Has any public testing of the water been done? (I bet some testing was done, but corporations are pretty good at keeping most things like that under wraps, and out of public scrutiny.)
I'm remembering where fish started to...hold on, I'm not going to wrack my memory for it, just this:
A report says small amounts of drugs have made their way into the water supply; experts contacted by WebMD put the potential risks in perspective.
www.webmd.com
Concern among scientists increased when fish in the Potomac River and elsewhere were found to have both male and female characteristics when exposed to
estrogen-like substances, she says. For instance, some fish had both testes and an ovary, she says.
Scientists starting looking at the effects of oral
contraceptives first, she says. "Now analyses have expanded to look at other drugs," Janssen says.
Drugs, like say the growing number of psychiatric medicines that even chemical treatment seems unable to get out of the water? Water that flows into the ocean? The same drugs linked to many inexplicable behavior changes not desired in humans, even violent psychosis?
Just one possibility.
Another is that maybe the orcas got some good drugs from the yacht parties (either given to them or dropped) and now seek to bump more off into the water. (Reindeer have knocked down people on shrooms after they peed just to eat the snow with the shrooms still in the pee, and lots of animals seek intoxication in the wild.)
I'm not inclined to think of either, but if it's spreading, and other animals are doing it, then it seems more likely.
I'd think that maybe it was always going on (lots of animal attacks never get reported), and I dismiss what one scientist said out of hand for good reason (he sounded like he learned about animals from Disney movies than field study), but the consensus does seem this is new. And I'm remembering things like this:
They should be glad the orcas didn't attack their boats to get at that penguin. They'd have an understandable motive for doing so. (Not thinking of revenge on their part, just to knock their lunch back into the water.)