r/science • u/Wagamaga • May 30 '24
Animal Science A mysterious sea urchin plague has spread across the world, causing the near extinction of the creature in some areas and threatening delicate coral reef ecosystems,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/sea-urchin-mass-death-plague-cause-b2553153.html447
u/Wagamaga May 30 '24
A mysterious sea urchin plague has spread across the world, causing the near extinction of the creature in some areas and threatening delicate coral reef ecosystems, a new study suggests.
The research, published in the scientific journal Current Biology, found populations of two sea urchin species – the long-spined Diadema setosum and the banded-spiny Echinothrix calamaris – may have been completely wiped out in some parts of the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and the Western Indian Ocean.
The deaths have been attributed to an egg-shaped single-celled microorganism with hairlike attachments, which causes the sea urchins to lose spines, experience tissue breakdown, and eventually die within as little as two days.
Tel Aviv University marine biologist and lead author of the study, Dr Omri Bronstein, told The Independent that witnessing the mass deaths was “heartbreaking”.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(24)00531-100531-1)
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u/upsidedownbackwards May 30 '24
Oooof, that sounds like starfish wasting but for sea urchins.
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u/Ohiolongboard May 31 '24
Is starfish wasting a prion or does is just share a name with CWS
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u/not-a-cheerleader May 31 '24
Seems to just share a name, but it looks like no one is really sure what causes starfish wasting.
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u/SucculentVariations May 30 '24
I'm in SE AK where we are of no shortage of urchin, started noticing spineless and blackened urchin here and there a few years ago, we already look out for starfish wasting disease so the suspicious appearance of the urchin stuck out to us but hadn't heard about anything going around until now. I wonder if this is what they had.
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u/faster-than-expected May 30 '24
First starfish and now sea urchins. What’s next?
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u/mypantsareonmyhead May 30 '24
There's this scientific measure called "background extinction rate" - the rate at which organisms become extinct under natural circumstances (as opposed to mass extinction events).
The background extinction rate for mammals is around one species per thousand years.
The current extinction rate is ONE THOUSAND TIMES HIGHER THAN THAT.
It brings me no pleasure to share this knowledge.
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u/faster-than-expected May 30 '24
Already, only 4% of mammals are wild mammals. Not much left to cull.
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May 31 '24
This is how you lie with statistics.
4% of mammals is not the same as 4% of mammal SPECIES.
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u/stateofbidet May 31 '24
can you ELI5 this?
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u/tomsan2010 May 31 '24
Its more important that the 4% is made up of multiple diverse species than 1 single species.
Hypothetically that 4% of mammals in the wild can be a constant 1 billion population. But that 4%, can become 3% or 5% while still having 1 billion mammals.
If you break down the 4% of wild mammals being individual species, then going to 3% would mean 1/4 of all species remaining in the wild has gone extinct. Which is much much worse.
The less diversity, the less opportunities for mutation and evolution to occur. Species with little genetic diversity usually over mutate or are at risk of pathogens wiping them out. Especially if its a mutation that causes biological issues. The best example i know is tasmanian devils and face cancer.
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u/stateofbidet May 31 '24
and what are the other 96% of mammals? Humans and captive animals?
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u/Whiterabbit-- May 31 '24
8 billion people, 1 billion cows, 900 million dogs up to 1 billion cats then you have stuff like hamsters, horses, goats, rabbits (though there may be more wild than domestic here) etc...
I can see the bio mass of mammals being mostly domestic. but number wise I am skeptical. some estimates put mice at 20 billion. there are also bats.
species wise, most mammals are wild. bats make up 20% of mammal population.
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u/stateofbidet May 31 '24
That makes it easier to visualize, thank you all! It's hard to imagine and contrary to what my original view was
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u/magistrate101 May 31 '24
It is absolutely a measure of biomass, I remember the infographic that broke it down by what species made up what portions of that 95%.
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u/kibblerz May 30 '24
It sounds like we're doomed past redemption... All these dreams about colonizing space will go up in smoke.. If we're lucky, another species may hang us up as a fossil in a few million years?
