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Nearly 100 dolphins, including an unborn baby and a young calf, have been killed in the Faroe Islands.

© Provided by MetroDolphins were herded into a bay where they were held for hours before being killed (Picture: SWNS/Metro)

The mass slaughter has been deemed the largest hunt of bottlenose dolphins in more than 120 years.

Faroes islanders killed 98 adults as well as an unborn baby and a young calf, according to the Sea Shepherd conservation group.

Experts believe the dolphins were herded to the shore on the island of Skálafjørðuras and murdered with knives, spears or other sharp weapons.

Water ran red with blood following this week’s killings.

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Such hunts form a traditional part of the Faroe Islands’ history but are widely condemned by wildlife organisations.

The Sea Shepherd organisation, which filmed the latest massacre, said in a statement: ‘This dolphin hunt, and indeed the killing of all pilot whales and dolphins in the Faroe Islands, is simply disgraceful and will rightly cause further national and international outrage.

‘Once again, some of the animals show cut marks from boat propellors where boats ran into, or over them.’

© Provided by MetroThe sea turned red following the slaughter of the dolphins (Picture: SWNS/ Metro)

© Provided by MetroPetitions against the hunts have garnered millions of signatures (Picture: SWNS/Metro)

Last year, Metro.co.uk exclusively revealed how 1,428 white-sided dolphins were butchered on the same island.

Related video: Shocking footage shows 99 bottlenose dolphins killed in harbour

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The animals were driven to the shore before their throats were slit as part of the centuries old tradition.

So many were killed that excess blubber was taken in disposal trucks to an incineration centre.

Despite widespread horror at last year’s slaughter – some suggested the UK cut trading ties with the Faroe Islands in retaliation – hunts have still continued.

Islanders are said to be divided on the practice, known as grindadráp hunts.

© Provided by MetroThe mass slaughter has been deemed the largest hunt of bottlenose dolphins in more than 120 years.(Picture: SWNS/ Metro)

© Provided by MetroThe Sea Shepherd organisation filmed the latest massacre (Picture: SWNS/Metro)

Fishing remains a key industry for locals and the whales and dolphins killed during grindadráp are meant to be dispersed across the community rather than exported.

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Many have urged campaigners to respect their culture and have vowed to continue the hunts.

Due to the remote nature of the islands in the North Atlantic Ocean – northwest of Scotland and halfway between Iceland and Norway – many traditions have remained uninfluenced by modern society.

But the hunts, of dolphins and pilot whales, has been condemned by animal rights groups and branded ‘barbaric’.

Speaking to Metro.co.uk last year, Blue Planet Society volunteer John Hourston argued the tradition was no longer necessary.

He said: ‘The justification that we get on an ongoing basis is that this is for food, despite the fact that the Faroe Islands is one of the richest countries in the European economic zone.

‘They have supermarkets all over.’

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Updated: 12:40 PM EDT Jul 27, 2022Infinite Scroll Enabled

Anne Shannon   

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MOUNT JOY, Pa. —

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration on Wednesday announced a new grant program for poultry farms hit by the avian flu.

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The avian flu directly impacted 17 poultry farms in Lancaster and Berks counties, causing a loss of more than 4 million birds. As the farms work to recover, the governor said he wants to help.

The commonwealth’s new HPAI Recovery Reimbursement Grant Program provides $25 million to farmers in the control zone.

Farmers whose flocks tested positive for avian flu or those who couldn’t conduct business as usual because of their location can apply for the funds.

“Secretary Redding’s team at the Department of Agriculture and my team at Treasury are already working together to ensure that the process is as smooth as possible, so when applications are reviewed and approved by Agriculture and sent to my office for payment, we’re going to cut those checks right away and get the funds into the field,” Treasurer Stacy Garrity said.

Pennsylvania has a $7 billion poultry industry with more than 26,000 jobs relying on it. The state ranks fourth overall in egg production and leads the US in organic egg and poultry sales.

Avian flu update

As of July 27, all avian flu control areas have been lifted.

