Her's a snip from an AP report ( I glommed it off AOL so I do not have the
URL).
"Study: Damage to Seas Began Long Ago
By PAUL RECER
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (July 26) - Humans started destroying the natural abundance of the
seas thousands of years ago and tipped a delicate balance that left the
environment more vulnerable to the excesses of the modern age, a study shows.
By widespread slaughter of sea turtles in the Caribbean, or sea cows off the
coast of Australia, or sea otters near Alaska, ancient humans started a
damaging cascade that changed the Earth, researchers say in a study appearing
Friday in the journal Science. It still is being felt.
''There's been a longtime belief that everything was fine until the ...
Europeans showed up,'' said Karen Bjordal, a zoology professor at the
University of Florida. ''Now we've discovered that the start of the
environmental problems (in the sea) go way back before that.''
''The notion of the native peoples of having a benign impact on the
environment in their vicinity has been challenged,'' said Charles Peterson of
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ''The general feeling is
that there were dramatic effects locally and not a prudent predation'' by
ancient humans long before the Colonial and industrial eras......"
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