Ocean Sentry
On land, the pattern is a sadly familiar one: when an ecosystem is threatened, it is the large predators that usually suffer the greatest decline and therefore are most in need of protection. Logic would seem to dictate the same pattern should apply at sea, but new research has demonstrated the opposite. It”s the small fry at the low end of the marine food chain that may be more prone to population collapse.
In the last six decades, smaller species that are commercially fished have had up to twice as many stock collapses as fishes higher up the food chain, according to a study published on 2 May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
