Man Will 'Wipe Out' Rare Creatures of the Deep

[callady]

Man will 'wipe out' rare creatures of the deep

By Severin Carrell

Published: 16 October 2005

The deep ocean is one of the world's last great wildernesses. But not for long. Two kilometres below the surface, scores of rare and exotic species are being wiped out at a dramatic rate.

These unique species include the goblin shark which boasts a unicorn-like horn, prickly sharks with humped backs and glowing eyes, vast single-celled organisms as large as footballs and tripod fish that stand on their fins.

In a letter passed to The Independent on Sunday, Britain's leading marine scientists have warned these species face extinction because of the global growth in deep-sea trawlers fishing for edible species such as the orange roughy, hoki and round-nosed grenadier.

The damage is indiscriminate, they warned. The vast nets, which can reach down for 2km, pull up thousands of tonnes of fish each year, but most are thrown back into the sea, dead.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/article319997.ece

[Metta]

1. Cost of doing business, they'd say. nt.

[NIGHT TRIPPER]

2. no one understands how it affects THEM--basic high school science

???the school system hasn't emphasised an understanding of the food chain and how changes affect all species???

Why aren't children growing up with a firm understanding--and why aren't GLOBAL laws put into effect???

Guess we have to wait for DEVESTATION

[depakid]

4. Don't try to talk science (especially systems) with Americans

even on DU, it's profoundly unsatisfying.

Americans largely abandoned science over 2 decades ago, coincident with the cult of Ronald Reagan.

[ladjf]

7. Good post.

[depakid]

10. and unfortunately, all too true

Read some of the things people write with respect to the potential for another virulent influenza pandemic. Now, it's on thing to have difficulty grasping scope and scale (and there will always be a few "atmosphere control" or "earthquake weapons" types wherever you go)- and yet it's quite another to see people ignoring worldwide scientific consensus and responsible contingency planning.

That reflects a lifelong lack of exposure to basic science- to the extent that people discount credible conclusions based on vredible research in favor of short circuited reasoning based on suspicion and intrigue.

[shadowknows69]

11. I only graduated 19 years ago

and I loved all the sciences. Studied Jaques Cousteau like a fanatic from the time I was 5. Probably should have looked into that marine biologist career but went into to radio instead, go figure. Didn't diminish my appreciation of the natural world though. Kids have an instinctive fascination of nature and that should be nurtured on all levels. This is what breeds environmentalists.

[ladjf]

8. Too busy worrying about Friday's game and the party afterward.

The RW is trashing the public school system as fast as possible and the religious schools are not doing a good job of educating for the most part. (too busy pushing the religious agenda.)

[FloridaPat]

3. How did the human race get so stupid?

[okoboji]

5. one word

greed

[ladjf]

6. Rampant egotism. The human race vastly overrates it's own

intelligence. Leading philosophers, theologians, artist believe that the ultimate answers about existence lie withing the confines of the
"infinite human mind". Science is OK for mundane things like building machinery but for the serious thinking, it requires the introspection of the individual human mind.

For humans to be so self absorbed as to think they know the ultimate answers is more ridiculous than an ant crawling around in the galley of a 747 trying to determine where and why he is.

This thread has some outstanding posts.

[callady]

9. The Arrogance of Humanism

by Rutgers Biologist David Ehrenfeld is worthy of reading and passing along. It is remarkable.

Humanity is on the march, earth itself is left behind.  ~David Ehrenfeld, The Arrogance of Humanism, 1978

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=0195028902

And this article by Ehrenfeld is of interest:

The Coming Collapse of the Age of Technology
<http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik9901/article/990111a.html>
David Ehrenfeld



A little-noticed event of exceptional importance occurred on the 8th of May, 1998. The conservative, power-oriented champion of science, progress, and reason, Science magazine, published an article by the distinguished British scientist James Lovelock which said:
We have confidence in our science-based civilization and think it has tenure. In so doing, I think we fail to distinguish between the life-span of civilizations and that of our species. In fact, civilizations are ephemeral compared with species.

Can the Machine Stop?

Nearly everyone in our society, experts and lay people alike, assumes that the events and trends of the immediate future—the next five to twenty-five years—are going to be much like those of the present. We can do our business as usual. In the world at large, there will be a continued increase in global economic, social, and environmental management; a continued decrease in the importance of national and local governments compared with transnational corporations and trade organizations; more sophisticated processing, transfer, and storage of information; more computerized management systems along with generally decreased employment in most fields; increased corporate consolidation; and a resulting increase in the uniformity of products, lifestyles, and cultures. The future will be manifestly similar to today.

Power carries with it an air of assured permanence that no warnings of history or ecology can dispel. As John Ralston Saul has written, "Nothing seems more permanent than a long-established government about to lose power, nothing more invincible than a grand army on the morning of its annihilation." The present economic-technical-organizational structure of the industrial and most of the non-industrial world is the most powerful in history. Regardless of one's political orientation, it's very difficult to imagine any other system, centralized or decentralized, ever replacing it. Reinforcing this feeling is the fact that our technology-driven economic system has all the trappings of royalty and empire, without the emperor. It rolls on inexorably, a giant impersonal machine, devouring and processing the world, unstoppable.

http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~jstallin/complex/readings/Ehrenfeld.htm