Signs of the Apocalypse

A Sign of the Apocalypse?  A Whale’s Tale

Gray whales live in large body of water.  They generally live in the eastern and western North Pacific.  They migrate between breeding and feeding grounds.  But recently they have been traveling to unlikely areas.  In May 2010 a gray whale was found in the Mediterranean Sea.  And now one is living in Northern California’s Klamath River.  Why?  Is this a sign of the apocalypse?

The female whale was traveling to her Arctic home, but took a wrong turn with her calf and ended up in the river.  Her calf has since left, but she did not follow.  She’s healthy and seems to be content to stay even though there have been many attempts to get her to leave.  No one seems to know why she is choosing to stay.  Scientists have given up.

The whale has created quite a stir.  People are praying to her, banging drums on the shore near her, writing poems about her, and swimming and boating near her.  Why is this whale content to stay in the river?  Why is she acting so strange and contrary to her nature?  Is she one more animal who knows something we don’t know?  Is she like the dead birds from January 2011, another sign of the apocalypse, the end times?  If she knows, she’s not saying.

8/16/2011 edit:  The gray whale, named “Mama” by local residents, died today.  After 53 days she beached herself on a sandbar in the middle of the river.  She was coaxed off the sand bar, but beached herself again.  She died around 4am.

This is just another example of extremely peculiar animal behavior that has occurred more and more recently.

Blood Red Lake in Texas

Texas Lake of Blood

The images of a blood red lake in Texas today are disturbing and even a little frightening – the water at the OC Fisher Reservoir has turned from a somewhat hazy blue to a dark, almost opaque blood red. Some have begun to call this the start of the apocalypse – perhaps not as much of a stretch given the state of the world and the events of recent times.

Others turn to a scientific explanation – a bacterial bloom of an insidious anaerobe named Chromatiaceae. According to local officials, the recent droughts that have been affecting much of Texas, and particularly this region, have led to declining water supplies and dramatic, dangerous falls in the water level in local lakes, rivers and reservoirs.

As the water levels have fallen, fish and other aquatic organisms have struggled, with many dying. The decaying fish have dramatically decreased the oxygen content of the water which allowed Chromatiaceae to step in and take over. Because Chromatiaceae does not need oxygen, it was able to thrive – especially when all of its competition (the bacteria, aerobes, that do require oxygen) were killed off.

Still, some are not convinced. Shortly after the national press began to pick up on the pictures coming out of the OC Fisher Reservoir, some began to take to YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere to proclaim the apocalypse had begun. What do you think? Is this a sad, natural phenomenon, or is there something bigger at work here?