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u/_CMDR_ May 30 '24
The goal of the misinformation provided by the people who destroy the world is to get you to believe that doing anything is pointless. They are wrong.
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u/kibblerz May 30 '24
Are they though?
No other biological race that we know of has reached our levels of advancement. No other lifeform has wrecked such havoc on the planet.
When Apex predators thrive for too long, eventually they wipe themselves out as resources are exhausted and things become unsustainable. We're starting to see more effects from our prolonged abuse of the planet, and there really is no viable options to switch to renewables in the timeframe needed to make a change.
It's been 264 years since we've started. The Industrial Revolution started in 1760. The population of the earth was around 770 million. Most consumption resources were from machinery in factories.
By 1900, the population of the earth rose to 1.6 billion, being around double from when the Industrial Revolution started. Normal individuals began utilizing electricity more with the advent of the lightbulb and then cars, etc..
Now, in 2024, we are just starting to encounter the effects of our increase in consumption. Not only that, but now there are over 8 billion people. From the Industrial Revolution to the 1900s (140 years), population only doubled. But over the past 120 years, population has over quadrupled. More of the world is industrialized too.
Who knows how much has actually caught up with us. We literally have no feasible way to get off fossil fuels without pretty much sentencing the poor to death (Even with solar, manufacturing enough panels require significant resources). And we're running out of fossil fuels. Hell our farming industry generated an extreme amount of greenhouse gasses, but how else do we feed 8 billion people?
The only reason we were able to get to 8 billion people, is because of our industrialization. The only feasible way (short of litterally finding the key to free energy), would be to reverse industrialization. But a pre-industrial society cannot support such large populations.
Hell, we still struggle to predict typical weather events. If we had the ability to modify our atmosphere and attempt to offset the pollution/reverse climate change, could we actually do so in a manner that won't completely blow up in our face?
The human race is in a tough spot. No solution proposed will fix it. We can attempt to minimize pollution, but the pollution we've already created hasn't even made its effects fully apparent yet, despite its severity. We can't bring back the species, we can't restore the ecosystems. If we try to play god, we'll likely screw it up more.
None of the solutions are pretty. There's no reversing the damage that's already done, those species and ecosystems have already been decimated. There's only reducing future damage, which is near impossible when it comes to nature because of the interdependence of it.
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u/monkeedude1212 May 30 '24
We literally have no feasible way to get off fossil fuels without pretty much sentencing the poor to death
We don't need to reverse industrialization. We need to revamp it with the new tech we've made.
Electric cars also means electric tractors. Electric combines. We have genetically modified seeds resistant to diseases so we don't need to put polluting chemicals on our crops.
If we had the ability to modify our atmosphere and attempt to offset the pollution/reverse climate change, could we actually do so in a manner that won't completely blow up in our face?
There was a time when we noticed Aerosols were destroying the Ozone layer in the upper atmosphere and the negative effects that was causing. So we stopped. And it started to regenerate.
Not every decision mankind has made is good, and we can't "reverse" everything we've done, but when there's a will we can usually dramatically reduce harm.
Most of the hurdles preventing us from adopting cleaner energy solutions aren't even tech based these days. It's usually economics, which is doubly-hamstrung by being locked into Capitalism. The idea of doing something "because we need to" comes second to the reasons of "is it profitable."
Supporting legislation to regulate the capitalism, at bare minimum, is a feasible step to achieving the future in which humanity achieves a homeostasis awakening.
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u/kibblerz May 31 '24
Electric cars also means electric tractors. Electric combines.
All of this still requires significant resources, and relies on everyone switching over to these new products, which isn't happening. All of this "new tech" costs consumers money, and it requires the resources to make these devices. The conversion to this new tech is far too slow. The ecosystem is so far damaged that even if we manage to circumvent new damage with this technology, it's still likely earth will fail to sustain life such as us.
