OCEAN TALK

[Brandon]

OCEAN TALK WHAT: Oceanographer Jeremy B. C. Jackson's discussion of "The Silent Ocean" WHEN: 7 p.m. Wednesday WHERE: University of South Alabama, Humanities building auditorium ADMISSION: Free MORE INFO: Call 460-7136

Tuesday, April 27, 2004
By BEN RAINES
Staff Reporter
The bounty in the world's oceans today offers a mere glimpse into the abundance and diversity of aquatic life present before people started fishing thousands of years ago, according to internationally acclaimed oceanographer Jeremy Jackson, who will speak Wednesday evening at the University of South Alabama.


From Our Advertiser




Jackson, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., is in the vanguard of an emerging interdisciplinary trend in the biological sciences that involves examining the past, both distant and recent, to understand the present.

Jackson has been the lead author on a number of critical scientific papers that have redefined the debate regarding the health of the oceans and man's impact upon them.

His work has drawn together scientists expert in diverse fields including anthropology, biodiversity, marine biology and paleoecology -- the study of ecological systems through the fossil record. Jackson's research sug gests the oceans were significantly impacted long before man began to study them. His lecture is entitled "The Silent Ocean."

"He is provocative, and that's one of the main reasons why people should see somebody like this speak," said Monty Graham, a jellyfish expert at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. "He's a provocative scientist, and not only to lay people, but to other scientists. Not everybody will agree with him, and not everybody agrees with him in the scientific world. That's important. I think people should see that, and see what it means to deal with some of these complicated issues such as overfishing."

One of the key concepts Jackson has advanced involves what he describes as "shifting baselines." He argues that most people, scientists included, have long based their understanding of the natural world on only the most recent observations available to them. This, he suggests, gives a false impression of the health of a natural community or of a specific species.

For instance, when examining the health of the mullet population in Mobile Bay, most would tend to compare today's mullet schools with estimates of the mullet schools present in the bay 20 or 50 years ago.

Jackson's work suggests that a more important comparison would involve stacking today's mullet population against the mullet populations from hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago.

Scientists could then see how the population looked before man began whittling away at it, year after year, and century after century.

"If you go out there and look at what is in the environment, you get a snapshot. You go time after time, you get these repeated snapshots and can see changes occurring over time, but it's really a limited time frame," said the Sea Lab's Graham. "Those snapshots become our references for what the world should be like.

"Here in the Gulf, people say, 'Oh, the snapper were twice as large 30 years ago, or there were twice as many 30 years ago.' But, that's almost misleading. We don't have a good concept of what things were like historically. Maybe there were a lot more snapper hundreds of years ago. His concept is that we need that longer historical perspective to understand how things have changed year to year or generation to generation."

Jackson's research suggests that man played a powerful role in the oceans -- even driving numerous spe cies to extinction -- beginning thousands of years ago. His work also indicates that overfishing is the most profound factor affecting the health of the oceans.

In an article in Science magazine in 2001, Jackson stated, "Ecological extinction caused by overfishing precedes all other pervasive human disturbances to coastal ecosystems, including pollution, degradation of water quality, and anthropogenic climate change. Historical abundances of large consumer species were fantastically large in comparison with recent observations."

His historical work has also shown that the impacts of overfishing may not begin to manifest themselves for decades or centuries, which may have important ramifications in the Gulf of Mexico, where the most intense fishing pressure has been exerted within the last 50 years.

Jackson's appearance was arranged as part of the 11th Annual Wiese Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of South Alabama.

Ref: http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/i ... 065930.xml

[Brandon]

Articles from Jackson:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/util ... d=11344287


http://taddeo.ingentaselect.com/vl=2824 ... 91/s4/p571
----or (if that doesnt work)-------
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/util ... =Marpg=571
(** WTF is a neogene? )