First it was the manatees, some dying so quickly they still had food in their mouths. Then it was pelicans and dolphins, who appeared to be starving to death. NOAA designated the manatee deaths an Unusual Mortality Event, and might soon apply the same designation to the dolphin deaths.
Is the same killer at work for all three? Or is this a deadly coincidence?
Nobody knows the answers to those questions. But in Florida's Indian River Lagoon, stretching along 40 percent of the state's Atlantic coast, something awful is happening.
At Wired, Nadia Drake assembles the brief on this case: what's known, what isn't, and how the investigation is proceeding.
Florida so often makes the national news for its political wrangling and court proceedings that it's sometimes easy to forget that it is an ecological treasure. Drake reminds us, even as she alerts us to the threats facing those riches.
Read Drake's story and you might decide that what Florida needs is a stand-your-ground law to defend itself against environmental assault.
-Paul Raeburn
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