One Ocean, Many Worlds of Life - Convention on Biological Diversity

Remarkably, no species <strong>of</strong> great whale has been exterminated by human
predation. The same cannot be said <strong>of</strong> other species. For example, the
great auk, a flightless seabird found on islands in the North Atlantic,
was hunted to extinction for its meat, eggs and downy feathers; the last
pair, found incubating an egg on an island <strong>of</strong>f Iceland, was killed on 3
July 1844, by Jón Brandsson and Sigurður Ísleifsson, who strangled the
adults, and Ketill Ketilsson, who smashed the egg with his boot. Steller’s
sea cow, a larger relative <strong>of</strong> dugongs and manatees, was first sighted in
1751; by 1768 it was extinct, a victim <strong>of</strong> its own “exceedingly savory”
meat and <strong>of</strong> blubber that, when melted, came “pretty close to the oil <strong>of</strong>
sweet almonds.” Before it was wiped out, sometime around 1860, the sea
mink was never even seen by scientists, who must infer how it looked
from bones and teeth. The Caribbean monk seal hung on for longer, but
eventually disappeared in the 1950s.
Great hammerhead shark
(Sphyrna mokarran)
Hawaiian monk seal
(Monachus schauinslandi)
flickr/wendellreed flickr/scruffydan
Today, the future for many other species looks equally bleak. The vaquita,
a porpoise found only in the Gulf <strong>of</strong> California, may number as few as 100
individuals. The southern bluefin tuna and elkhorn coral are critically endangered,
as are several species <strong>of</strong> sea turtles. Hammerhead, thresher and white
sharks have declined in the Northwest Atlantic by more than 75 percent in
15 years; in the Mediterranean Sea, sharks have declined 99.99 percent from
historical abundances in the early nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.
There may be just 1,110 Hawaiian monk seals remaining, and fewer than
half that many <strong>of</strong> its relative, the Mediterranean monk seal.
The reasons for declines in many numbers <strong>of</strong> marine species are varied,
poorly understood and <strong>of</strong>ten the result <strong>of</strong> a convergence <strong>of</strong> factors.
<strong>One</strong> <strong>Ocean</strong>, <strong>Many</strong> WOrlds Of life
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