census of the seas :)

[mrhnau]

A Census of the seas.

There were some really cool finds There is so much we still don't know about! Fascinating stuff

Here is a synopsis from the top of the page

• Type of shrimp thought to have gone extinct 50 million years ago discovered
• Off New Jersey, 20 million fish are found swarming in school the size of Manhattan
• Thousands of new species have been discovered during the census
• About 2,000 researchers from 80 countries participating in the census

 

[exile]

A Census of the seas.

There were some really cool finds There is so much we still don't know about! Fascinating stuff

Here is a synopsis from the top of the page

Thanks for the link, mrhn---incredibly ambitious project, this is! For some reason, I suspect the results are going to be a bit discouraging, though...

 

[mrhnau]

Thanks for the link, mrhn---incredibly ambitious project, this is! For some reason, I suspect the results are going to be a bit discouraging, though...

Discouraging in what way?

-in edit-
Concern over cataloguing every species? That task being too overwhelming perhaps? Even if its not exhaustive, there are thousands of species left to discover, and I think it would be incredibly useful

 

[exile]

Discouraging in what way?

Well, for one thing, there will almost certainly be documentation in a spectacular reduction in the size of many critical fisheries---on the east coast, the Grand Banks, and on the west coast, the salmon fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska and off the BC coast. There's been anecdotal evidence for a long time that the Grand Banks is approaching exhaustion, and the pattern of closures during the height of the season in BC has reached five-alarm levels. Some of it is overfishing with these gigantic purse sein nets, and some is habitat desrtruction in the breeding creeks... not good....

 

[MA-Caver]

# A new find: a 4-pound rock lobster discovered off Madagascar.

Get the butter!

# A new type of crab with a furry appearance, near Easter Island. It was so unusual it warranted a whole new family designation, Kiwaidae, named for Kiwa, the Polynesian goddess of shellfish. Its furry appearance justified its species name, hirsuta, meaning hairy.

A furry crab.... ..... :lookie: ...... ..... :idunno: waiting for the punch line.

Seriously though, I can understand Exile's statement about it being "bit discouraging". While we are finding new species everyday hundreds more are being wiped out. The seas have suffered from pollution and over-fishing for decades (if not centuries). On another thread I had posted a pic of a hypothetical time-line should man disappear from the planet altogether. It said that fish populations would (totally) recover in about 50 years. I would be thinking it would be more like about 100 years. Longer for the whale population to recover as well. The whale recovery might even have to come first as their massive fecal quanities help the food-chain. With the lessening numbers the rest of the ecology suffers. (yeah, I'm a tree-hugger... haven't ya'll figgured that out yet??)
So it's discouraging to think of how many species will not ever see the light of day or by man because of the continual abuse of (one of) man's greatest natural resource(s).
Is that about right Exile? Or did you mean something else?

 

[exile]

Get the butter!
A furry crab.... ..... :lookie: ...... ..... :idunno: waiting for the punch line.

Seriously though, I can understand Exile's statement about it being "bit discouraging". While we are finding new species everyday hundreds more are being wiped out. The seas have suffered from pollution and over-fishing for decades (if not centuries). On another thread I had posted a pic of a hypothetical time-line should man disappear from the planet altogether. It said that fish populations would (totally) recover in about 50 years. I would be thinking it would be more like about 100 years. Longer for the whale population to recover as well. The whale recovery might even have to come first as their massive fecal quanities help the food-chain. With the lessening numbers the rest of the ecology suffers. (yeah, I'm a tree-hugger... haven't ya'll figgured that out yet??)
So it's discouraging to think of how many species will not ever see the light of day or by man because of the continual abuse of (one of) man's greatest natural resource(s).
Is that about right Exile? Or did you mean something else?

You've got it exactly, MA-C. And it's really up in the air whether what you're talking about is reversible or not... in many cases, probably not...

 

[mrhnau]

Get the butter!
A furry crab.... ..... :lookie: ...... ..... :idunno: waiting for the punch line.

LOL! I've actually seen pictures of it. It's quite fuzzy!

