Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says

A dead whale in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 2011. As container ships multiply, more whales are being harmed, a study said. CreditMarco De Swart/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean

nytimes.com - by Carl Zimmer - January 15, 2015

A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them.

“We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,” said Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an author of the new research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

But there is still time to avert catastrophe, Dr. McCauley and his colleagues also found.

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