Posted on 08/20/2008 11:03:49 AM PDT by cogitator
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.
...
"All of the different kinds of data and methods of analysis point in the same direction of drastic and increasingly rapid degradation of marine ecosystems," Jackson writes in the paper.
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To stop the degradation of the oceans, Jackson identifies overexploitation, pollution and climate change as the three main "drivers" that must be addressed.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Just more Liberal scare tactics to push socialist agenda. Spices come and go. 99.999% of all species that have ever lived have become extinct, without man kinds help.
What you will not see in this is the fact that when you put up a sea based oil drilling rig, sea life explodes. This is been proven in Louisiana and has been so affective that when a rig is decommissioned other states are trying to buy them to put off their shores.
Were these also Man made? I think not! Yes, we need to keep the oceans as clean as we can.
But the Enviro_Nazis probably want all world people to stay off the oceans for a least a couple centuries. There that will fix it.
I can tell you for a fact that your table listing a 96% decline in Goliath Grouper (formerly known as Jewfish) in the Florida Keys since 1956 is so patently false as to be absurd.
I would assume if this one is so distorted, the rest is as well. I have 34 years residency in the Florida Keys and i know the Jewfish and all other species in the Keys quite well. And yes, I have extensive college studies in marine biology.
And here I thought the oceans were supposed to be dead by 1980. Clearly, we’re not killing enough fish.
Fifteen years ago Ted Danson said the oceans would die in ten years. Yawnnn.
Another scientist trolling for some grant money to continue this ‘vital’ research.
Even if temperatures rise significantly, which is probably not going to happen, fish etc. will just move a little further North as the ocean warms very slowly (its time constant is over 1000 years).
You mean the Democrats will take over?
Doesn’t slime contain a lot of oil we can recover and burn in our cars?
“Global Warming” is quickly being exposed as a lie.
“Man's Destruction of Oceans”, and with them our own destruction, will be the next target.
They'll run with it for 20 years until the facts catch up to them.
Constant monitoring of Ocean temperatures by ARGOS (http://www.argos-system.org/html/applications/ocean_en.html) shows no change. Coral reefs have been destroyed by dust coming from Africa due to cyclical droughts. It is arrogant to think that mankind can destroy the whole world by just existing.
Save your breath. ‘Cogitator’ made up his mind on man-made global warming a long time ago.
LOL! I did hear that polar bears have a fear of flying... reason for another government granted study!
“Dogs and cats....living together....MASS HYSTERIA!!!”
I have a solution involving a professor with short lengths of rope around his ankles, some 45 lb. barbell weights, and the ocean. Human population decreases slightly, and the fish get fed.
A ping...of DOOMAGE!
We can completely replace petroleum by growing bioengineered saltwater algae on about 3% of the open ocean surface. Not only does algae convert CO2 into O2 creating a closed loop it removes pollution from the air and water. There will be an explosion of new ocean life because algae is the beginning of the ocean food chain.
I am a conservative...and, IMO, part of being conservative is being a good steward of the environment. There is so much we do not know about God's creation. We should be careful in our care for it.
NOTE: Before I get all the nasty replies...this does not mean that I support an expensive, economy killing green agenda...it just means we need to find the right balance.
I caught one of them endangered Jewfish last fall...must’ve been over near the bridge to Marco.
Small one...maybe 5 pounder...and U-G-L-Y.
They already printed the blueprint for the outcome (3 years ago):
[ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2005) — Washington, D.C. -– Volcanic eruptions in Siberia 251 million years ago may have started a cascade of events leading to high hydrogen sulfide levels in the oceans and atmosphere and precipitating the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a Penn State geoscientist.
That warming, however, could set off a series of events that led to mass extinction. During the end-Permian extinction 95 percent of all species on Earth became extinct, compared to only 75 percent during the K-T when a large asteroid apparently caused the dinosaurs to disappear.