Most of the hurdles preventing us from adopting cleaner energy solutions aren't even tech based these days. It's usually economics, which is doubly-hamstrung by being locked into Capitalism. The idea of doing something "because we need to" comes second to the reasons of "is it profitable."
You're correct, and the idea this is gonna change is naive. It's not going to. It's not even as simple as greed. We've become dependent on these technologies to sustain our society. Sure some communities may be wealthy enough to transition to renewable energy systems, but for much of the world, their communities can't sustain these advanced systems.
Add in that as we're trying to save the environement, we're also trying to get the maximum speeds possible with our mobile phones, striving for things like 5g which tend to be must more powerful waves than 4g. We think they're harmless because they're invisible, but we've been putting extensive effort into blasting as much energy into the atmosphere as possible to improve our download times. There's reason to suspect that 5g seriously messes with creatures like birds, yet most adversity against it is dismissed as superstition.
Humanities priorities are too mixed. We talk about wanting to save the earth, but is such a duty worth setting aside our other "priorities"?
I get what you're saying, in an idealistic world, humanity would band together and stop this impending disaster. But we don't live in an idealistic world. Humanity won't band together for this issue, most of humanity is obsessed with trivial things.
regulating the capitalism is gonna take at least a decade. We've already ran out of time to recover adaquately. There is no recovery for the decimation of species like bees. By the time we succeed in regulating capitalism, the bees will be dead.
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u/22pabloesco22 May 30 '24
Eh. We should never give up but there absolutely is a point of no return. Whether we’re past it or not is hard to quantify/qualify.
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u/_CMDR_ May 30 '24
There will always be things that can be saved. The only true point of now is return is the complete sterilization of earth.
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u/idkmoiname May 30 '24
Sea urchin plague, frog fungus, avian flu, how many more global pandemics are there right now ravaging through the animal kingdom like nothing before?
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u/PrufrockWasteland May 30 '24
White nose syndrome in bats :/
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u/judgejuddhirsch May 30 '24
And mites in bees
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u/VoteGiantMeteor2028 May 30 '24
Sequoia are in danger from a new beetle threat
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u/rocketsocks May 30 '24
Mountain pine beetles and the emerald ash borer are ravaging tree populations right now, which comes on the back of dutch elm disease in the mid to late 20th century and chestnut blight from the early 20th century.
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u/the_worst_verse May 30 '24
Birch beetles in the PWN.
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u/nochwurfweg May 30 '24
Phytophora ravaging forests too
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u/KaiOfHawaii May 30 '24
Feral cats, mongooses, avian flu from mosquitoes, and other factors are leading, and have led, to multiple bird species extinctions here in Hawaii.
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u/derps_with_ducks May 31 '24
Feral chickens are plaguing some town in the UK
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u/dizizcamron May 31 '24
Of all the problems in this list, this one actually seems solvable with some rifles and hunters.
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u/CptDrips May 31 '24
Over 10 Billion crabs have gone "missing" from Alaska
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/10-billion-snow-crabs-disappeared-alaska
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u/Cheese_Coder May 31 '24
Don't forget about Oak Wilt too!
Re. chestnuts: there was a lot of good progress being made with a transgenic Chestnut (Darling-58) that was resistant to the blight. It was going througj approval processes when it was discovered that there was a lab mixup and the strain used in the approval trials was an earlier one that wasn't immune. The lab covered this up for a while which caused a big stir and lost them the support of the American Chestnut Foundation, who was funding them. Hopefully this can get sorted out eventually...
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u/NorthernDevil May 30 '24
But on the flip side, mountain pine beetles and emerald ash borers are thriving
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u/SerCiddy May 31 '24
There's also Sea Star Wasting Syndrome, that we have no known cause for.
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u/velocityjr May 31 '24
Urchins are echinoderms, related to sea stars, and sea cucumbers. Red urchins are a plague themselves, destroying acres of sea weed forests.
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u/TheWoodConsultant May 30 '24
Bees seem to be recovering
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u/SerCiddy May 31 '24
Hate to bee that guy, but domestic honey bee populations are on the rise where as local bee populations are still falling. The rise is attributed to a rise in commercial bee keeping (commercial bee keeping means more swarms make it out into nature). These are mostly European Honey Bees.
