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.”
Scientific assessments of the oceans’ health are dogged by uncertainty: It’s much harder for researchers to judge the well-being of a species living underwater, over thousands of miles, than to track the health of a species on land. And changes that scientists observe in particular ocean ecosystems may not reflect trends across the planet.
Dr. Pinsky, Dr. McCauley and their colleagues sought a clearer picture of the oceans’ health by pulling together data from an enormous range of sources, from discoveries in the fossil record to statistics on modern container shipping, fish catches and seabed mining. While many of the findings already existed, they had never been juxtaposed in such a way.
A number of experts said the result was a remarkable synthesis, along with a nuanced and encouraging prognosis.
“I see this as a call for action to close the gap between conservation on land and in the sea,” said Loren McClenachan of Colby College, who was not involved in the study.
There are clear signs already that humans are harming the oceans to a remarkable degree, the scientists found.
Read more: Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says
The Latest on: Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction
- Increasingly Frequent Ocean Heat Waves Trigger Mass Die-Offs of Sealife, and Grief in Marine Scientistson May 1, 2024 at 2:10 am
Heat waves recently extended across nearly 30 percent of the world’s oceans, an expanse equivalent to the surface area of North America, Asia, Europe and Africa.
- Column: The salmon industry faces extinction — not because of drought, but government policies and politicson April 18, 2024 at 3:05 pm
To better understand the threats to salmon, it helps to know about their life cycle. Salmon live and breed on a three-year timeline. Adult fish swim in the ocean, but migrate upstream to lay eggs ...
- Mass extinction event shows how life responds to extreme changeson December 28, 2023 at 7:14 am
A recent study from USC Dornsife has unveiled startling new insights into one of Earth's most devastating mass extinction events ... ecosystems. While ocean life experienced a significant loss ...
- The Permian extinction—when life nearly came to an endon July 31, 2023 at 2:07 pm
For years scientists have known that the deep ocean lacked oxygen ... Now we are creating a new mass extinction, wiping out countless species. Will life be as resilient this time?
- Rapid Reductions In Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Critical For Avoiding A Major Mass Extinction Of Ocean Specieson May 2, 2022 at 4:38 am
The fossil record shows that more than 250 million years ago volcanic gas emissions caused ocean temperatures to increase and oxygen availability to drop, leading to a mass extinction claiming ...
- What is extinction?on December 12, 2021 at 12:07 am
When there are no individuals of a species left alive, we say that it is extinct. Extinction is permanent; when an organism disappears, it’s gone forever. Lots of species have come and gone ...
- Ocean Shock: The climate crisis beneath the waves.on August 12, 2020 at 9:40 pm
To stand at the edge of an ocean is to face an eternity of waves and water ... but this hidden climate change has had a disturbing impact on marine life – in effect, creating an epic underwater ...
- HALTING THE EXTINCTION CRISISon August 22, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Our planet now faces a global extinction crisis ... It’s full of bold, life-changing initiatives including a call for a $100-billion investment in endangered species and protection of 30% of our lands ...
via Bing News