Tiny Hawaiian Island Disappears Under Rising Seas - It's Gone

HONOLULU -- "Whale Skate Island in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands was a tiny dot of land in the vast Pacific, about 10 to 15 acres in size. It was covered with vegetation, nesting seabirds, Hawaiian monk seals and turtles laying eggs. It no longer exists.

"That island, in the course of 20 years, has completely disappeared" with rising sea levels, said Beth Flint, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist for the Pacific Remote Island Refuges. "It washed away." And with it went habitat for the seabirds, seals and turtles, who had to find other islands or die, in one of the more dramatic illustrations of how global warming may be affecting Earth's species and their habitat.

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Jim Maragos, a coral reef biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Honolulu, has studied corals surrounding the Hawaiian Islands chain and U.S. territories in the Pacific. "At all of our refuges in the remote Pacific Islands over the last 20 years, there's been at least some coral bleaching," he said. "These are places that have no people. There's no other excuses except for that there was warm temperatures. So we know that warm temperatures caused it. What we don't know is what's causing the warm temperatures."

Jeff Palovina, acting director of the NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Science Center, said it will take many years before scientists can say with confidence that global warming is the sole reason for the bleaching. It could be caused by El Nino-La Nina ocean currents, general variability, or it may have been happening for years before people noticed it. "We know there's more observation going on now than there were 20 years ago in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands," he said. "So we don't know if we missed episodes of coral bleaching in the past. It'll take a lot longer to be able to say it's one cause or another."

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http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2133933,00.html

facing the same problems. It's called "Rising Waters"

http://www.itvs.org/risingwaters/index.html

Ya think Mother Nature is trying to tell us something?

Sad thing is, that most won't figure it out and do something until the US is under water. :(