Earlier today I wrote about a new report that shows that in the last fifty years humanity has wiped out 60% of the mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles who share this planet with us.
And I quoted scientists who said that the destruction of nature is as dangerous as climate change.
So I thought I'd share this story where both climate change and the destruction of biodiversity are both combining to devastate coastal waters.
By triggering an invasion of the so called ocean cockroaches.
Five years ago, assigning wickedness to the purple urchin, a shellfish the size of a plum with quarter-inch spikes, would have been absurd.
That was before the urchins mowed down Northern California’s kelp forests.
First humans reduced the numbers of sea otters who feed on the purple urchins, then climate change is believed to have killed off another urchin predator, the massive sunflower starfish.
Then a blob of warm water reduced the process of upwelling that brings up nutrients from the depths to fertilize the kelp fields.
When the kelp started to die, so did the edible abalone snails who depend on it for food and the larger red urchins.
And the worst could be still to come.
Locals worry that rockfish — like sculpin, rock cod and red snapper — may be next. They spawn in the kelp forest. Worldwide, 100 species of rockfish rely on kelp, said Rebecca Johnson, who leads the California Academy of Sciences Citizen Science program.
The good news is that a new generation is taking over, and I believe it will be able to rebuild the world on a new foundation.
Before we are reduced to seeing the natural wonders we once took for granted, through the eye of a time machine.
There is at least one place in Northern California where visitors can still see what the bull kelp forests used to look like. The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco has a 100,000-gallon saltwater tank, designed to mirror the Northern California coast, where you can see abalone, urchins both purple and red, sunflower starfish and bull kelp bobbing near the surface.
It is beautiful, but it feels like a time machine.
There is at least one place in Northern California where visitors can still see what the bull kelp forests used to look like. The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco has a 100,000-gallon saltwater tank, designed to mirror the Northern California coast, where you can see abalone, urchins both purple and red, sunflower starfish and bull kelp bobbing near the surface.
ReplyDeleteIt is beautiful, but it feels like a time machine.
Wow, Joni Mitchell's classic really has come true:
They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum.
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see 'em.
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone...
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Sounds to me like we're the cockroaches. :(
Hi Jackie...yes, Joni Mitchell’s classic does resonate even more than it always did. I have a giant Ripley’s acquarium in my neighbourhood right next to the CN tower, and the other day some loud obnoxious guy jumped naked into the shark tank. Fortunately or not, the sharks took one look at him and decided they weren’t hungry. But now I can’t stop dreaming about Trump flailing around in that tank, and what a fitting ending that would be. The let’s make a deal shark consumed by his own kind...
DeleteSystems under stress tend to become more variable and less predictable, the environment is no exception. More complex higher order life forms that require some short term stability for existence are the first to go and will be replaced by simpler and potentially more lethal life forms. Humans have been blessed with the ability to record the past and use it to project into and to some extent modify the future to our benefit. Materialistic Cons with their divine intervention spiritual mythology ignore the obvious at everyone's peril.
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Hi RT...I hope you’re right. I can’t believe how easily Cons are able to ignore scientific evidence. It’s like they consider it just alternative theology, with all those caterwauling Cons able to reject it, and apparently have no remorse about what kind of world they are condemning their children to live in. When the dam bursts they are going to need a new kind of getaway Noah’s Ark with two powerful outboard motors...
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