UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture
Human Impact on the Oceans Focus of Feb. 12 Talk at UNH
By Sharon Keeler
UNH News Bureau
February 5, 2002
DURHAM, N.H. -- One of the nation's premier marine ecologists will speak at the University of New Hampshire Tuesday, Feb. 12, on how humans have influenced the oceans.
Jeremy Jackson, director of the geosciences research division and William and Mary B. Ritter Memorial Professor of Oceanography at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, will deliver his talk, "Unnatural Oceans," at 12:40 p.m. in the Strafford Room of the Memorial Union Building. It is free and open to the public.
Jackson's talk will focus on the domino effect of marine destruction, set in motion by the excessive harvesting of fish, marine mammals and other food species centuries ago, which has led to a worldwide crisis in coastal ecology.
In an article published in the journal Science last year, Jackson and other researchers describe the ecological extinctions of marine megafauna from overfishing at a global scale never before realized. The study includes vast populations of whales, manatees, dugongs, monk seals, sea turtles, swordfish, sharks, giant codfish, and rays.
Jackson will discuss how this revolutionary historical perspective is essential to current management because historic data provide a framework for remediation and restoration that is otherwise invisible.
Jackson's talk is sponsored by UNH's College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, College of Liberal Arts, Department of History, Department of Natural Resources, Natural Resources Policy Analysis Laboratory, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, Jackson Marine Laboratory, Office of Sustainability Programs, Farrington Fund, and the N.H. Sea Grant program.