ExtinctMammals

Extinct Marine Mammals

Effects

On Humans

• Overexploitation seems to be the main issue – loss of fish from overfishing and poor practices can destroy ways of life, jobs, industries, etc.

• Marine mammals are often caught as bycatch

• Unregulated harvest

• new and innovative solutions to this problem are required to take account of the socioeconomic conditions experienced by fishermen” (Merritt)

• Issue of regulation versus deregulation – looking at pros and cons of regulation seeing as it costs a lot, but is significant in saving a species

o Regulation = politically unpopular (Merritt)

• Poverty and the collapse of other industries can lead to abrupt changes in local fishing conditions – may start to prey on marine mammals once their value as food and bait is noticed

o Unregulated and unsustainable (Merritt)

o Peruvian dolphins; anchovy fisheries collapsed so people started hunting dolphins; led to depletion in population (Merritt)

On Ecosystems

• World’s fisheries are not only impacting marine mammals, but the trophic structure as well – by capturing huge amounts of fish they are causing changes in energy pathways and species numbers (Merritt)

o Affect marine mammals adversely

• Loss of biodiversity/ decline in mammals can cause population imbalances in other species (Munday)

Connection to Coral Reefs

• Lots of extinctions/endangerment is caused by loss of habitats – coral reefs have declined 40 percent world wide (Zimmer)

o Partly a result of global warming (Zimmer)

• Loss of coral due to bleaching/global warming have changed the structure of coral reef ecosystems and communities – lead to changes in the fish communities, which lead to more changes through the trophic levels (Munday)

• Direct relationship between abundance of coral and abundance of coral dwelling fish (Munday)