Sea Life Die-Off Found on Beach

Observation by Leigh Takak:

Time: 2:08 AM, Location: Tubutulik River Estuary near Elim, Alaska

While on a field trip for work, we stopped and you can notice hundreds of dead clams and star fish littering the beach. I thought this is unusual, because there was so much. I do not recall seeing this much dead clams and star fish growing up. I was not certain of a major storm around the time of the observation. This beach spit area has a new river channel created in 2011 after a major fall storm. It was a beach spit but got washed out and the beach was separated by a new river channel. We used to camp in the area a lot when I was young. My dad had a cabin in that area. It would be a good idea to have a monitoring program for future use.

LEO Editor comments:

We followed up with a phone conversation to Leigh to learn a little more about this event and about subsistence resources for Elim. The main question is what caused the die-off of these marine invertebrates? Was it something with the environment? Was is a summer storm? Elim is a located a short distance (28 miles) from the village of Golovin. On July 28th (a week later then Leigh's observation) Carol Oliver posted about how stormy the weather was (see attached post), conditions that were more typical of fall.

From a community health standpoint, Leigh's post does make us wonder about shellfish safety. According to Leigh, clams are used as a subsistence resource in Elim, but a different type of clam then those shown in this observation. The kind of clams which are a subsistence resource are little neck clams, typically collected from the beach after a fall or winter storm. In more southern areas of Alaska, harmful algae can make shellfish toxic and there have been questions raised in recent years whether shellfish in more northern regions (like Norton Sound) is being impacted by marine toxins. Note: shellfish toxins do not typically harm the shellfish or result in shellfish die-off, but rather in effects animals and people that eat the shellfish. Another environmental issues in recent years has been illness in sea stars in southern Alaska caused by a virus. Both of these are issues, sea star wasting syndrome and harmful algal blooms that cause toxic shellfish are associated with ocean warming, and good reasons to develop monitoring programs that can compliment local observations and provide more in depth environmental or species monitoring.

A few options for monitoring marine life in Alaska include programs like COASST (see link) which tracks marine bird die-off events. SEATOR is a consortium of tribal entities in Southeast Alaska, is a good model for monitoring ocean conditions for harmful algae and shellfish safety. The Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program is a good go-to resource for all things marine science, including the reporting and assessment of marine die-offs. This post has been shared with the Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program agent in Nome, as well as the Norton Sound Health Corporation, Environmental Health office. For identification of the types of clams and sea stars in this post (also any other sea life), we have reached out to the University of Fairbanks Museum for any help on species identification.

Thank you Leigh for sharing your observation with LEO Network. Mike Brubaker