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PORTLAND, Ore. -- The killer foam that hit Northwest seabirds has subsided but conservationists are worried about a death toll they say numbers in the thousands.

The first algal foam that hit Washington's Olympic Peninsula in mid-September claimed more than 10,000 scoters, or seaducks, said Julia Parrish, a University of Washington marine biologist and seabird specialist. She says that toll, mostly surf scoters and white-winged scoters, amounts to 5 percent to 7 percent of their overall population on the West Coast.

"I don't think it will knock the population back for years," Parrish said. "But at least with surf scoters - a species that's in decline - conservation scientists are rather concerned about it."

She thinks thousands more seabirds, including many red-throated loons, were killed in the second wave of foam off southwest Washington's Long Beach Peninsula about two weeks ago.

The foam has been linked to the bloom of a single-cell phytoplankton, or algae - called Akashiwo sanguinea - that hasn't posed a problem in the Northwest until now.

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