The General Quarantine Order is still in place, enabling the state to place additional restrictions on infected farms to control the spread of the disease. The prohibition on exhibiting poultry at fairs is also still in place.

To apply for the grant program, visit the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s website. To learn more about HPAI, visit the avian flu page.

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A record-breaking bird flu outbreak has hit the Swedish west coast, leaving hundreds of wild birds dead. Local authorities are just starting to take action despite the problem existing all summer.

LASSE SØRENSEN / July 28, 2022

Bird flu outbreak leaves Swedish coast littered with carcasses

GOTHENBURG, Sweden (CN) — Tourists wandering along Sweden’s west coast this summer may come across more than a fresh ocean breeze and the delicious smell of cooked fish on shore.

Swedes and visitors alike have stumbled upon many dead birds in recent months and see others behaving in unnatural ways. A record-breaking outbreak of bird flu on the west coast is a major threat to wild bird populations.

“It is justified to talk about a disaster,” Anders Wirdheim, chairman of the city of Halmstad’s ornithological association, told local broadcaster SVT, after hundreds of dead northern gannets had been discovered in a short amount of time. Most of them were infected.

“If [the outbreak] continues, and it seems like it will, then the situation is serious,” Wirdheim said, adding “if 7,000 birds disappear in a colony, it is fair to call it a catastrophe. That is the scenario we see right now, with a risk of this becoming a recurring event.”

According to researchers, the current outbreak is an entirely new scenario in Sweden. While the bird flu can occur all year round, it usually slows during summer months and peaks in the winter season in Sweden.

It is the second year in a row that the virus is spreading rapidly in the summer.

“What we are seeing now, with the continued spread of infection and high morbidity and mortality among wild birds in the middle of summer, is a completely new scenario. There are therefore many indications that the coming season will also be problematic, with an increased risk of outbreaks also in domestic birds,” Karl Ståhl, state epizootiologist at the Swedish National Veterinary Institute, told SVT.

Birds infected with the flu virus display unnatural behavior before they die. Observers have witnessed terminally ill swans circling around themselves and geese flying irrationally up and down.

The bird flu reaches the brain and causes severe inflammation. When it hits the central nervous system, it causes the bird to lose control of its body.

Sweden’s Public Health Agency says the current type of bird flu is not dangerous for humans, as there is a very low chance the virus will jump into people.

Other than northern gannets, guillemots and razorbills are among birds registered dead with the virus.

In the southern archipelago of Sweden’s second-largest city, Gothenburg, local hunter Tommy Berntsson shoots sick birds to “end their suffering.”

He has tried to figure out where to throw the infected dead birds out, but local authorities have not provided him a clear answer when he calls them.

“I’ve just been thrown around, no one wants to take responsibility,” Berntsson said and added, “I don’t think the authorities take the issue seriously.”

An anonymous island resident told SVT that the lack of guidance on how to handle the dead birds forced her to find her own solution, as it is not allowed to throw the birds out as normal waste. She said that she collected and drove the dead birds out to dump them on islands and islets.

According to Wirdheim, a critical part of fighting the outbreak is removing dead birds from the shores. It is important that people use gloves when handling the birds and put them in plastic bags for destruction, he said.

The city of Gothenburg admits to a lack of clarity regarding procedures for how disposal of the birds should be handled. Authorities are currently discussing how to manage the dead birds, but said they will start collecting the dead birds in the archipelago.

“We will prioritize it with the resources we have available,” said Morgan Davidsson, the municipality’s sector chief.

The Swedish Agency for Agriculture is scheduled to present its recommendation to handle the situation to Swedish municipalities on Thursday.

Europe as a whole is experiencing an unprecedented extensive outbreak of bird flu, according to the Swedish National Veterinary Institute.

TOPICS:BiochemistryScripps Research Institute

Primordial Soup: Scientists Discover New “Origins of Life” Chemical Reactions

By SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE JULY 29, 2022

“We think the kind of reactions we’ve described are probably what could have happened on early Earth,” says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy.

The reaction generates the building blocks of proteins and DNA: amino acids and nucleic acids.

