Oceans out of balance? │How industrialized fishing affects the secret mathematical laws of nature

Max Planck Lecture online

  • Date: Mar 23, 2022
  • Time: 06:00 PM - 07:15 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Dr. Ian Hatton, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig
  • Location: Online-Event
  • Host: Max Planck Society
  • Contact: mpgberlin@gv.mpg.de
 Oceans out of balance? │How industrialized fishing affects the secret mathematical laws of nature
Ian Hatton and his team including scientists from Spain, Australia, Israel and Canada were able to prove an assumption that biologists already made in the 1970s: humans have upset the natural balance of biomass in the oceans.

Up until 200 years ago, there was a mysterious balance in the sea: the biomass of bacteria, plankton, fish and mammals were almost the same, representing possibly life's largest scale pattern extending over all species of the global ocean. Humans have upset this equilibrium since the mid-19th century through highly efficient fishing methods and whaling. As a result, there are far fewer large fish and marine mammals than this law-like property of nature would suggest. The reasons for the natural biomass balance remain unresolved. Scientists will discuss how these dramatic changes to ocean biomass due to human activities may be impacting ocean ecosystem functioning. 

Moderator: Dr. Tanja Busse, science journalist

 

The event is one of four lectures within the series “Fragile Ökosysteme” (other talks in German).

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