BBC News: Thousands of dead octopuses wash up on Portugal beach

I find it strange that it is only octopuses that are being washed up... If there is something killing them then surly many other inverts would also be susceptible to the cause?

Perhaps dumped by a fishing vessel?
 
A fishing boat loosing a catch (or sinking, or dumping a catch before being caught for over fishing) would make more sense than most thoughts I have seen on the blogs.
 
yeah, there are quite strict overfishing policies about and it would make sense for a fishing boat to dump surplus rather than open themselves up for a fine... sense from their point of view anyway. I once seen boxes and boxes of Nephrops being thrown over a harbour wall and suspected that they had either "gone off" of were breaching some regulation on quantity???
 
I don't think that many (more likely hundreds rather than thousands I suspect) would be by-catch for the same reasons that poisioning doesn't make sense (that many are not likely to be in close proximity). Octo fishing is a commercial fishery in the area so I think the catch was intentional why it go dumped is speculative.
 
Interesting new take:

"There is one other option, however. In December 2007, Portuguese police confiscated 9.4 tons of cocaine in a shipment of frozen octopus from Venezuela. "I suppose it's possible that someone defrosted the animals, took out the cocaine, then threw their bodies overboard," says Weber. Still, like Oliveira, Weber is betting on a biological cause. "We've had swine flu, bird flu," he says, not completely in jest. "Why not octopus flu?""
 
I saw the cocaine article when I went looking for more news but that was several years ago (as I see you noted) so I discounted the possibility. I still think Colin has the logical direction and I see it was considered but not accepted because of rough seas. A boat in trouble though might dump or lose its cargo.
 
Wow, I would never have thought of over fishing because I was over-thinking the topic itself. I was thinking they all mated then died, but then remembered that is a squid trait. This forum doesn't screw around. :wink:
 
Octos are not known for mating orgies like some cuttles and squid. Female octopuses incubate their eggs anywhere from 2 weeks to almost a year (depending upon species and water conditions) before dieing and most males can mate more than once and don't die immediately so a mass mating die-off is not a potential here. I wonder why the toxology reports will take so long.
 
Massive octopus kill a mystery - UPI.com


[SIZE=-2]The Money Times[/SIZE]

Massive octopus kill a mystery
[SIZE=-1]UPI.com[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]6 (UPI) -- More than 1200 pounds of dead octopus have washed ashore on a 1.8-mile stretch of beach in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, concerned scientists say. ...[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Dead Octopuses Wash Up on Portuguese Beach[SIZE=-1]TIME[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Mystery: Thousands of Dead Octopuses Wash Up on Portugal Beach[SIZE=-1]Treehugger[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]all 10 news articles »[/SIZE]


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The laboratory results shown that was just too much freshwater content on that part of the coastline. The main reason was that rained a lot during that period and rivers introduced loads of freshwater on the ocean...
 

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