Scripps Report Paints New Picture Of Outlook For Oceans - "The Rise Of Slime" - ScienceDaily

[hatrack]

ScienceDaily (Aug. 13, 2008) — Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing. Such is the prognosis of Jeremy Jackson, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, in a bold new assessment of the oceans and their ecological health. Jackson believes that human impacts are laying the groundwork for mass extinctions in the oceans on par with vast ecological upheavals of the past.

He cites the synergistic effects of habitat destruction, overfishing, ocean warming, increased acidification and massive nutrient runoff as culprits in a grand transformation of once complex ocean ecosystems. Areas that had featured intricate marine food webs with large animals are being converted into simplistic ecosystems dominated by microbes, toxic algal blooms, jellyfish and disease.

Jackson, director of the Scripps Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, has tagged the ongoing transformation as "the rise of slime." The new paper, "Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean," is a result of Jackson's presentation last December at a biodiversity and extinction colloquium convened by the National Academy of Sciences

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Jackson furthers his analysis by constructing a chart of marine ecosystems and their "endangered" status. Coral reefs, Jackson's primary area of research, are "critically endangered" and among the most threatened ecosystems; also critically endangered are estuaries and coastal seas, threatened by overfishing and runoff; continental shelves are "endangered" due to, among other things, losses of fishes and sharks; and the open ocean ecosystem is listed as "threatened" mainly through losses at the hands of overfishing. "Just as we say that leatherback turtles are critically endangered, I looked at entire ecosystems as if they were a species," said Jackson. "The reality is that if we want to have coral reefs in the future, we're going to have to behave that way and recognize the magnitude of the response that's necessary to achieve it."

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080813144405.htm

[NickB79]

1. The return of the Canfield ocean. NT

[hatrack]

2. Bloop . . . Bloop . . . Bloop-bloop!

:evilgrin:

[sofa king]

6. I've seen the future:

The Republican Party, 2200 A.C.E.:

[GliderGuider]

3. Jackson is to the oceans what Hansen is to the atmosphere

He tells it like it is. And how it is, sucks. I'm not sure which frightens me more -- the state of the oceans or the air.

We have utterly fouled our nest. It's going to be lethal for many species, possibly including our own.

[phantom power]

4. I'm going to vote "oceans."

Because if the oceans really do go off the rails, things will go very badly for our atmosphere shortly after.

[GliderGuider]

5. Yeah, losing the oceanic carbon sink would kinda suck.

:nuke: