Friday, April 01, 2005

How's your herring?

Herring are little silvery fish which are a major food source for fish and marine mammals. (Humans like me sometimes eat them, too.) Their precipitous decline in the Puget Sound area in Washington state has scientists worried. The decline was from an estimated 10,000 tons in 1994 to just 808 tons in 2000. What could be causing the decline? The scientists want to know.

A sudden drop in the population of any species is a serious warning sign of stress in an ecosystem. These kinds of drops are being recorded regularly for all types of species, plant and animal, around the world. Will we listen to the message those declines are trying to tell us?

UPDATE: Today must be sardonic mood day. All my posts include actual parodies or self-parodies. Peak Energy picked on this news and does a nice job of skewering the Bush administration in his parody of the story.

(Comments are open to all. See the list of environmental blogs on my sidebar.)

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