Marine Life Facing Mass Extinction Report Says - A team of scientists has concluded after conducting a broad study that ocean life is about to suffer from unprecedented damage.
New York Times has learned that groundbreaking analysis on data from the broad study indicates that marine life is facing mass extinction.
"We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event," said Douglas J. McCauley, study author and ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Despite the alarming discovery the team of scientists made, McCauley quips that there is still time for humans to avert and mitigate further catastrophe.
He even insists that humans could thank the fact that the oceans are still mostly intact and capable of sustain a healthy ecological environment for marine life.
"We're lucky in many ways," said marine biologist at Rutgers University Malin L. Pinsky. "The impacts are accelerating, but they're not so bad we can't reverse them."
The significant damage being reported by the new study could mostly be accredited to man-made climate change, overfishing and water pollution, reports One Green Planet.
Based on the study, 15 different marine species have already gone extinct in the past 500 years and the list of marine animals that are threatened to become endangered species continues to increase.
The report claiming that marine life is facing mass extinction is backed by the finding that about 52 percent of the world's wildlife has already disappeared in the past 40 years alone.
"Stakes for seafloor mining claims are being pursued with gold-rush-like fervor, and 300-ton ocean mining machines and 750-foot fishing boats are now rolling off the assembly line to do this work," said Steve Palumbi, one of the co-authors of the paper.
The authors of the broad study are now calling for countries to limit industrialisation of the ocean as well as imposing ways that would help mitigate further damage to marine life, according to Tech Times.
"If by the end of the century we're not off the business-as-usual curve we are now, I honestly feel there's not much hope for normal ecosystems in the ocean. But in the meantime, we do have a chance to do what we can. We have a couple decades more than we thought we had, so let's please not waste it," Palumbi added.
The study reporting that marine life is facing mass extinction was published in the journal Science on Thursday.
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