The recent news that scientists have discovered and then accidentally killed the world’s oldest living animal – an Artica islandica clam – at first seems disturbing, a case of overexuberant scientists chasing information at the cost of life.
The clam, named Ming, was believed to be between 405 and 410 years old. Ming was dredged up from along the north Iceland shelf as part of research to determine how the marine environment has changed in the last centuries.
However what is more interesting is the reason that scientists believe that Ming lived so long:
Dr Wanamaker said he believed the clam had survived so long because fisheries and predators were so few in the region. In some parts, clam populations have been wiped out through overfishing, while marine predators, including cod, seals and wolf fish also take a hefty toll.
That reason underscores the critical need to protect the marine life from industrial fishing as well as to exercise extreme caution in any industrial activities, such as deep sea mining, on the bottom of the sea. How many rare animals are killed and discarded as bycatch or crushed beneath the rollers of deep sea trawls? How many yet undiscovered creatures will be wiped out by deep sea mining?
The great majority of the ocean is still a mystery. New life is being discovered on deep sea expeditions. And, in the case of Ming, record life spans for living creatures are being discovered.
In our lifetimes, we have the chance to reverse the trend in ocean decline before it is too late, and to protect all that is mysterious and beautiful in our great oceans.
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