Hi Janie,

I met with Don yesterday and he showed me the area where he observed the die-off. My hope had been to find at least a small bit of living sponge material from which we might glean some idea of the cause of the mortality. We scoured the area and all we found were standing dead. Hence, you are correct in that we may never know what killed them. Sounds like they may have a bit of an ephemeral presence in some areas. Perhaps it was a pulse of freshwater or drop in temperature? Everything else in the area [...]