Four billion years ago, the Earth looked very different than it does today. It was devoid of life and covered by a vast ocean. Over the course of millions of years, life emerged in that primordial soup. For a long time, researchers have theorized how molecules came together to spark this transition. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have discovered a new set of chemical reactions that use ammonia, cyanide, and carbon dioxide—all thought to be common on the early Earth—to generate amino acids and nucleic acids, the building blocks of proteins and DNA.

“We’ve come up with a new paradigm to explain this shift from prebiotic to biotic chemistry,” says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, PhD, and an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research. “We think the kind of reactions we’ve described are probably what could have happened on early Earth.” Krishnamurthy is the lead author of the new paper that was published in the journal Nature Chemistry on July 28, 2022.

In addition to giving scientists insight into the chemistry of the early Earth, the newly discovered chemical reactions are also useful in certain manufacturing processes. For example, in the generation of custom-labeled biomolecules from inexpensive starting materials.

Earlier this year, Krishnamurthy’s team showed how cyanide can enable the chemical reactions that turn prebiotic molecules and water into basic organic compounds required for life. This one worked at room temperature and in a wide pH range, unlike previously proposed reactions. The scientists wondered whether, under the same conditions, there was a way to generate amino acids, which are more complex molecules that compose proteins in all known living cells.

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In cells today, amino acids are generated from precursors called α-keto acids using both nitrogen and specialized proteins called enzymes. Scientists have discovered evidence that α-keto acids likely existed early in Earth’s history. However, many researchers have hypothesized that before the advent of cellular life, amino acids must have been generated from completely different precursors, aldehydes, rather than α-keto acids, since enzymes to carry out the conversion did not yet exist. But that idea has led to debate about how and when the switch occurred from aldehydes to α-keto acids as the key ingredient for making amino acids.

After their success in using cyanide to drive other chemical reactions, Krishnamurthy’s group suspected that cyanide, even without enzymes, might also help turn α-keto acids into amino acids. Because they knew nitrogen would be required in some form, they added ammonia—a form of nitrogen that would have been present on the early Earth. Then, through trial and error, they discovered a third key ingredient: carbon dioxide. With this mixture, they quickly started seeing amino acids form.

“We were expecting it to be quite difficult to figure this out, and it turned out to be even simpler than we had imagined,” says Krishnamurthy. “If you mix only the keto acid, cyanide, and ammonia, it just sits there. As soon as you add carbon dioxide, even trace amounts, the reaction picks up speed.”

Because the new reaction is relatively similar to what occurs inside cells today—except for being driven by cyanide instead of a protein—it seems more likely to be the source of early life, rather than drastically different reactions, the scientists say. The research also helps bring together two sides of a long-standing debate about the importance of carbon dioxide to early life, concluding that carbon dioxide was key, but only in combination with other molecules.

In the process of studying their chemical soup, Krishnamurthy and his colleagues discovered that a byproduct of the same reaction is orotate, a precursor to nucleotides that make up DNA and RNA. This indicates that the same primordial soup, under the right conditions, could have given rise to a large number of the molecules that are required for the key elements of life.

“What we want to do next is continue probing what kind of chemistry can emerge from this mixture,” says Krishnamurthy. “Can amino acids start forming small proteins? Could one of those proteins come back and begin to act as an enzyme to make more of these amino acids?”

Reference: “Prebiotic synthesis of α-amino acids and orotate from α-ketoacids potentiates transition to extant metabolic pathways” by Sunil Pulletikurti, Mahipal Yadav, Greg Springsteen and Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, 28 July 2022, Nature Chemistry.
DOI: 10.1038/s41557-022-00999-w

In addition to Krishnamurthy, authors of the study, “Prebiotic Synthesis of α-Amino Acids and Orotate from α-Ketoacids Potentiates Transition to Extant Metabolic Pathways,” are Sunil Pulletikurti, Mahipal Yadav and Greg Springsteen. 

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This work was supported by funding from the NSF Center for Chemical Evolution (CHE-1504217), a NASA Exobiology grant (80NSSC18K1300) and a grant from the Simons Foundation (327124FY19).