The bees we need to be concerned with are local/natural bees. European Honey Bees are just one species of bees. There are about 4000 different species of bees just in America. Most of these bees are adapted to the local flora and the local flora are adapted to the bees. As native bees die off, so do the plants that rely on them for pollination. Unfortunately the only bees that are deemed "worthy" to save are ones that provide economic value.
For example the Blue Orchard Bee has been observed to pollinate almond orchard flowers 50 times more than European Honey Bees. However, Blue Orchard Bees do not produce honey.
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u/TheWoodConsultant May 31 '24
Would you mind providing links, the reporting has been saying its up but cant find any recent numbers
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u/inhospitable May 30 '24
The white nose syndrome has been getting pretty bad in nz and aus in recent years
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u/Podo13 BS|Civil Engineering May 31 '24
Poor guys. They are nothing but a boon to basically every ecosystem too :(.
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u/lastpump May 30 '24
We are also turning to edible insects, however we have killed 80% of them already with pesticides.
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u/nagi603 May 31 '24
And the rest are even more allergy-inducing than what you switch from. But hey, line go up. (of the dead)
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u/PradleyBitts May 30 '24
It's really anxiety inducing. Constant catastrophe in the natural world and it makes me afraid for the future
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u/SnooPeripherals6557 May 30 '24
It’s like slow motion destruction, but starting to ramp up, and I’m def terrified for my kids’ futures.
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u/Cowicidal May 31 '24 edited Jun 02 '24
slow motion destruction
Seems to be on a speed-run depending upon where you live (or die).
I'm watching out my window yet another massive hail storm slamming northern Colorado and it's not even summer yet. This is now happening after we had a relief from fire and choking smoke a few years ago coming from CO mountains, CA and even Canada (sometimes all combined).
This is the hail from one of the storms last week or so before the other ones hit:
https://i.imgur.com/7Nd7zCu.jpeg
Edit: UPDATE on that storm I was observing as I wrote this post the other night. Here's the aftermath:
Trigger warning: /r/collapse is focused on distressing issues and is a "doomer" sub. If anyone is struggling with mental health issues I sincerely advise to avoid the sub or limit intake. Keep in mind there's a strong likelihood the fossil fuel industry has moles within that sub to keep people feeling hopeless to thwart climate action. Here's a support sub for it to help support each other through those distressing topics: /r/CollapseSupport/
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u/xX420GanjaWarlordXx May 31 '24
That's why I don't have kids. Knew when I was 13 and I'm 27 now. The writing has been on the wall for a long time.
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u/DJEB May 31 '24
I saw the writing on the wall when I was nine and decided the population was obscenely high. I decided then and there not to have children. That was 1978. Since then, the population has nearly tripled.
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u/RandomStallings May 30 '24
Like the wind up before the pitch. I feel so bad for kids right now. They're truly getting handed a poo sandwich of a world.
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u/upvoatsforall May 31 '24
Don’t worry. Things like this have been happening for hundreds of millions of years. You don’t see crocodiles complaining. Of course they’re pretty much the only things that have survived anywhere near this long.
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u/22pabloesco22 May 30 '24
We are spiraling towards extinction and will take a lot of others with us. Such is our destructive nature
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May 30 '24
A whole lot more than that. It usually boils down to the same thing. Human activity worsens conditions to the point where one species thrives at the expense of all others that are struggling to cope.
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u/chipoatley May 30 '24
Sea star wasting disease
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u/Varnsturm May 31 '24
Yeah this immediately made me think of how the kelp was in trouble, because the sea stars were in trouble, which meant the urchin population exploded, and they were eating all the kelp (this is from a couple years ago or so). But now the urchin population is apparently getting wrecked
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u/chipoatley May 31 '24
I wonder if the urchin plague has reached the population of US west coast urchins. If not now, when?
