Among the many things that outrage and depress me about humanity, our treatment of and disregard for the oceans is near the top, and I'm not talking about oil spills (though there's that, too). Yet another species faces extinction, and the disappearance of blue tuna could catastrophically change the nature of the oceanic ecosystem. All so the Japanese (and Americans, and Europeans) can get their quality sushi. Disgusting.
The oceans are facing an increasing likelihood in massive extinctions:
Researchers from the University of Bristol, who looked at how levels of acid in the ocean have changed over years, found that the current acidification is more severe than any time in the last 65 million years ago.For those of you non-creationists wondering what happened 65 million years ago, that would be the end of the Cretaceous period. So basically the oceans now are the worst they've been since the dinosaurs were wiped out, only this time, it is human pollution instead of a devastating meteor that is the culprit.According to the report as ocean acidification accelerated it caused mass extinctions at the bottom of the food chain that could threaten whole ecosystems in the future.
The study, published in Nature Geoscience, looked at sediments from around 55 million years ago, when temperature rose by up to 6 degrees Celsius and acidification was occurring at a similar rate as today.
In some rare, moderately-decent environmental news, overfishing may be falling off some.
Two years after a study warned that overfishing could cause a collapse in the world's seafood stocks by 2048, an update says the tide is turning, at least in some areas.
[...]Of 10 areas of the world that were studied, significant overfishing continues in three, but steps have been taken to curb excesses in five others, Hilborn and Worm report. The other two were not a problem in either study.
This is indeed some fairly good news in an area (fishing and the oceans) that has seen some of the worst news regarding environmental change in recent years.
However, I think it's a bit premature to be saying that "Crabcakes and fish sticks won't be disappearing after all." As the article itself points out (and contradicts its opening statement), many fish populations are still at high levels of risk, and fishing in Europe (particularly around Scandinavia) continues to be particularly excessive. And even if people try to boycott fish from those parts of the world, sometimes the alternative is not much better. Certainly reducing the overfishing rates in several areas of the world is good news, but until we reduce overfishing entirely and populations can rebound (which is still a major question), saying the threat of overfishing is going away seems a bit premature.
The fishlife in rivers and oceans is already pretty much screwed, but beyond the human toll of fishing, Paul Greenberg's op-ed reminds us of yet another way people's seemingly innocuous decisions about things as seemingly mundane as domestic pet ownership are leading to the not-so slow death of the oceans. While Greenberg has some suggestions (including policy suggestions for Obama), I'm just not hopeful about the future of fish and the oceans, and this is just one of many reasons why.
Wow. This Jeremy B.C. Jackson article shows the decline in fish populations because of human activity. Via The Intersection. They have the whole list and I don't know how to put in on this site. Anyway, here's a few numbers.
Globally, we have wiped out 85% of the world's large whales, 91% of the world's oysters, 87% of the sea turtles, and 61% of the seabirds.
Locally, it is even worse. Since 1973, 97% of the tiger sharks off North Carolina have been killed. Since the 1950s, 99% of the oceanic whitetip sharks in the Gulf of Mexico have been killed. 95% of the entire fishery biomass of the Bohal Sea has disappeared since 1959. 93% of the live coral cover of the Caribbean has been eliminated since 1977. The list goes on and on.
The oceans have supported life for a billion years or so. We are looking to wipe it all out in less than 100 years. We are rapidly turning them into deserts. Our lack of stewardship toward the oceans is disgusting and the effects are likely to be permanent.
Our species-wide mission to make the oceans lifeless continues unabated.
The lionfish is wreaking havoc on the Caribbean and could drive many native species to extinction. The lionfish is popular in aquariums but is a voracious eater of other fish. It also has lovely venomous spikes that pierce divers' suits and embed themselves deeply into the skin.
Says the Times article:
Oregon State researcher Mark Hixon says that the lionfish epidemic, "''This may very well become the most devastating marine invasion in history.''Wherever it appears, the adaptable predator corners fish and crustaceans up to half its size with its billowy fins and sucks them down in one violent gulp.
Research teams observed one lionfish eating 20 small fish in less than 30 minutes.
