The End Of The Life Aquatic?

The Washington Post reports that a Wave of Marine Species Extinctions Feared. It's worth reading the whole article, but in case you are lazy, here some "soundbites":

...For years, many scientists and regulators believed the oceans were so vast there was little risk of marine species dying out. Now, some suspect the world is on the cusp of what Ellen K. Pikitch, executive director of the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, calls "a gathering wave of ocean extinctions." 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.

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"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. People don't imagine this. It hasn't captured our imagination, like the rain forest."

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In some cases, fishermen have intentionally exploited species until they died out, such as the New Zealand grayling fish and the Caribbean monk seal; other species have been accidental victims of long lines or nets intended for other catches. Over the past two decades, accidental bycatch alone accounted for an 89 percent decline in hammerhead sharks in the Northeast Atlantic.

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...Despite the sturgeon's fecundity, overfishing and habitat destruction have caused that population to dive as well. Beluga sturgeon, the source of black caviar, release 360,000 to 7 million eggs in a year, Pikitch noted, but [their population has] declined 90 percent in the past 20 years. Just this month, scientists in Kazakhstan reported that they failed to find a single wild, reproducing beluga female, leaving them with no eggs for hatcheries.

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