Those of you concerned about the future of sea birds and other marine organisms
might have noticed that concerns have recently been raised about the impact of
modern trawling practices - in particular, the ecological devastation of the sea
floor [statements eminating from both the American Academy of Science and the
Royal Society]
For many of us, out of sight is out of mind, but the following item in The Times
paints a very bleak future. I can't provide a direct link, but if you go to
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/ over the next few days and do a search for "coral
reefs" you should come up with the following ...
The Times Online
February 26, 2002
Environment
A graveyard at the bottom of the sea
by Magnus Linklater
After decades of severe overfishing, new deep-sea trawling techniques threaten
to wipe out the world's last wilderness and we may be too late to stop it ...
(The main thrust of the lengthy article is that the sea-bed is being
clear-felled, with entire habitats entirely wiped out. Half the catch is
discarded [it all dies anyway] and a lot of little known biodiversity is being
eliminated at a very high rate of knots.)
Regards, Laurie.
.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
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