Volcanic carbon dioxide would cause atmospheric warming that would, in turn, warm surface ocean water. Normally, the deep ocean gets its oxygen from the atmosphere at the poles. Cold water there soaks up oxygen from the air and because cold water is dense, it sinks and slowly moves equator-ward, taking oxygen with it. The warmer the water, the less oxygen can dissolve and the slower the water sinks and moves toward the equator.
“Warmer water slows the conveyer belt and brings less oxygen to the deep oceans,” says Kump.
The constant rain of organic debris produced by marine plants and animals, needs oxygen to decompose. With less oxygen, fewer organics are aerobically consumed.
“Today, there are not enough organics in the oceans to go anoxic,” says Kump. “But in the Permian, if the warming from the volcanic carbon dioxide decreased oceanic oxygen, especially if atmospheric oxygen levels were lower, the oceans would be depleted of oxygen.”
Once the oxygen is gone, the oceans become the realm of bacteria that obtain their oxygen from sulfur oxide compounds. These bacteria strip oxygen from the compounds and produce hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide kills aerobic organisms.
Humans can smell hydrogen sulfide gas, the smell of rotten cabbage, in the parts per trillion range. In the deeps of the Black Sea today, hydrogen sulfide exists at about 200 parts per million. This is a toxic brew in which any aerobic, oxygen-needing organism would die. For the Black Sea, the hydrogen sulfide stays in the depths because our rich oxygen atmosphere mixes in the top layer of water and controls the diffusion of hydrogen sulfide upwards.
In the end-Permian, as the levels of atmospheric oxygen fell and the levels of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide rose, the upper levels of the oceans could have become rich in hydrogen sulfide catastrophically. This would kill most the oceanic plants and animals. The hydrogen sulfide dispersing in the atmosphere would kill most terrestrial life.]
Seems like the planet has a way of protecting itself from all its rude parasites.
“The Rise of the Slime”
Sounds like what’s been going on in Washington DC for the last twenty years.
I don’t have time here to list the many ways in which I’ve been told that the Earth is going to die from some kind of human activity or another since I was born in 1956. Suffice it to say I’m still here, and I’m not eating Soylent Green.
I teach this to my students, too, as a way of innoculating them to news stories like this.
Of course, it is fun to imagine the end of the world, just as long as you get to survive.
Me thinks Old Agitator is really Al Gore.
You state that you have semi-retired. Please do us a favor and make it complete.
But cogitator said to me in his own words;
[I am the very model of a modern-day “librarian”. Haven’t you read my profile, Opie?
I’m very well acquainted too with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news-—
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse...]
What will be will be and a bunch of Archie Bunkers, can’t do anything about it. (you thought I was going to say queerbaits, didn’t you?)
Below the link I've excerpted a relevant section.
"As noted by the GMFMC (1990) and the SAFMC (1990), fishing pressure on goliath grouper throughout the 1970s and 1980s impacted the abundance and density of the species in both the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic; total U.S. commercial goliath grouper landings are presented in Table 2. Commercial landings in the Atlantic Ocean peaked in 1977 with 72,000 pounds (Table 3). In the Gulf of Mexico, commercial landings increased in the late 1970s, and continued to increase until their eventual decline in the mid- to late-1980s (Tables 4-6). Because of fishing pressure in the commercial and recreational sectors, the abundance and density of goliath grouper significantly decreased throughout its range. In many cases, the species was completely eradicated from areas such as North and South Carolina for over a decade."
"Porch et al. (2003) summarized interviews with fishermen and divers who had been active in southern Florida since the 1960s or earlier. Specifically, the nine interviewees were asked their perception on the reduction in goliath grouper populations from the time they first started fishing to the time of the harvest prohibition in 1990. The average percent reduction reported was 86 percent, with a standard deviation of approximately 13 percent (Porch et al., 2003)."
Surface ocean pH has declined about 0.1 pH units (globally) since accurate measurements commenced. That's "acidification", not "acidified".
Algae can be converted to biofuel.
Doesn't sound like a bad idea, if it can be made commercially viable.
You flatter me, sir. But at least I'm not fatter.
