The biodiversity in West Africa in general is completely underrated. I mean, Darwin solidified his trajectory in life a few short days after the Beagle anchored off of Cape Verde (a place he initially detested then fell in love with).
I'm hoping that Cape Verde's World Cup success story translates to more eye balls on stories like this (with the mere mention of the country landing it in search results). Which means more attention, money and research to West Africa's relatively fragile but diverse ecosystem.
There are 6 floristic kingdoms in the world, and Fynbos can only be found in a tiny section of Africa.
When I was there it was wild to see a completely different array of plants and flowers. There is one small white flower that had petals that felt like some sort of sythentic material. There is a whole world that very few people experience or even know exists.
> Zinzindohoué agrees: “We don’t need to wait for others to come to our country to show us what is under our sea. We are the ones who must take responsibility.
vaguely related I read a fascinating story the other day about basically garbage dumping of leftover oyster/clam shells being used to re-seed a marine ecosystem off the Florida Keys
Nice to read a paper that's looking for paths of persistence instead of only documenting decline. Climate stories often end with "thing are getting worse", this one also asks where ecosystems might still persist if local conditions are managed well.
Related, I recently read an article about staghorn corals surviving in Miami of all places [1]. They resisted bleaching, pollution and inundations with fresh water. The origin of this resistance is apparently colonization by a different species of algae that is otherwise native to the western Pacific and Indian Oceans.
I am sorry to be negative, but after living in a commercial fishing area for a while: I wish we would stop discovering reefs, as that just invites horrible things like drag net fleets into these areas. [0]
We are strip-mining the oceans' remaining bounty.
When I lived in that commercial fishing area, I learned about bycatch. That is a top-tier euphemism for destroying the entire ocean ecosystem/protein-provider, where sometimes only 3% of caught biomass makes it to any table. [1]
Shrimp is by far the worst. Please stop eating shrimp. If you knew the truth, and respect efficiency, you would never eat wild shrimp again.
I went from thinking that seafood was a good thing, to now mostly eating chicken. We are such morons with how we treat the seas. BTW, I love spearfishing. If that is how I got my seafood, then not only fun, but no waste/bycatch.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 30.8 ms ] threadI'm hoping that Cape Verde's World Cup success story translates to more eye balls on stories like this (with the mere mention of the country landing it in search results). Which means more attention, money and research to West Africa's relatively fragile but diverse ecosystem.
When I was there it was wild to see a completely different array of plants and flowers. There is one small white flower that had petals that felt like some sort of sythentic material. There is a whole world that very few people experience or even know exists.
* https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/florida-dumped-h...
Some dermatologists have noted that sunscreen is little used in Africa. [1]
I’m not saying that is the only explanation for the reef’s preservation, but it’s likely a significant contributing factor.
[1] https://theconversation.com/sunscreen-wouldnt-have-saved-bob...
https://www.dev.nationalgeographic.org/society/our-programs/...
https://github.com/NGS-Exploration-Technology/Deep-Sea-Camer...
[1] https://www.biographic.com/the-corals-that-shouldnt-exist/
We are strip-mining the oceans' remaining bounty.
When I lived in that commercial fishing area, I learned about bycatch. That is a top-tier euphemism for destroying the entire ocean ecosystem/protein-provider, where sometimes only 3% of caught biomass makes it to any table. [1]
Shrimp is by far the worst. Please stop eating shrimp. If you knew the truth, and respect efficiency, you would never eat wild shrimp again.
I went from thinking that seafood was a good thing, to now mostly eating chicken. We are such morons with how we treat the seas. BTW, I love spearfishing. If that is how I got my seafood, then not only fun, but no waste/bycatch.
[0] https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/
[1] https://www.fao.org/4/w6602e/w6602E09.htm