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The Arkansas River at Sunset
I am starting to see more stories about the massive fish kill (around 100,000) that occurred last Thursday on the Arkansas River in NorthWest Arkansas. All of these stories suggest that disease is the most likely culprit for the kill. Yes, fish kills are a fairly common event, but not ones as large as this. Even if disease did play its part in this kill, the true culprit is the ever increasing level of toxins found in the Arkansas River due to ill-conceived natural gas harvesting techniques, though I’m sure the chicken houses amongst other point and non-point pollution sources aren’t much help either.
Toluene is a volatile organic compound present in the fracking process that builds up in the freshwater drum (the kind of fish that died); this chemical is deadly for humans as well and will continue to make its way up the food chain and is probably already in your drinking water. Maybe the fish kill is just Oklahoma getting back at Arkansas – just kidding. In all seriousness though, toluene is used during the fracking process and most likely contributed to the fish kill. Remember toluene is but one of many toxic compounds being release into our surface and groundwater and that means eventually you will be eating these compounds if you aren’t already drinking them. Now that’s food for thought…
Ozark, AR is home to multiple Natural Gas related companies that could have contributed to Thursdays events:
Xto Energy Inc.: Oil and Gas Field Exploration Services
Chrisman Oilfield Service: Oil and Gas Field Services, NEC
Arkansas Western Gas Co.: Mixed, Manufactured, or Liquefied Petroleum Gas Production and/or Distribution
P.S. Some of the links have more info than others but I put them in for a reason. Which is to say, they contain information that is pertinent to my statements.
20 Comments
Thanks for your post, Ivan. If you hear more about this subject that the media doesn’t cover, we’d love to see you post about it.
Is this connected to the 2000 dead birds that fell from the sky over Arkansas? If only we had some government agency that looked into such things…ah well.
thanks Ivan, rec.
with all the fracking and corporate farming going on in a state not known for it’s environmental oversight, it would not surprise me to find this is related to these practices – But, why only this one species of fish ? it could be viral. or it could be this one species (Drum ?) is the only species to eat something that has been contaminated – looking forward to credible post mortems
From what I can tell the two events are unrelated, but it is surely one heck of a coincidence. The bird event happend around 100 miles east of the fish kill, the day after the fish kill but since the birds all fell within a 1 mile radius of one another it is unlikely they died from the same condition.
The Freshwater Drum fish may act as a biological indicator of pollution, like in the gulf they where testing baby shrimps to check the pollution levels. Some species are more susceptible to certain toxins than others. I too am still waiting for conformation from the tests of the fish that died.
“The diet of the freshwater drum is generally benthic and composed of macroinvertebrates (mainly aquatic insect larvae and bivalve mussels), as well as small fish which in certain ecosystems results in excessive accumulation of lipophilic pollutants such as PCBs which are harmful to humans (in some cases over 16 time EPA recommended levels).[9] However, accumulations of mercury tend to be lower as drum do not occupy high positions in food chain”
Toluene (a non polar solvent) is a lipophilic pollutant…
Don’t forget about the blackbirds falling from the sky
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7010UO20110102
A blind man can see these signs. For some light reading how about ” The Book of Joel.” It is a small Bible book but it reads like the nightly news lately. These wierd events, like the Australian floods, and the plethora of natural and man made disasters last year point to the end of time. December 21 2012 is now less than 24 months away. The hysteria that date should engender will increase exponetially as the days dwindle down to you reach Armageddon.
Zenostoa
Can I have your stuff when you’re gone?
Yes four to five thousand red winged blackbirds fell dead and dying from the sky over Beebe, Arkansas around 100 miles east of the fish kill but the incidents are most likely unrelated, though it is one heck of a coincidence.
Oh ick, Kelly, no, you don’t know where that’s been!
Pollution and climate change are a definite reality but I doubt time is ending in the eminent future. However humanities time may be cut short by our own actions and inactions. On the bright side the planet and many of its species will most surely outlive humanity. If anything I look at the end of the long count calendar as the beginning of the next long count and maybe an opportunity for a paradigm shift.
Any chance you can find atmospheric conditions data for that area for 72 hours up to and after events, say a 200 mile radius including both bird and fish kill? There’s been a lot of speculation about high level hail and fireworks, but it seems to me that one condition would make the other less likely (who’s going to like fireworks in hail?).
Wondering if there was some kind of inversion over the area — also wondering if there were more human health problems during that same time in same area, might be documented in number of 911 calls or ER visits.
I will look into it but my understanding is that High Altitude lighting or hail might have been the culprit and the fireworks simply helped to force the birds into flight and disorient them. However I don’t see how they could have gained enough altitude to be affected by whether not occurring at ground level. An inversion is entirely possible as they are common in Arkansas.
I am not having much luck finding many weather records but I do remember it being unseasonably warm (60′s & 70′s) Thursday thru Saturday those conditions may have been caused by an inversion.
Well, I don’t know anything about the birds or the fish, but absent some very good explanation for the birds and another very good explanation for the fish, at this point in time, the rational thing is to believe that the two events are indeed quite related. So, at this point, we HAVE to say “the two events are most likely related”. We are constrained by RATIONALITY. And if anybody wants to bet, I’m happy to put my money where my mouth is. Choose someone to hold the money. I’ll lay 10-1 and probably could be talked into laying more. Jaynes’s Probability Theory: The Logic of Science, is the greatest selling academic book of all time, even surpassing Kuhn. Check it out. I’m sorry to be harsh, but it is literally irrational for a nonbiologist to believe that these events are unrelated at this point in time.
Not sure how you can begin to make those statements after starting off with “…I don’t know anything about the birds or the fish…”. The only thing that relates the two events is a possible combination of weather events happening withing a short time of one another. The first event being over an inch of rainfall in the Arkansas River watershed Wednesday in the area of the fish kill, the contents of the runoff from which probably contributed to the fish kill. The other weather event was the abnormally high surface temperatures NYE. The temperature went from nearly seventy degrees and fell close to freezing with high winds. The weather may be a commonality but that is not to say that the events are related anymore than a tornado and a snowflake. I am not a biologist but I have studied biology at the college level and I think it is fairly evident when looking at the facts that it is unlikely however possible that the two events are closely related.
“Experts” say the birds died from massive injuries. Hail, lightning or running into stuff because they were scared stupid from noise. Birds do that. The fish? Pollution is the only answer unless they all got some sort of disease (which is also possible considering it’s happened before). Probably will never know the answer to either, because the government will never be honest in it’s investigations. All animals of the world have population controls though. Except humans that think we can keep populating until the end of time.
Now it’s Louisiana
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/04/national/main7212053.shtml
“The only thing that relates the two events..”
This is begging the question. I don’t know. You don’t know. What we know is that these things are extremely rare. Two have two such events so close in time and space is even rarer still. And now, as per john’s comment below, LA is turning up dead birds, that makes three such events all close together. It’s like if three dead people turn up in the same Las Vegas hotel on a given night.
These types of events is not all that rare. Usually it is only fishermen who find out about the fish kills and often birds don’t die over populated areas. You are right in saying that we do not know for sure and will not until the test results come back for the fish and birds, including the new birds found in Louisiana but those result might not come for another month and honestly depending on who has a hand in the testing the results might be falsified.