It said those who died were swept out to sea by rip currents. The EThekwini Municipality said on on Facebook on Sunday that a team of 35 lifeguards undertook a mass rescue effort and paramedics attended to more than 100 people involved in the incident. He added that a teenager was among the three people declared dead at the scene at North Beach, which was closed off after the incident.Īnother 17 people were injured, according to the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government, which said in a statement posted on Facebook on Sunday: “The details of the incidents are still sketchy at this point, however, it is believed that a freak wave put many people into distress while swimming and they tragically drowned.” “EMS responded to reports of a freak wave that swept a group of beachgoers against the pier causing multiple injuries,” spokesman Njabulo Dlungele said in a statement published on Twitter on Sunday. The ocean is a malevolent, sleeping beast, awakening here and there to drag swimmers to their doom.ĬNN - Three beachgoers were killed by a “freak” wave in South Africa’s coastal city of Durban on Saturday, according to local emergency medical services (EMS). The story, headlined, ‘ Freak’ wave kills 3 beachgoers and injures 17 in South Africa, is classic mainstream press. No seismic activity and they figured out later it was a downdraft far out at sea. “Swept the beach and shoved some Mopars around but no one killed. “ When I worked at SURFER there was a story about a freak wave that came from out of nowhere on a calm night in Daytona Beach,” Marcus wrote. Marcus, whom you may know from his wild below-the-line harangues and one-man blood feuds here at BeachGrit, sent a CNN report of a “freak wave” that had caused a mass drowning in Durban, that surf-soaked city on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast. Perhaps, a future exists where whales return to their historical numbers once again, and both the planet and humanity will reap the rewards.Earlier today an email, written in a breathless did-you-hear-this style and cc’d to a broad cross-section of surfers and media, arrived from the former Surfer staffer, Ben Marcus. When whales thrive, so do the ecosystems they live in, meaning more growth in all parts of the food chain. Helping whales rebound may help ecosystems already struggling with the impacts of climate change. No whales meant no iron recycling which meant less krill. When whaling decimated the whale populations it also wreaked havoc on the balance of the ecosystem. Krill rely on the reintroduction of nutrients, especially iron, back into the ecosystem and a large supply of those nutrients comes from whale poop. The answer became clear when scientists factored in one particularly important factor-poop. Initially it seemed counterintuitive-less whales eating krill should mean krill are able to explode in numbers. Today, krill populations in the Southern Ocean are down by over 80 percent since the end of whaling, a fact that left scientists scratching their heads for quite a while. When considering just blue whales, whaling reduced their krill consumption by 99.6 percent. Information about how much food whales consume provides more than just a fun fact for parties with friends, it can give us insight into why certain changes and issues arise in an ecosystem. Twentieth century whaling reduced global whale populations by about two-thirds, but blue whales were hit especially hard. That’s about the same as 8,800 quarter-pound burgers! When considering all the blue whales that live today, it means blue whales eat over half a million tonnes of krill every year. Smithsonian scientist Nick Pyenson took part in new research that indicates that in one day a blue whale can eat about 16 tonnes (or metric tons) of krill. How much do whales eat? As you'd imagine, it's a lot.
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