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Gazette Day reports:
In the year 2016, there was a heatwave that affected many parts of the world. The extreme temperatures were especially felt in and around the continent of Australia. As a result of the heatwave, the waters around the Great Barrier Reef warmed considerably. Scientists were worried that with the oceans already warming due to global climate change, the additional heat stress might cause considerable damage to the Great Barrier Reef.
After the heatwave subsided, a team of scientists conducted tests to find out how the heatwave damaged the reef. Extensive aerial surveys were conducted. These surveys concluded that a great deal of the reef had bleaching that had killed off many parts of the reef. [...] The surveys found that 90 percent of the corals in the reef suffered at least some type of bleaching. The worst damage was on the northernmost third of the reef. In this section, much of the damage was caused by the initial rise in temperature.
The other damage occurred later. The coral reefs depend on a symbiotic relationship with a certain type of algae. Over the course of a few months after the heating event, the algae separated from the reef causing additional reef death.
During the heating event in 2016, one-third of the coral reefs in the world were bleached and damaged in some way. The reefs do have the ability to come back from this [heat-induced damage] as long as the damaging events are not too frequent.
Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0041-2) (DX)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 25 2018, @04:00PM (1 child)
I looked into farmed cod fish because it seems obvious and a good investment opportunity.
Its shockingly high tech; some animals are not suited to livestock lifestyle for various biological reasons; we don't eat Panda merely because they're momentarily rare; if we could turn them into livestock (which we can't, they really hard to breed) they wouldn't be rare for long and soon we'd be eating panda burgers at McDonalds. But pandas are not very useful as livestock as a species.
I seem to recall cod was only domesticated into livestock in aquaculture laboratories in the 80s... 1980s. Its pretty high tech and very start-uppy and new. I would imagine you could buy farmed cod today at whole foods for maybe $50/pound or some stunt like that. Its not going to be in McDonalds Filet-o-probably-fish anytime soon. Maybe someday.
Someday, farmed cod, maybe. Till then, for all practical purposes, no Atlantic cod anymore, at least not at the insane scale of 20th century harvests.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26 2018, @06:31PM
Currently commercial fishing is like a group of hunters damaging a forest just to catch the wild pigs in it while discarding the chickens and other animals killed in the process (because they're only there for pigs).
Then another bunch damages the forest again to catch the chickens and discards the wild pigs and other animals killed in the process (because they're only there for chickens).
Commercial fishing makes the beef industry look good in comparison. It's terribly unsustainable.
The problem with most current fish farming (not all) is it depends on commercial fishing. That said since farmed fish tend to be less fussy than humans on the sort of fish they eat, there might be less bycatch that way.