Marine wild life about to collapse in 100 years: Study

Washington, Jan 19: The collapse of wildlife on land due to human activity is about to recur in the sea in the next 100 years, a consortium of scientists has found. According to the researchers, wildlife in the oceans is still as healthy as it was on the land hundreds of thousands of years ago. However, that may be about to change as the next 100 years promise to present major challenges to marine life. "A lot has changed in the last 200 years. Our tackle box has industrialised," said lead author Douglas McCauley, professor at University of California - Santa Barbara. There are factory farms in the sea and cattle-ranch-style feed lots for tuna. Shrimp farms are eating up mangroves with an appetite akin to that of terrestrial farming which consumed native prairies and forests. "Stakes for seafloor mining claims are being pursued with gold-rush-like fervour and 300-ton ocean mining machines and 750-foot fishing boats are now rolling off the assembly line to do this work," explained co-author Steve Palumbi from Stanford University. According to the authors, increasing industrial use of the oceans and the globalisation of ocean exploitation threaten to damage the health of marine wildlife, making the situation in the oceans as grim as that on land.