Major Reductions in Seafloor Marine Life from Climate Change by 2100

Dec. 31, 2013 — A new study quantifies for the first time future losses in deep-sea marine life, using advanced climate models. Results show that even the most remote deep-sea ecosystems are not safe from the impacts of climate change.

An international team of scientists predict seafloor dwelling marine life will decline by up to 38 per cent in the North Atlantic and over five per cent globally over the next century. These changes will be driven by a reduction in the plants and animals that live at the surface of the oceans that feed deep-sea communities. As a result, ecosystem services such as fishing will be threatened.

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500-Million-Year-Old Sea Creature With Limbs Under Its Head Unearthed

Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer

Date: 27 February 2013 Time: 01:00 PM ET

Scientists have unearthed extraordinarily preserved fossils of a 520-million-year-old sea creature, one of the earliest animal fossils ever found, according to a new study.

CREDIT: Yie Jang (Yunnan University) 

The fossilized animal, an arthropod called a fuxhianhuiid, has primitive limbs under its head, as well as the earliest example of a nervous system that extended past the head. The primitive creature may have used the limbs to push food into its mouth as it crept across the seafloor. The limbs may shed light on the evolutionary history of arthropods, which include crustaceans and insects.

"Since biologists rely heavily on organization of head appendages to classify arthropod groups, such as insects and spiders, our study provides a crucial reference point for reconstructing the evolutionary history and relationships of the most diverse and abundant animals on Earth," said study co-author Javier Ortega-Hernández, an earth scientist at the University of Cambridge, in a statement. "This is as early as we can currently see into arthropod limb development."

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/27504-cambrian-arthropod-fossil-discovered.html

Extinct Whale Fossil Found on Seafloor

Researchers diving off the coast of Georgia may have found the remains of an Atlantic gray whale, a relic of a population that was hunted to extinction by the 18th century.

But this particular specimen died long before whalers became a threat. Carbon dating showed that the fossil, a left jawbone, is about 36,000 years old.

The big bone was first discovered along with two badly eroded vertebrae near Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary about 20 miles (32 kilometers) off southeast Georgia in 2008. It took the researchers two years to pull out all the pieces of the fossil, which was embedded in layers of shell and sand 70 feet (21 meters) below the surface. The jawbone was recovered in sections and measures 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/25765-extinct-atlantic-gray-whale.html

Fishing Technique Flattens the Seafloor

Fishing fleets are altering the seafloor much like farmer's ploughs have altered the landscape, indicates a study of the effects of so-called bottom trawling on the continental slope off the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

Bottom trawlers drag nets and gear to capture fish, shrimp and other marine life along the seafloor, and previous research has called out this technique for stirring up sediment and destroying habitat.

This new study by a Spanish team looked down into deeper waters than typically studied, at the upper portion of the continental slope, which drops out toward the deep ocean and offers insight into how the deep-sea landscape changes.


Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/22937-trawling-smooths-seafloor.html