Mediterranean marine life in greatest peril, census shows
Bombs, the invasion of alien species and pollution among threats facing fish in the enclosed sea, according to study 
By Alok Jha, www.guardian.co.uk
Monday 2 August 2010 21.05 BST Marine life in the Mediterranean faces the greatest risk of damage and death, the Census of Marine Life shows. “Enclosed seas have the risk that, when you impact it and throw chemicals or other garbage into it, it will not go away so easily as it will from the open ocean,” said Patricia Miloslavich of Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela and co-senior scientist of the census. The surveys identified places such as the Mediterranean, Gulf of Mexico, China’s shelves, Baltic, and the Caribbean as having the most threatened biodiversity. In one of the summary papers published today scientists rated the threats posed to life in different seas from seven different pressures including overfishing, habitat loss, and temperature changes. The Mediterranean, which contains almost 17,000 identified species, scored the maximum threat rating of 5 for four of the categories while the Gulf of Mexico, with just over 15,000 named species, and seas off China, with more than 22,000 species, scored the highest threat rating in three areas: overfishing, habitat loss and pollution. Dense coastal populations of humans tend to be packed along enclosed seas, said Miloslavich, meaning increased pollution and extraction of more biodiversity from the water. In addition, sediment runoff and nutrients in sewage and fertiliser can wash into the sea and cause algae and other simple life forms to bloom and reduce the amount of oxygen available to other species. …
