By Robert Paul Reyes

“Manatees, sea turtles and fish in the Sunshine State are dying in record numbers because of the unusually long cold snap.

With temperature in central Florida dipping down again this week, conservationists are bracing for more animal and plant deaths due to unusually long winter cold snaps that have resulted in record wildlife losses.

Manatees have been among the hardest hit, with over 200 killed in January alone, and carcasses continuing to wash ashore. The highest number of manatee deaths for a single calendar year in Florida waters is 429, so local officials are closely monitoring these endangered marine mammals.” read more

Floridians may not want to read another article about the cold snap that has wreaked havoc in their state, but we must make people aware of the toll that the cold weather is taking on the state’s wildlife.

We all know that Florida’s citrus crops has been hit hard by the prolonged cold temperatures, but not everybody is aware that the unusually cold temps have resulted in the death of many of the Sunshine State’s wildlife.

Manatees can’t tolerate water that’s below 68 degrees for an extended period of time, and hundreds have succumbed to the frigid temperatures.

Thousands of sea turtle were rescued from the chilly waters last month. Thanks to volunteers many turtles were removed from the cold waters and temporarily placed in warm salt water. Almost all of the rescued critters have been returned to the ocean.

Manatees and sea turtles may not be as cute as puppies and kittens, but we must still do all that we can to save them. Get in touch with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission if you want to help.

Follow Robert Paul Reyes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertpaulreyes

Robert Paul Reyes is a NewsBlaze writer on Politics, Pop Culture and Pointless Pontificating. Contact him by writing to NewsBlaze.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, lifted off Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 41 on a first-of-a-kind mission to reveal the sun’s inner workings in unprecedented detail. The launch aboard an Atlas V rocket occurred at 10:23 a.m. EST.

The most technologically advanced of NASA’s heliophysics spacecraft, SDO will take images of the sun every 0.75 seconds and daily send back about 1.5 terabytes of data to Earth – the equivalent of streaming 380 full-length movies.

“This is going to be sensational,” said Richard R. Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “SDO is going to make a huge step forward in our understanding of the sun and its effects on life and society.”

The sun’s dynamic processes affect everyone and everything on Earth. SDO will explore activity on the sun that can disable satellites, cause power grid failures, and disrupt GPS communications. SDO also will provide a better understanding of the role the sun plays in Earth’s atmospheric chemistry and climate.

SDO is the crown jewel in a fleet of NASA missions to study our sun. The mission is the cornerstone of a NASA science program called Living With A Star. This program will provide new understanding and information concerning the sun and solar system that directly affect Earth, its inhabitants and technology.

The SDO project is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center managed the payload integration and launch.

For launch coverage, briefing materials, and multimedia, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/news/briefing-materials-20100209.html

For more information about the SDO mission, visit:

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov

and

http://www.nasa.gov/sdo

Source: NASA