Starvation seems the most likely cause of death for nearly 1,000 gray whales that died last summer along the west coast of North America. A Canadian researcher believes the whales were victims of a drop in food production in the Bering Sea. Scientists don’t know whether the trend is due to global warming or to simple changes in the natural oceanographic cycle. Meanwhile, marine scientists are baffled by a massive die-off of lobsters in New York’s Long Island Sound. They believe a mysterious pathogen may be responsible for killing tens of thousands of lobsters, as well as blue crabs and rock crabs.
