“Lobsters are not supposed to bleed orange.” Ahem. Kirk Johnson reports that as the first sign that “something had once again gone seriously wrong in Long Island Sound.” The clue came in mid-August at a pathology lab at the State University of New York/Stony Brook -- “the very week researchers reported a sudden increase in the [Long Island] Sound’s water temperature after a year of record-breaking warm weather.” Researchers, after conducting autopsies, identified the culprit as calcium -- “the rough equivalent of kidney stones in humans, and all the evidence pointed to one cause: water so warm that it was impairing their ability to process minerals.” Johnson quotes researcher Alistair D.M. Dove: “The correlation is very strong. Not proven, but strong. Climate is the killer here.”

Johnson points to “no airtight proof that warmer water is at the root” of the Long Island Sound lobsters’ decline, adding that some researchers point to pesticides aimed at combating West Nile Virus as a likely suspect. But he reports that “many scientists” agree with the climate change concern, raising the dilemma that “temperature is a problem without an easy cure, or a villain to hold accountable.” Johnson reports too that weakened immunity systems resulting from higher temperatures may make the lobsters “more susceptible to poisons or diseases they could otherwise fight off.”