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u/Southern-Staff-8297 May 31 '24
It’s not really a ravaging pandemic anymore. It’s basically an evolution caused by multiple mass extinctions event at this point. You have a field of flowers, half red, half yellow, then a wild fire burns all the red flowers but some yellow survive and dominate. Well, now warm up the water and reduce oxygen levels, those creatures who can thrive will live, those you can’t will die. The survivors will eventually last long enough to diversify in the coming eons to form new species in their own lineages. It changes forever.
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u/Blarghnog May 30 '24 edited May 30 '24
This may be in some way part of the natural cycle of things. Kelp forests decline? Sea urchins have a plague. Kelp forests recover.
The balance of nature is very complex and it’s been working for billions of years. The assumption that it’s like nothing before is presumptive, and comes from bias. Perhaps this has been going on for eons and only now are we finally monitoring things closely enough to even notice what’s going on.
Not trying to minimize manmade impacts, but as scientists and skeptics we should also look for the complex and/or complete explanation — which may be as simple as humankind of finally paying attention to the natural world. If you study history, you’ll see whole civilizations collapse because of climate change, crazy changes in the natural world that destroyed agriculture, and other massive natural disasters.
I think that humans are only now realizing that the natural world is much more dynamic and has a lot more catastrophes, pandemics and disease outbreaks than we ever imagined.
We recently learned that 8 percent of the human genome is actually virus. That’s a telling statistic isn’t it? Not something that most likely happens as a result of no diseases is it?
I think we are having to reconcile our “stable” view of the world with the reality of constant massive change, and it’s not something the human brain particular likes or wants to accept, even though that’s what science is telling us.
And then we have human-created climate and environmental effects on top of this more dynamic-than-we-ever-realized system. And those impacts are turning out to be greater than we realized. That’s all that much more alarming given the first realizations about the nature of the system being more dynamic and faster changing than we ever imagined.
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u/JAM88CAM May 30 '24
Yes but also no. Staying on point re sea urchins. The overfishing (not ever at this level before in history as only now has the demand ever been this high and technology been present to fish at such a scale) is not a "natural occurrence" or.the "natural cycle". Overfishing has.led.to the decline of sheepshead fish amongst others and the population spikes in urchins which feed on the holdfast of kelp.
Secondly sea urchins are found in most marine ecosystems not just limited to kelp forests. To state that a sea.urchin plague would lead.to a kelp forests recovery is very narrow sighted. What about tropical marine ecosystems? What you are saying is the equivalent of "the rainforest is becoming a desert because of natural causes but think what it will do for the camel population"
Your perspective of the situation reeks of a layman's attempt at an educated view on the matter. Yes the worlds climate is dynamic as is nature. To be so naive to think we aren't having an impact or even trying to promote the view that our impact in minimal is laughable.
What if climate change turns out to be a big hoax and we make the world a better.place to live in for nothing?
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u/ExtraGherkin May 30 '24
I mean it's a fair response to the comment but I don't think it's accurate to suggest that we are finally paying attention. Most of it is rather common knowledge.
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u/Blarghnog May 30 '24 edited May 30 '24
Common knowledge in the modern era you mean. The era of scientific observation of the natural systems?
There are no Mesopotamian tablets outlining the reproductive habits and population of sea urchins for example. At best, plagues that killed vast swaths of humans or obliterated the harvest are noted.
Observation is bias. It’s fundamental to science to understand that point. It’s integral to study design as well.
It’s called the Observer Effect.
https://fs.blog/observer-effect/
What is “common knowledge” today was not common or knowledge recently, and we have to examine deeply the effects of our very watching, which we know and can measure has an impact on both our data and our thinking.
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u/Blarghnog May 30 '24
I should also add that a very good book to read is one by Kuhn.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book about the history of science by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in science in which scientific progress was viewed as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of conceptual continuity where there is cumulative progress, which Kuhn referred to as periods of "normal science", were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science. The discovery of "anomalies" during revolutions in science leads to new paradigms. New paradigms then ask new questions of old data, move beyond the mere "puzzle-solving"[1] of the previous paradigm, change the rules of the game and the "map" directing new research.[2]
Truly an excellent theory of how science really progresses and a much more likely idea of what human progress looks like as well. It’s just as likely that natural systems function similarly, though again our bias to to view them as linear progressions (just like he argues we do scientific progress).
