The answer involves the Blob and how it rippled across multiple levels of the marine food web, and it comes amid more reports of rapidly warming oceans. One of the best adapted seabirds in the northern hemisphere, they can outfly other seabirds and speed from shelf to coast in a few hours. Without food, murres starve to death within three to five days. Many of the dead or dying murres that washed ashore had empty stomachs and little to no body fat or muscle. In the summer of 2019, a warm mass of water appeared in the Gulf of Alaska that resembled the original Blob of 2014.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 15, 2020 18:56 UTC