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Overfishing
and overhunting of marine habitats nothing new under the sun This document was provided by: The VivaVine (Fall 2001, Vol. 10, No. 4)Note: The
information on this website is not a substitute Overfishing and overhunting in recent decades have been calamitous for the environment. But these are nothing new, according to a report compiled by a team of 19 scientists, published in the July 27 edition of Science. The report concluded that throughout history, overfishing and overhunting have had far worse effects on coastal marine habitats than pollution or global warming. "If you contrast what's out there now to what was there 200 years ago, it's just crumbs," said Steve Gaines, director of the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara, reacting to the study in a statement quoted in a midsummer story in the Los Angeles Times. By poring over such physical evidence as sediment samples, archeological digs, and historical harvests, the scientists in the study learned that the world was at one time teeming with marine life, way beyond the upper levels that governments strive to attain today when instituting regulations to manage fisheries. Current fish population goals fall far short of the levels of life that once were. One researcher quoted in the LA Times article was awed by the study's results. The historical records have "exceeded all of our imaginations," he said. The magnitude of the impacts may not have surprised students of the rules of ecological balance, however. Each of the mass die-offs of marine life the researchers found in habitat after habitat was associated with human destructiveness, sometimes the removal of a single species. Hunt otter near extinction, for instance, and you'll have an overabundance of sea urchins, which eventually graze away kelp habitats that harbor entire ecosystems. At one time, turtles and oysters were so thick in American coastal waters that they presented a navigational hazard to the early explorers. Hunt or harvest them to a dwindling few and soon the critical place they hold in the food chain will be sorely missed. Without turtles in the Florida Bay, a fungus has taken over to deplete oxygen vitally needed by fish. Without the unique water-filtering abilities of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, the water has become cloudy and ultimately uninhabitable for manatees, sturgeons, whales, and alligators. |