I’m not a marine biologist, and unlike George Costanza I don’t play one on TV. But real marine biologists, like those in this report from The Washington Post, are worried about ocean conditions and the possibility of substantial loss of marine life:
Wave of Marine Species Extinctions Feared, by Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post: The bulldozers … pressed forward into a patch of dense mangrove trees that buckled and splintered like twigs. … Sitting in a small motorboat a few hundred yards offshore … Samuel H. Gruber -- a University of Miami professor who has devoted more than two decades to studying the lemon sharks that breed here …[said].... The mangroves being ripped up to build a new resort provide food and protection that the sharks can't get in the open ocean, and Gruber fears the worst. …
Gruber's sentiments have become increasingly common in recent years among a growing number of marine biologists ... For years, many scientists and regulators believed the oceans were so vast there was little risk of marine species dying out. Now, … Dozens of biologists believe the seas have reached a tipping point, with scores of species of ocean-dwelling fish, birds and mammals edging toward extinction. In the past 300 years, researchers have documented the global extinction of just 21 marine species -- and 16 have occurred since 1972. Since the 1700s, another 112 species have died out in particular regions, and that trend, too, has accelerated since the mid-1960s: Nearly two dozen shark species are close to disappearing … "It's been a slow-motion disaster," said Boris Worm, a professor at Canada's Dalhousie University, whose 2003 study that found that 90 percent of the top predator fish have vanished from the oceans. "It's silent and invisible. … It hasn't captured our imagination, like the rain forest." … the fate of many fish … worries experts. ... "Extinctions happen in the ocean; the fossil record shows that marine species have disappeared since life began in the sea," said Elliott A. Norse, who heads the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Redmond, Wash. "The question is, are humans a major new force causing marine extinctions? The evidence, and projections scientists are making, suggest that the answer is yes."
Large-scale fishing accounts for more than half of the documented fish extinctions in recent years, Nicholas K. Dulvy, a scientist at Lowestoft Laboratory in England, wrote in 2003. Destruction of habitats in which fish spawn or feed is responsible for another third. Warmer ocean temperatures are another threat, as some fish struggle to adapt to hotter and saltier water that can attract new competitors. … Today, sharks, along with sturgeon and sciaenids (known as croakers or drums for the sounds they make undersea), are among the most imperiled of the species that spend most of their lives in the ocean. Populations of sharks, skates and rays -- creatures known as elasmobranchs that evolved 400 million years ago and have skeletons of cartilage, not bone -- have difficulty rebounding because they mature slowly and produce few offspring. … Despite the sturgeon's fecundity, overfishing and habitat destruction have caused that population to dive as well. … Despite scientists' warnings, American and international authorities have been slow to protect marine species. The only U.S. saltwater fish to make the protected list is a ray, the smalltooth sawfish, which was added in 2003. …
On Bimini, 50 miles from the Florida coast, … Gruber documented that between 2000 and 2001, during the heaviest dredging of the ocean floor for the resort's construction, the survival rate for lemon sharks fell 30 percent .... He has yet to assess the impact of the mangrove destruction, which began on a large scale this year. The president of the Bimini Bay Resort and Casino, Rafael Reyes, said he … questions Gruber's statistics and the idea that "sharks and development don't mix." "We have a vested interest in making sure things remain as they are," Reyes said, adding that … "… I have to make sure the environment's pristine because my clients are fishermen." But Gruber remains unconvinced. "I believed when I started the ocean was so vast there was no way you could ever kill off the sharks or anything," he said. When it comes to being a fish, he said, "Now you can run, but you can't hide."