Seriously though, I can understand Exile's statement about it being "bit discouraging". While we are finding new species everyday hundreds more are being wiped out. The seas have suffered from pollution and over-fishing for decades (if not centuries). On another thread I had posted a pic of a hypothetical time-line should man disappear from the planet altogether. It said that fish populations would (totally) recover in about 50 years. I would be thinking it would be more like about 100 years. Longer for the whale population to recover as well. The whale recovery might even have to come first as their massive fecal quanities help the food-chain. With the lessening numbers the rest of the ecology suffers. (yeah, I'm a tree-hugger... haven't ya'll figgured that out yet??)
So it's discouraging to think of how many species will not ever see the light of day or by man because of the continual abuse of (one of) man's greatest natural resource(s).
Is that about right Exile? Or did you mean something else?

I understand. Until a baseline for comparison is established, its going to be hard to have serious scientific concern. I'm not sure if this census is number counting or more species counting. I'm guessing a bit of both.

Should we be doing better? Sure, I'll agree with that. Hard to stop some of it, especially when you feel like going out for some tasty seafood.

 

[exile]

LOL! I've actually seen pictures of it. It's quite fuzzy!
Should we be doing better? Sure, I'll agree with that. Hard to stop some of it, especially when you feel like going out for some tasty seafood.

I agree, I love nothing more in the realm of food than shellfish and genuine wild BC or Alaskan salmon and halibut (the latter fortunately in no danger, apparently). The real problem is habitat destruction---in British Columbia, logging has for many years rendered the hillsides that surround the spawning creeks vulnerable to surface erosion of the worst sort, and it only takes one bad mudslide to wipe out a salmon creek for a decade, if not a generation, or even permanently. And that (or the local analogue) been going on, all over the world, at exponentially increasing rates, in some places. The big deep ocean fish, like marlin, swordfish and tuna, are more and more suspect because of mercury contamination---very nasty stuff, that, especially for children.

Overfishing for consumption isn't totally out of the picture, but a lot of that isn't a matter of demand, but of fishing practice---the idea is, you basically scour the sea with these unbelievably huge nets---sometimes a quarter of a mile long, with depths in the biggest cases of between 50 and 100 feet---which catch and kill everything above a certain size, including protected species like dolphins---and put most of the salmon you catch into cans for export. I myself would rather pay top dollar for wild salmon caught by small trollers using nothing more destructive than hook-and-line technology, knowing that there'll be something left in the sea to reproduce and we'll still have fish fifty years from now. But the large purse seiners on the coast have been carryout a slashed-earth policy in the oceans for the past forty years or so...

Still, habitat destrution is the number one threat, there should be no mistake about that.

 

[MA-Caver]

Overfishing for consumption isn't totally out of the picture, but a lot of that isn't a matter of demand, but of fishing practice---the idea is, you basically scour the sea with these unbelievably huge nets---sometimes a quarter of a mile long, with depths in the biggest cases of between 50 and 100 feet---which catch and kill everything above a certain size, including protected species like dolphins---and put most of the salmon you catch into cans for export. I myself would rather pay top dollar for wild salmon caught by small trollers using nothing more destructive than hook-and-line technology, knowing that there'll be something left in the sea to reproduce and we'll still have fish fifty years from now. But the large purse seiners on the coast have been carryout a slashed-earth policy in the oceans for the past forty years or so...

Still, habitat destrution is the number one threat, there should be no mistake about that.

True, paying top dollar for specific methods of specific species of fish... but some folks can't pay top dollar... a LOT of folks can pay LOW dollar... so meet the demand and supply... the fastest way possible no matter how many non-edible species get caught in the nets as well.
So fresh dolphin carcasses can be sold (secretly) to the Japanese (who would consider them a delicacy) for top dollar and more money is made.
Eliminate greed and you eliminate a lot of problems that are killing this planet.

 

[exile]

Eliminate greed and you eliminate a lot of problems that are killing this planet.

Absolutely... but what a frail reed to hang one's hopes on for the survival of this poor old planet, eh?