Three simultaneous mass mortality events are affecting divergent marine wildlife populations along the eastern seaboard and the Gulf coast. At time of going to press, the precise cause in all three cases remains a mystery. In Maine, reports of dead and dying sea urchins on the sea floor and in tidal pools first appeared in mid-September, and accelerated following the opening of the urchin fishing season. Although some researchers have suggested the die-off is not necessarily anything unusual or alarming, others beg to differ. I've never seen a sick sea urchin, and I've been looking into tide pools for 20 or 30 years.
Mystery also surrounds a die-off of lobsters in Long Island Sound.
The summer did witness relatively high water temperatures in the area, but this was mostly at the sea surface, not the bottom of Sound, where the lobsters live. Meanwhile, more than fifty dead bottlenose dolphins have washed ashore along the Gulf coast of Florida since August. Tissue samples from the twelve most recently dead dolphins have been sent for analysis. Although no positive correlation between the events has been established, a red tide outbreak occurred in two Panama City bays in late August and September. Haberstroh, J. 1999.