinoflagellate Akashiwo sanguinea — would be considered a contributing factor but not a direct cause, Brancato said.
More tests will reveal whether the birds died of hypothermia or of something else, she said.
Those tests should be back at the end of this week or beginning of next week, she said.
Gremel said that park officials are monitoring the situation, and collected more samples Tuesday.
Not dangerous for humans
The beaches are not considered dangerous for human beings, said Cat Hawkins Hoffman, chief of the park’s natural resource division, saying that more information would be known once the results of tests on samples were received.
Brancato said that if the current hypothesis of the birds dying from hypothermia holds up, the algae is not dangerous to humans, but added that some surfers in California reported skin rashes and respiratory problems.
“But it wouldn’t be anything seriously dangerous,” she said.
She cautioned people to leave dead and ailing birds alone and to take extra precautions with children and pets on beaches.
“At this point it doesn’t appear to be a disease, or anything like an oil spill,” Gremel said.
Shellfish feeders
A unique aspect of the scoters are that they feed on shellfish, Gremel said.
Hawkins Hoffman said that the scoters eat clams whole — including the shells.
That could make them more vulnerable to toxicity in algae if it were transmitted through shellfish, Gremel said.
“We won’t know until the final tests on the carcasses come back,” he said.
Both Gremel and Brancato said that the birds appeared to be vulnerable because they were molting and are in the beginning stages of migrating south.
“Really this could be a combination of stressors because the birds are molting, migrating and appear to be emaciated,” Brancato said.
“So all of those things could be contributing to their deaths.”
Odd behavior
Jim Conomos, owner of the Rainforest Hostel, spotted many birds acting oddly over the course of the weekend.
“These birds normally stay in the water all the time,” he said, “and they were hovering in a corner off of the beach.
“Big waves would come up and wash them out, and then they’d crawl right back out, and they don’t walk too good on land.”
Conomos, who was watching the birds on First Beach in LaPush, said that many of the birds appeared to be seizing and that their feathers looked strange — almost as if they had lost their oil and were waterlogged.
Conomos said the brown algae bloom off the coast was unusual.
“I’ve lived here for 20 years and haven’t seen anything like it,” he said.
“The water turned cocoa brown with that algae.
“I am really worried about what is going on.”
__________
Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
