Open oceans being sought to save variety of
species
By Craig Welch, staff reporter
© Seattle Times
When Yellowstone National Park was created in
1872, Congress ordered it protected "from
injury or spoliation of all timber, mineral deposits,
natural curiosities or wonders within said park,
and their retention in their natural conditions."
That decision is hailed as a good part of the
reason the United States still has bison, grizzly
bears and a place with habitat rich enough to
support reintroduction of gray wolves in the mid-1990s.
Scientists learning more about the loss of ocean
predators such as marlin, cod and sharks to fishing
are turning to national parks as a model in calling
for vast, open-ocean preserves.
Today, scientists at the American Association
for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle
will unveil advances in technology that are allowing
them to track the movement of sea creatures.
That, in turn, is providing greater evidence
of the important open-ocean places the world's
largest predators use to feed and breed — places
that, if protected, could help such creatures
thrive.
As fisheries around the world collapse, those
who catch them for human consumption have moved
into deeper and deeper waters, where top predators
increasingly are caught, accidentally, in the
same nets. A recent study estimated that, globally,
the number of such predators has plummeted 90
percent in the past 50 years.
"The ocean is not homogenous," said
Elliott Norse, president of the Marine Conservation
Biology Institute in Redmond. "Tuna, billfish,
sea turtles ... they all move along highways in
the sea. They travel long distances, and then
they'll hit a patch and go back and forth and
back and forth to feed."
Two scientists from Duke University, Andy
Read and Larry Crowder,
have been mapping the travel of marine mammals,
seabirds and sea turtles to find these locations.
The areas are often hundreds or thousands of
miles from land, tending to center in upwellings,
where nutrient-rich waters from the bottom move
toward the surface, or along edges, such as the
gulf stream off the eastern coast of the North
America.
Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com
Media Contact: Tim Lucas at 919-613-8084 or
tdlucas@duke.edu |
