A million West Coast seabirds died in one year. The culprit? A warm ocean ‘blob’

A warm “blob” in the Pacific Ocean would have blood on its hands — if it had any, according to a study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Plos One.

Researchers at the University of Washington say the blob is to blame for the deaths of a million seabirds along the West Coast from 2015 to 2016.

About 62,000 dead or dying common murres washed ashore up and down the coastline over 12 months, leading scientists to extrapolate that up to a million may have died in all, the study says.

How did it happen? The murres probably starved to death after warmer ocean temperatures created greater competition for food, researchers say.

The warmer water sped up the metabolism of salmon, cod and halibut, which normally don’t require much food, the study says. The hungry fish gobbled up herring, anchovies and sardines, which also are the primary source of food for the murres.

“Think of it as a run on the grocery stores at the same time that the delivery trucks to the stores stopped coming so often,” said co-author Julia Parrish, according to a University of Washington release.

Damage to the murre population will continue for years, with some colonies failing to produce a single chick because of depleted breeding stocks, researchers say.

“The magnitude and scale of this failure has no precedent,” lead author John Piatt, a research biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center and an affiliate University of Washington professor, said in the release.

“It was astonishing and alarming, and a red-flag warning about the tremendous impact sustained ocean warming can have on the marine ecosystem,” Piatt said.

Common murres nest in colonies on cliffs overlooking the ocean. Black with white bellies, adult murres can dive more than 200 yards beneath the surface in search of food, the release says.

Dead birds were found on beaches from central California to Alaska during the die-off, the study says. In some cases, researchers found 1,000 times more dead murres than normal.

This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 9:19 AM.