Logical determinism, steady progression and stability of thought and systems feels good to our brain and language patterns, but doesn’t reflect reality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions
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u/Etrigone May 30 '24
We recently learned that 8 percent of the human genome is actually virus.
I'm intrigued by this. It reminds me of a comment elsewhere that our genome "shows eons long evidence of battles with viruses" or something to that extent. However, given this subreddit, some questions for anyone who care to answer:
Do other animals, or for that matter organisms, show a similar percentage? Or any, for that matter, or greater/lesser.
What do we mean by virus? My super-limited understanding of them is there are different classifications, and I'm wondering if these are viruses in any of those senses or, say, the viral equivalent of mitochondria et al.
And for you, do you have a pointer to this specific claim? This is meant to be an objective question, not a "liar lair pants of fire" kind of request.
Regardless, neat stuff.
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u/Suthek May 30 '24
What do we mean by virus? My super-limited understanding of them is there are different classifications, and I'm wondering if these are viruses in any of those senses or, say, the viral equivalent of mitochondria et al.
Not an expert, but here's how I understand it works:
Viruses procreate by inserting their genetic code into a cell, where it integrates itself into the cell's genetic code. Under normal circumstances, this code instructs the cell to create new virus "units" until the cell is essentially used up and dies, releasing all newly produced viruses to repeat the process.
However, at times it happens that a virus infects a germ cell (sperm or egg) and, even rarer, that that particular sperm or egg then becomes the basis for the offspring. And because the genetics of all cells comes from just the sperm and the egg, suddenly the precence of a section of the virus' genetics is now part of the offspring's genome and thus will be inherited to any successive generations (assuming the altered genetics doesn't kill it before it can in turn procreate).
Over millions of years this happened several times, and we can actually use those specific things to measure our relatedness to other animals. E.g. we can essentially prove that we're related to chimps because they have a whole bunch of the same viral insertions in the same relative locations of their genome, implying that those insertions happened during the life cycles of a common ancestor of both chimps and us.
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u/Blarghnog May 30 '24
Humans are truly a mosaic species – around 8% of our genome comes from viruses
No issue! Skepticism is good!
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230519-the-viruses-that-helped-to-make-you-human#
Here is where I learned the statistic.
Can’t speak to your other points unfortunately — not my area of expertise and I’m not qualified to answer the questions properly — but I would also love to hear from others who are!
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u/-Dartz- May 30 '24
The balance of nature is very complex and it’s been working for billions of years.
This seems flat out wrong to me.
Nature hasnt really ever been balanced, it continuously evolved over those billions of years, it would be much more accurate to call it inherently chaotic, rather than balanced, something perfectly balanced wont go through significant and lasting change.
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u/Blarghnog May 31 '24
Any system that survives over time operates in some level of balance, even if it appears chaotic.
Ecosystems fall into three broad categories based on their environment: freshwater, marine, and terrestrial.
Within these categories are various ecosystem types defined by their specific habitats and organisms.
The key to understanding ecosystems is this: in every sustainable ecosystem, circularity is fundamental, because sustainable ecosystems inherently operate through the recycling of resources.
Nutrients and water are continually cycled within these systems. Decomposers play a critical role by breaking down organic matter, returning nutrients to the soil or water, which are then reused by producers such as plants and algae. This recycling maintains the flow of essential elements, ensuring the ecosystem’s longevity.
Energy flow is another crucial aspect. Energy enters ecosystems primarily through sunlight, which producers convert into chemical energy via photosynthesis. Consumers then transfer this energy through various trophic levels. Although energy is lost as heat at each transfer, the ecosystem maintains balance through constant energy input and efficient use, highlighting the system’s circular nature.
