Tag Archives: overfishing the oceans
Wonder why your progressive friends are loony? Read this! Humans Are Overfishing the Oceans Into ‘Unprecedented’ Mass Extinction
People are driving marine ecosystems to “unprecedented” mass extinction, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Science. Large-bodied animals will be the first to go, the study says—blue whales, great white sharks, and bluefin tuna, for example. Their size is part of their vulnerability, making them more susceptible to fishing and hunting by humans, “the dominant threat to modern marine fauna,” the researchers found. “If this pattern goes unchecked, the future oceans would lack many of the largest species in today’s oceans,” co-author Jonathan Payne, associate professor and chair of geological sciences at Stanford University, told the Guardian. “Many large species play critical roles in ecosystems and so their extinctions could lead to ecological cascades that would influence the structure and function of future ecosystems beyond the simple fact of losing those species.” Read the rest here 16:43
Just how badly are we overfishing the oceans?
So just how badly are we overfishing the oceans? Are fish populations going to keep shrinking each year — or could they recover? Those are surprisingly contentious questions, and there seem to be a couple of schools of thought here. more@wapo 11:55
