This is most definitely something to be concerned about, but what is needed is solid data.
As Michael Crichton pointed out so brilliantly, we don’t really know how to control ecosystems, and our clumsy attempts to do so often make matters worse.
The answer, as always, is more knowledge, which requires a lot more research.
To that I say, so what? If one believes in evolution, then one must accept that extinctions are a natural part of the evolutionary process.
Wasn’t Jaques Cousteau predicting the death of the coral reef and thus the oceans in 20 years back in 1970?
We had nothing to do with it then and we have nothing to do with it now.
Period.
L
We were camping on a lagoon in North Florida about 15 years ago and we saw an example of this problem. One morning a group of guys came in with rowboats and a mile of gill nets and completely encircled the whole lagoon - maybe 20 acres, with gill nets. It took them a whole day to net every living creature in the lagoon. They kept the legal fish and threw the by-catch back, but most of it was dead. They killed undersized snapper, grouper, crabs, flounder, white trout, sail cats, etc. that were caught in the net.
This went on every day all along the coast. It’s no wonder that species like mullet that were once so plentiful you could catch them in hand nets were almost wiped out.
Are DemonRats going extinct????????? Darn!
There is no doubt about it, the way we live puts 100’s of thousands of metric tons (perhaps millions) of toxic chemicals into our environment every day. Folks on this forum always laugh off mass deaths like the seal thread yesterday, I guess that’s the macho cool thing to do, but in the end, things are really pretty messed up.
Can't happen that way. AS an example, we reduced the population of Blue Whales to nearly the point of extinction. These are the largest carnivores that have ever lived on earth, with adults weighing as much as 100 tons.
They fed on krill (Euphausia superba), a shrimp like critter found in immense quantities in the Antarctic Ocean. Despite the removal of the top carnivore in the entire history of the world, and the removal of many other whales, the only result was that many, many, many krill were not converted to whale scat.
When the whale population bred back, no change occurred, other than many krill again became whale scat.
Conclusion: The earth is composed of exceeding resilient ecosystems/habitats.
It is human civilization which is fragile. I suggest we concern ourselves with preserving the traditional American civilization, which is in danger.
Look for Obama to promise Hu that China will be allowed to send her fishing fleets to US waters as a monthly minimum
payment on the debt.
A global collapse in marine ecosystems gonna hit the Asians HARD baby!
Over-fishing, I believe.
I try to eat primarily farm-raised fish.
And, yes, I know all the supposed horror stories. So don’t waste your breath.
I know the wild critters need that ocean to themselves, and I still want to eat fish. So farm them like chickens, cows, or whatever else, and feed the world protein.