Caribbean Life - Snorkeling the Reefs (cc)

I love snorkeling, and the sea life in all it's shapes and colors is amazing. It's also more threatened then previously reported....

Pollution and global warming are pushing the world's oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warn.

Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water "dead zones," toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks -- all are accellerating, they said on Monday in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world's top ocean experts.

Sponsored by the International Program on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.


These symptoms, moreover, could be the harbinger of wider disruptions in the interlocking web of biological and chemical interactions that scientists now call the Earth system.

All five mass extinctions of life on the planet, reaching back more than 500 million years, were preceded by many of the same conditions now afflicted the ocean environment, they said.

"The results are shocking," said Alex Rogers, an Oxford professor who heads IPSO and co-authored the report. "We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime."

That event, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, may be an ancient dress rehearsal for future climate change that could be even more abrupt and more damaging, some scientists fear.

"We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation," said Daniel Laffoley, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas, and co-author of the report.

"And we are also probably the last generation that has enough time to deal with the problems,"

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[bdecourcey]

Its true. I just snorkelled in the Bahamas. I was so upset as there were so little fish around the reefs. When i went ten years ago i didn't know where to look as there were so many fish of all sizes. This trip I had to seek them out. They were beautiful but it was obvious to me that they were dying. The reefs are struggling to survive.

[littleninja14532]

conners first quirst thench stencg