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Aug. 15th, 2003 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaMore depressing news about the state of the world's oceans, thanks to human activity.
from Studies Show People and Coral Don't Mix
"It didn't matter if we were looking at the Red Sea, Australia or the Caribbean," added Karen Bjorndal, director of the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research at the University of Florida. "As soon as human exploitation began, whether in the 1600s in Bermuda or tens of thousands of years ago in the Red Sea, the same scenarios were put into play."
First, people killed off large predators such as sharks and the biggest fish and turtles, which are easy to catch and slow to reproduce. Then smaller fish go and finally sea grasses and the corals themselves. A search of historical and archaeological records in 14 regions including the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Red Sea, Caribbean and Australia, show the same thing -- these reefs used to be teeming with life and are not any more.
"In the 1600s when the European ships used to navigate in the Caribbean ... the ship's captain could navigate by the sounds of turtles swimming in the water, there were so many turtles swimming in the water. It is a very, very different world," Pandolfi said. And yet, these turtles had already been decimated by indigenous populations on the Caribbean islands. "I used to think that green turtles were basically in pristine shape when Columbus arrived, and I don't think that any more," Bjorndal said.
from Studies Show People and Coral Don't Mix
