In a Scrape: Seafloor Trawling Threatens Deep Ocean Species

Advances in bottom-trawling technology have given commercial fishing boats access to the sea floor where unknown species have been making a living for eons














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  1. 1. Wayne Williamson 04:47 PM 3/25/11

    As far as I can see(in other articles) the depth of deep sea trawling is at depths of less than 100 meters...why is the article talking about over a thousand meters...

    That being said, I agree with the rest of the article on the destruction of environment that occurs with this method of harvesting...how long will it take for them to become productive again....

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  2. 2. scientific earthling in reply to Wayne Williamson 09:01 PM 3/25/11

    Wayne: Forget about them becoming productive again...

    The use of the word productive, suggests you believe all life exists to aid and assist Homo sapiens. This is not so; we exist because of all the life that went before, most of the current base lifeforms can exist without us, but we can not exist without them. We even need the 10G bacteria and viruses that live in and on our bodies. Yes a small minority of them assist us attain our end.

    We are living in interesting times, the sixth extinction is rapidly accelerating to its ultimate end, when it is done most of the mega species will be gone, we are a mega species.

    Natural selection works in wondrous ways, we might even convince ourself the biosphere has some form of collective intelligence. The Gaia hypothesis is based on this assumption. I use the word Hypothesis because no one has established that this is so, people who refer to it as a theory are using the wrong scientific descriptor. A Theory in science is a proved fact, it explains the past history, current events and predicts successfully future outcomes. In loose everyday English it is often used to imply a postulate or hypothesis. All the idiots who come back at you, but it is only a theory are using the non scientific meaning of the word.

    Don't worry yourself too much about the loss of species as a result of human activity. In a few thousand years life will be abundant again, and new lifeforms will start occupying the space vacated by the mega lifeforms lost. Historic record indicates every extinction was followed by more advanced species replacing the ones lost. We can not be sure this will happen again, but that is immaterial. The fact that we have never encountered lifeforms more advanced than ourselves might hint at the possibility that when lifeforms advance on this path they inevitably exterminate themselves. No this is an hypothesis I am advancing, not a theory.

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In a Scrape: Seafloor Trawling Threatens Deep Ocean Species

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