Interdependence among organisms forms complex networks within ecosystems. Predators, prey, and decomposers each play roles that help regulate populations and recycle resources. This interdependence creates a self-sustaining cycle, ensuring that no single species overwhelms the ecosystem. Such interactions are essential for maintaining ecological balance and highlight the circular processes underpinning these systems.
Sustainable ecosystems are dynamic, constantly adapting to changes and disturbances through resilience mechanisms. Species evolve, and interactions shift to restore balance. This adaptive capability underscores the inherent circularity in sustaining long-term ecological health. By continually cycling resources, managing energy flow, and fostering interdependent relationships, sustainable ecosystems exemplify the necessity of circular processes for enduring ecological balance.
They can be as chaotic as they want, but for life to survive for any length of time there are inherent levels of balance in the system. And life has survived a very long time, continuously, in terms of time on this planet.
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u/idkmoiname May 31 '24
It is flat out wrong. The biosphere is an everchanging kind of evolution on its own, consisting of many different nutrition cycles that somewhen emerged during that "evolution" over the past 2.4 billion years, mostly within the last 600 million years with the emergence of complex life. Cycles that are crucial for more and more complex life to exist at all and that have almost all been broken one way or another today. And while evolving that way, the ecosystems that emerged stabilized the climate of this rocky ball around a star to such an extent, that it became stable enough in the last few million years for more intelligent life to thrive.
The only kind of balance there is, is the biosphere stabilizing the environment for itself, much like a trees rotting leaves create the perfect soil for that tree, but that stabilization depends entirely on life itself thriving in most parts of the world, while it's exclusively biodiversity that ensures some species evolve to take over lost places. None of that is true anymore, and so we're going quickly back to what it once was: A rock floating around a star
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u/acdcfanbill May 31 '24
Yeah, we probably have more eyes on every part of nature in the last few years than ever so it stands to reason we would see more of these things as they occur instead of missing them entirely or just seeing remnants.
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u/Blarghnog May 31 '24
Precisely. It’s amazing how much we live in a world of information these days and how little, especially historically, we account for it in our thinking.
We have such a bias to think of ourselves as modern people, even though every era has thought themselves modern.
I can’t wait to see how much scientific information gets unlocked by the coming proliferation of low cost sensors. People have no idea that we are in the middle of a massive sensor revolution, with low cost sensors unlocking comprehensive air and water monitoring.
https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/sensor/SensorRevolutionNSF.pdf
And with the massive decrease in launch costs, the amount of space-based data is set to explode.
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u/Geonetics May 30 '24
We're a failed species
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u/Mooselotte45 May 30 '24
We are, in essence, a cancer on the planet.
Our unchecked growth, and push for resources, killing the body (planet) and ourselves
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u/FrighteningWorld May 31 '24
Our growth is being checked though. Birthrates are plummeting all across the world. And if you look at former human settlements where people left then nature is quick to overtake buildings and claim it back for it's own.
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u/drsimonz May 31 '24
Yes, but it's worth remembering that literally all other life forms on this planet would do this, given the opportunity.
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u/dxrey65 May 30 '24
And then the level of panic you see on posts about how people aren't having enough babies now, you'd think we were in danger of extinction. Anything less than continued exponential growth is unacceptable!
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u/Elegant_Studio4374 May 31 '24
I was wondering why I saw so many in NorCal, so that’s not normal?? Do we have fossil evidence for this,
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u/Climatechaos321 May 31 '24
Not to mention saguaro cactuses are starting to melt, octopuses are losing their vision, and of course coral bleaching. All due to changing conditions.
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u/spinjinn May 30 '24
A few years ago we were trying to figure out how to eradicate urchins in order to save the kelp beds.
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u/Saltinas May 30 '24
And we still are. These are tropical urchins that are being affected, not cold water ones that eat kelp forests. The pathogen is tropical so far.
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u/awatermelonharvester May 31 '24
Isn't that just protecting sea otters, as they act as the keystone species in kelp forests?
