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13:18 GMT, Jan 17, 2015

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Animals, Australia, Biology,

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Mass extinction for Earth’s oceansprobable, comprehensive study says

The first comprehensive study of its kind

has determined that ocean life is facing

mass extinction from human activity. But

the record damage is still reversible –

unlike our impact on land. American scientists say the effects can

be mitigated.

We’ve known for a while that achieving sustainability would be

impossible with our lifestyles. Although the majority of Earth is

Published time: January 17, 2015 10:19

Reuters / Jorge Silva

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covered in water we are vastly reliant on, many of our practicesare causing unprecedented damage to marine biology: coral reefdamage, resource mining, fish farming, construction work,chemical pollution, the depletion of bio resources, unintendedspecies migration, global warming, military drills – to name just afew.

The picture has just been made clearer by a study that for thefirst time ever brought all these strands together. Drs. Malin L.Pinsky, Stephen R. Palumbi, Douglas J. McCauley and colleaguesfrom the University of California have dug into hundreds ofsources past and present, including the fossil record andstatistics on shipping and seabed mining to form the chillingconclusions of their study, published Thursday in the journalScience.

“We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,”McCauley says on the analysis, which has already received wideacclaim from marine biologists and experts in related fields.

READ MORE: First time in 2 mn years, melting Arctic ice threatensmass-scale species contamination

“If by the end of the century we’re not off the business-as-usualcurve we are now, I honestly feel there’s not much hope for normalecosystems in the ocean,” Palumbi said.

READ MORE: Melting of Antarctic ice sheet and 3-meter sea level

Coral eating starfish at Australia's Great Barrier Reef (AFP Photo /Katharina Fabricius / Australian Institute of Marine Science)

rise inevitable - study

One of the key conclusions is that the oceans had until now

largely evaded the damage we had caused to terrestrial life,

seeing as we’re after all a terrestrial species. But after 1800, when

industrialization hit, land extinction sped up and the stage was

set for irreversible water damage, which is now mirroring the

situation.

“Current trends in ocean use suggest that habitat destruction is likelyto become an increasingly dominant threat to ocean wildlife overthe next 150 years,” the team said in their study. And because

oceans are a fluid mechanism, and much more difficult to

monitor accurately than land, there is practically no way of

reaching a conclusion on the average state of Earth’s water. Some

places could be far wars off than others, hence the importance of

the new cumulative analysis.

READ MORE: Big US banks balk at funding Great Barrier Reef coal

port

READ MORE: Danger to food chain? Microplastic contaminates

found in Sydney Harbor

We’re squeezing the species on all sides: mangrove farming

destroys habitats, while our fish nets have affected 20 million

Reuters / Sergio Moraes

square miles of ocean already, altering the continental shelf.

Seabed mining contracts are an especially huge change: the area

went from zero square miles in the year 2000 to a staggering

460,000 in 2014. This serious threat is especially dangerous to

sensitive and unique ecosystems.

And while we no longer hunt whales to the same extent, their

lives are now affected by a rapidly growing number of shipping

lanes.

READ MORE: US Navy to kill, injure ‘thousands’ of whales,

dolphins during drills – activists

The process is also a chain. The human footprint has caused a 40

percent decline in coral reefs worldwide, which consequently

leads to habitat destruction for marine species. Some migration

may result in the arrival of predatory species to ecosystems that

are not prepared to accept them, and so on. But everyone is

feeling the impact.

“If you cranked up the aquarium heater and dumped some acid inthe water, your fish would not be very happy,” Pinsky said. “In effect,that’s what we’re doing to the oceans.”

And it starts on land for many marine animals: some lay eggs –

like sea turtles; seabirds nest in cliffs, and so on. Some have

already become extinct due to our land activity.

READ MORE: Nicaragua starts work on $50bn canal between two

oceans

Photo by Phil's 1stPix / flickr.com

“But in the meantime, we do have a chance to do what we can. Wehave a couple decades more than we thought we had, so let’s pleasenot waste it,” Palumbi said. "I fervently believe that our best partnerin saving the ocean is the ocean itself.”

READ MORE: BP caps cash pipeline to research worst oil spill in

US history

McCauley elaborates that if we limit the industrialization of

Earth’s water, we could facilitate species recovery – much more so

than we ever could on land, where the damage is now irreversible

in places.

“There are a lot of tools we can use,” he said. The team believes

that designing an approach with climate change in mind would

be the way to go. It’s about considering how and where species

can escape rising temperatures and a lowering of pH levels. As

we learn that some areas are indeed affected more gravely than

others, one of the approaches may be to limit industrial

operations to some areas, while allowing others to recover.

“It’s creating a hopscotch pattern up and down the coasts to helpthese species adapt,” Pinsky said.

33 comments

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0

Reply21 minutes ago

Devark Veyth

I love how the worst industrial disaster EVER (which is quite possibly an

ele) just continually flys under the radar... #Fukushima.. and it's not even

close to being contained.

-1

Reply29 minutes ago

felipecnichols

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0Brigitte Meier

The conservation efforts will all come to naught once the steel casings of

the poison gas and biological weapons' ammunition dumped into the sea

rust through and release the content. It will poison most of the sea. So

much radioactive and toxic waste has already been dumped into the sea

near the Somalia coast that the livelihood of the people as fishermen was

destroyed and they became pirates. People on land got sick from the

waste dumping. there are thousands of square miles of ocean covered with

plastic refuse. It will disintegrate into hydrocarbons and poison the oceans.

If mankind wants to save the oceans, it should not only reduce

industrialization of the ocean, stop all sonar and other military tests, but in

addition start to clean up the pollution wrought onto the oceans. Then the

fish and natural conditions can take over and regenerate the oceans. A

more likely scenario is however that mankind will in time die out due to

starvation as land is polluted with toxic chemicals and seas are polluted with

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