Same old BS, just a different year.
‘Acidified’ is a loaded term that implies that the water is turning acidic. If the liquid were in the lab, ‘pH lowered’ or ‘neutralized’ would be used.
So I think “acidification” just implies the pH is going down?
The ocean around the Keys is lousy with Goliath Grouper. When they put the ban in, they said it was because they grow so slowly. They said it would take 50 years for Goliath Grouper to reach their ultimate maximum weight of 600-800 pounds.
LOLOL, the damn fish are growing to 600 pounds in less than 8 years. There are hundreds of fishing spots that I used to fish frequently, that I don’t even go to anymore because you can’t get a fish to the boat past the monster Jewfish. I’ve got pictures taken last summer of anchored up on a spot, with 20 of the huge Jewfish coming to the surface when they hear the engine, looking for a meal. The things are so voracious and huge, they would eat a 30 pound dog in one gulp if it fell overboard.
This is not a fish in danger. In fact, they should open season on them before they eat everything else in the sea.
Guess I better stock up on cans of sardines and jars of coelentrates before global warming cooks them off the globe.
“And yes, I have extensive college studies in marine biology.”
Your extensive knowledge means nothing, comrade. Did you know that driving your SUV, raising your children and being a productive citizen who believes in free enterprise, family, liberty and God is causing the polar bears to go extinct?
Ask nobama. He’ll tell you.
;-)
btt
A couple comments on that: one, there have been studies showing that marine reserves work, i.e., if you have areas where species can grow and reproduce without pressure, they rebound fast. The other factor is that if you’ve got a species that is thriving at the expense of others, and which doesn’t have natural predatory pressures — I immediately think of the forest vermin called whitetail deer here in the eastern U.S., which are all over the place, eating everything in sight — then they need to be culled to restore balance. I think jewfish might supply a few nice fillets, eh?
Oops, I though they meant churches were dying off. Mass. Extinction. Or maybe it was end of days for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Reanalyses of fishery collapses incorporating criteria that included targeting, variability in fishing effort, and market forces discovered many false cases of collapse based simply upon a decline of catches to 10% of previous maximum levels. Consequently, we suggest that the low mean trophic level index calculated in the earlier article for the GOM did not reflect the overall condition of the fishery ecosystem, and that the 10% rule for collapse should not be interpreted out of context in the GOM or elsewhere. In both cases, problems lay in the assumption that commercial landings data alone adequately reflect the fish populations and communities.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2268206
Somehow I don't read that as a strikingly good thing. But at least the fisheries could recover with effective management.
More from the article:
The fisheries and ecological literature demonstrates the unintended ecological consequences of fishing and has prompted numerous pleas for a more holistic ecosystem approach to marine fisheries management (1–3). This movement in support of ecosystem-based management has been paralleled by efforts to identify indicators of ecosystem status (4). Among the most high profile indicators of marine ecosystem status is the mean trophic level index (MTLI) (5). This index represents a weighted average of the trophic level of fisheries landings. Pauly et al. (5) initiated the analyses and demonstrated downward trends in the mean trophic level of fisheries landings for a variety of marine ecosystems. Their initial findings have been repeated in subsequent analyses from additional locations (6–8).
{snip}
None of the time series of MTLI exhibited negative trends from a higher trophic level to a lower trophic level. Results of our reanalyses clearly differ from those presented by Pauly and Palomares (6) who reported a negative trend. For the USA only and the GOM (including shrimp and menhaden), indices based upon commercial catches varied around a long-term mean trophic level near 2.5 (Fig. 1). Both slopes were positive (P < 0.001) rather than negative.
The authors maintain that a key indicator of marine ecosystem health, the "mean trophic level index", is increasing slightly (good) in the GOM, not decreasing as prior studies have indicated, which misinterpreted the data, relying as they did on commercial catch numbers. (I think)
Which contradicts Jackson's statement: "All of the different kinds of data and methods of analysis point in the same direction of drastic and increasingly rapid degradation of marine ecosystems".
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