Seasonal tourists are flocking to California, and they’re coming for the food, especially the seafood. While that may not be news to many, it is when you consider that these tourists are big ocean predators like sharks and seals and tortoises. Yes, tortoises. Even they have to eat, and they happen to like fish.
The study of marine predators along the California coast was part of a larger Census of Marine Life that ended last year. While countless species have been studied individually, this was one of the first times that multiple species were studied simultaneously to better understand the region as a distinct ecosystem.
What researchers discovered was that the California Current ecosystem supports such a diverse array of marine life that it could be compared to Africa’s Serengeti Plain. But like the Serengeti, human impact is being felt in ways that scientists have not realized before. A separate report released on Tuesday by a group of international scientists found that overfishing, climate change and pollution could harm the potential of marine life to support human populations, and that some ecosystems, such as corals, could go extinct within a generation.
The message of both reports is that we must pour the same effort into saving the whale and the tuna that we have into saving the rhino and the elephant. Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel and San Francisco Chronicle.
