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Old 06-09-2014, 07:57 AM   #1
slowboat
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Dead deer cowries

In the last few weeks I have found more dead cowries in a day than I normally find in a year. Around a dozen a day while spearing, .

This is highly unusual , as normally you might see them at an octopus garden , and only a few.
I see them dead and laying out on every spot I go to , why ? No idea, many still have meat in them which really unusual , as usually every little scrap is eaten . Most are really fresh , some have been dead longer , and show growth but in each area they all seem to have died around the same time.

Anyone else seeing them ? When your inverts start dying , there is a bigger problem .
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Old 06-09-2014, 08:13 AM   #2
kengolding
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Re: Dead deer cowries

I saw two of them this weekend. Not sure if there were more. The ones I saw were totally empty of meat.
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Old 07-29-2016, 04:32 PM   #3
Trigger-f
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Re: Dead deer cowries

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Originally Posted by slowboat View Post
In the last few weeks I have found more dead cowries in a day than I normally find in a year. Around a dozen a day while spearing, .

This is highly unusual , as normally you might see them at an octopus garden , and only a few.
I see them dead and laying out on every spot I go to , why ? No idea, many still have meat in them which really unusual , as usually every little scrap is eaten . Most are really fresh , some have been dead longer , and show growth but in each area they all seem to have died around the same time.

Anyone else seeing them ? When your inverts start dying , there is a bigger problem .
I found a dozen dead deer and zebra cowries in the Middle Keys off of a couple bridges in June and July. They were all fresh dead some laying in the open with a bit of silt on them and some under some rocks but pretty visible and easy to spot (a few with some meat in them, as reported above, some completely empty). Have any of you encountered this recently?

I'm thinking it's either related to pollution (maybe from Lake Okeechobee water discharges or some kind of virus(?), though I did see and photograph a Tun sea slug which looked very healthy to me and fast (for a sea slug). It puzzles me that this is happening only to deer and zebra cowries.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/47679496@N02/27621731785/

Last edited by Trigger-f; 07-29-2016 at 04:46 PM.
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Old 07-29-2016, 07:54 PM   #4
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Re: Dead deer cowries

I have seen instances where there are a lot of dead deer cowries in one location. I think I have seen it in Ft. Pierce.. I don't really remember if I thought it correlated with upwellings or some other event.
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Old 08-01-2016, 08:43 AM   #5
Trigger-f
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Re: Dead deer cowries

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I have seen instances where there are a lot of dead deer cowries in one location. I think I have seen it in Ft. Pierce.. I don't really remember if I thought it correlated with upwellings or some other event.
I doubt it's cold water, more like water quality, perhaps salinity levels in specific areas due to all that freshwater being discharged by the lake, or maybe a virus(as the one that was killing starfish from CA to WA state couple years back). So many dying at the same time points to some kind of event that is being prolonged by conditions(it'd it's been happening since 2013). Point is, what causes them exactly to expire.

All my years of scuba diving/snorkeling, I had found only 1 deer cowrie in the Keys.
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Old 08-01-2016, 05:13 PM   #6
kwyoungspear
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Re: Dead deer cowries

Water quality
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Old 08-02-2016, 08:20 AM   #7
Trigger-f
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Re: Dead deer cowries

Maybe but if it was water quality, other sea slugs in the area would be dying too. I observed quite a few juvenile lobsters in the area I found the cowries at, also couple small nurse sharks and many fish. This seems to be specific to cowries.
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Old 05-29-2019, 07:29 AM   #8
Trigger-f
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Re: Dead deer cowries

I know this thread is 3 yrs old, however, I wanted to add that I am still finding dead cowries in the Keys. I found 6 fairly large Deer cowries (Cypraea Cervus) laying in the open next to large rocks, while snorkeling. All fresh dead with some flesh inside(3 of those were in very good shape, shiny shell etc..).

Has anyone else encountered this since 2016?

Last summer I was able to film a live cowrie in the Middle Keys so was hoping this(whatever it is that is killing them) had stopped. Could be it's bacterial/virus related, IDK. This is very disturbing.
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