"We May Be Sitting On The Precipice Of A Major Extinction Event" For Earth's Oceans - NYT

[hatrack]

A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them. “We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,” said Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an author of the new research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

But there is still time to avert catastrophe, Dr. McCauley and his colleagues also found. Compared with the continents, the oceans are mostly intact, still wild enough to bounce back to ecological health. “We’re lucky in many ways,” said Malin L. Pinsky, a marine biologist at Rutgers University and another author of the new report. “The impacts are accelerating, but they’re not so bad we can’t reverse them.”

EDIT

Coral reefs, for example, have declined by 40 percent worldwide, partly as a result of climate-change-driven warming. Some fish are migrating to cooler waters already. Black sea bass, once most common off the coast of Virginia, have moved up to New Jersey. Less fortunate species may not be able to find new ranges. At the same time, carbon emissions are altering the chemistry of seawater, making it more acidic. “If you cranked up the aquarium heater and dumped some acid in the water, your fish would not be very happy,” Dr. Pinsky said. “In effect, that’s what we’re doing to the oceans.”

Fragile ecosystems like mangroves are being replaced by fish farms, which are projected to provide most of the fish we consume within 20 years. Bottom trawlers scraping large nets across the sea floor have already affected 20 million square miles of ocean, turning parts of the continental shelf to rubble. Whales may no longer be widely hunted, the analysis noted, but they are now colliding more often as the number of container ships rises.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/science/earth/study-raises-alarm-for-health-of-ocean-life.html

[merrily]

1. Kind of puts all other issues in perspective, doesn't it?

[hatrack]

2. Yes, it's why I don't get too upset with I/P, TerraTerraTerra!!!!, Cantaloupe-Calved Migrants, Ebola

. . . and the remainder of the distractions du jour.

[merrily]

3. Maybe I don't really need a will, after all.

(Gallows humor version of "looking on the bright side.&quot

[defacto7]

4. An "alarm" for health of ocean life...

The ocean is the origin of all life on earth. It's a single organism with a beating heart of thousand year intervals between beats and human civilization has exited for about 7 beats. Humans as a species has lived about 100 beats, mammalian life about 300,000 beats and all living organisms about 3 million beats. We are simply playing on the edge of a precipice that separates our form of life from other forms of the ocean's choosing. It can obliterate us in a matter of months when it "decides" it has had enough of our foolishness. When the time comes for the ocean to clean us out it will reverse the course of life on the planet as it has done several times already, starting the timer over as if we had never exited.

The ocean will not die by our hand but it graciously gives us a timed choice. We can join the rest of successful living organisms thriving and evolving, or we can continue on our suicide course of arrogance and complacency which will only lead to obliteration, a blip in earth's history unremembered. The ocean will die when the cosmos calls it's number and not before. So we join life or we ignore it.

Tick.... tick....tick....

[CrispyQ]

5. "But there is still time to avert catastrophe, ..."

Not in a everything-for-profit, look-one-quarter-ahead model.