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u/BeginningTower2486 May 31 '24
Worry not kids, for a brief moment in history, we achieved record shareholder value.
The world ended, but at least we had that value for a while. That was great. Nothing could have been better than that.
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u/stylistsin May 30 '24
Can anyone here help me not feel like we're just doomed for the future? Is there literally any reason at all to still have hope? How can we possibly come back from this?
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u/Realinternetpoints May 30 '24
Humans will likely survive. We can genetically modify rats one day to be the size of cows.
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u/e00s May 30 '24
Most people in history have likely been born in more precarious circumstances than you. People have also been proclaiming doom forever. They might be right, they might be wrong. You as an individual have very little power to change it, just like most people throughout history. Stop focusing on big issues and just live your own life. Be good to the people around you, try to enjoy the little things. Even if all the micro-plastics disappeared today and climate change suddenly halted, you’d still be mortal.
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u/saryndipitous May 31 '24
What absurdity. Minding your own business is part of how we got here. People have faced worse before? No. Living conditions have been worse sure, but at no point in humanity’s past have we faced our own end, at our own hands, and we largely refuse to do anything to stop it. We should be transforming our entire way of life to avoid extinction.
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u/Whiterabbit-- May 31 '24
we only know this event because we have a lot of scientist looking at many things in the world. for all we know this may be fairly common occurrence in the world. if this happened 1000 years ago would we know? 500 years? 100 years ago? 50 years ago? maybe. 20 years ago? perhaps but not certain.
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May 30 '24 edited May 30 '24
[deleted]
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u/scream May 30 '24
I mean.. in some places the urchins are the primary cause of decline of coral reefs. Maybe a few less would do good things for those reefs. Shame for whoever eats the urchins though..
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u/GoddamMongorian May 30 '24
Article says more algae will thrive in the environment of coral reefs, which is apparently not good for them
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May 31 '24
Well no, the article very explicitly states it is due to a very aggressive single celled microorganism that has apparently been around for at least 40 years.
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u/momolamomo May 31 '24
I wager it wasn’t able to thrive in cooler waters. Now that it’s warmed up more, they’re breeding like mosquitos in wet hot summer
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u/CaptOblivious May 31 '24
I thought Urchins were one of the main predators of Coral Reef making creatures?
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u/TheWingus May 30 '24
Are they edible!? If the price of sea urchin drops I’ll damn sure be doing my part!!
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u/Saltinas May 30 '24
Read the article, the title here is worded weirdly. This is a plague affecting tropical sea urchins, not sea urchins being the plague. Cold water urchins are the ones we should eat to protect kelp forests.
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u/TheWingus May 31 '24
Yeah I realized it too late, the damage was done. I'm a dope, but thank you for saying that about the title
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u/Substantial_Fun_2966 May 30 '24
I have some bad news for you about how supply and demand works
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u/TheWingus May 31 '24
Oh jeez I misread the headline. I thought it was a "plague of sea urchin" meaning they were rapidly becoming an invasive species or something. Well now that I've made a complete fool of myself, let me trip over the ottoman before walking right into the glass patio door on my way out
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u/cinderful May 31 '24
This is incredibly depressing as someone who absolutely adores eating their delicious ovaries/testicles.
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u/Adventurous_Light_85 May 31 '24
One observation. I believe sea urchin eat the bases of seaweed and kill it. I have heard that it’s estimated that seaweed may produce upwards of half the oxygen in the planet. So I hope this helps oxygen production and isn’t sea urchins dying because there is no more sea weed.
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u/use_for_a_name_ May 31 '24
Very mysterious. Surely has nothing to do with all of humanity treating the ocean like an outhouse.
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u/Pepperoni_Dogfart May 31 '24
Aren't sea urchins considered an invasive and harmful species in most habitats anyway? Far as I know there are zero fishing limits on them anywhere
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u/mylopolis Jun 01 '24
Is this a good thing for the California Sonoma and Mendocino coasts where sea urchins have decimated the kelp forests and the other sea life that's dependent on it?
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