What does "High Impact" actually mean in this case? That human activities have prevented all forms of marine life? That the water isn't pristine drinkable quality? That some creatures might find it a little harder to survive? Without actually quantifying what the damage is they are warning on some sort of relative scale it's not easy to react to this.

This is not new; most of the scientific community has known about this for years.

It's a disgrace how little our Government agencies, Fishing bodies etc have done about it - it's all about money, money, money, and the hell with whether the stocks will recover or not.

A token cut in takes here and there, when it's *massive* or full *no go* cuts that are needed, and have been needed for YEARS. A reason I don't eat anything but sustainably farmed fish...needless to say I don't get to eat a lot of it.

And don't get me started on the illicit mid-ocean tank cleaning, dumping, bottom scraping etc

Frankly, when I become ruler of the world, my first act will be to appoint a population control police, and the first for the lethal injection will be the organisations that have know about this and done NOTHING.

I once caught 4 big cods using a fishing line whilst bored during a North Sea geosurvey.

They were very tasty, and I shared them with my workmates that evening.

I can't bring them back, but I won't do it again.

When you become ruler of the world my mothership will have collected me long ago - I sincerely hope! (one by one the penguins steal my sanity).

We have an eco-nazi! He states "when I become ruler of the world, my first act will be to appoint a population control police, and the first for the lethal injection will be the organisations that have know about this and done NOTHING." That is an eco-nazi, someone who wants to kill humans to save a few fish or a few trees. Under no circumstances is killing humans acceptable, Greenpeace tree-hugger.

And also, since this study has an assumption: global warming is caused by humans. Anybody who doesn't have an agenda and who spends just 5 minutes looking up weather history knows that assumption is shaky, at best. So, how seriously can we take a study which is relying on unprovable claims? Of course, some eco-nazis, like the earlier "anonymous coward", will be caught just like a fish on a hook. Studies that say humans are destroying the earth are profitable. Which is why this study came out. Besides, as had already been pointed, this is a scientific study, so it should have quantifiable definitions. In any other field, if you start a study with something that cannot be proven, you would have your funding removed. But not so when you blame humans for destroying our earth.

Having said all that, I know the oceans are over fished. I know the oceans are too polluted in many places. But I also know it is not as bad as the money-loving scientist want you to believe.

...at least have the right idea when it comes to fishing quotas. You see, with the EU fishing quotas, if you accidentally catch fish you don't have a quota for, you chuck it away, dead. Huge, enormous wasteage. The Iceland fishing fleets can trade their quota with each other so almost nothing goes to waste, and their fish stocks are in a much healthier state as a result. But no-one seems to want to do anything to properly protect the oceans. Personally I'd count oceanic pollution and the destruction of marine environments as higher priority than global warming. We're all doomed, I tells yer.

"pristine drinkable quality"

Er, I don't think seawater is drinkable anywhere, not even the Baltic (which is the least saline of all seas).

"...synthesized global data on human impacts ..."

Do they mean they made it all up, or is there some other definition of synthesis I don't know about?

Nothing synthetic about Paris.

"To quantify it partially, in the Metro this morning one of the scientists was quoted (whoever it was escapes me) saying that marine life around the North of Scotland would be wiped out with one more major oil spill."

Now that the global warming frenzy is coming under serious (public) criticism the human-hating eco-freaks have to find another target quickly. Not saying that 'Shakje' is one of these but the article Shakje quotes sounds like a harbinger of things to come.

"Er, I don't think seawater is drinkable anywhere, not even the Baltic (which is the least saline of all seas)."

Well, I was on the Caspian Sea off the coast of Turkmanistan in 1994 and that was clear and sweet to drink.

Unfortunately I later heard from a marine biologist that a crystalline lake/sea would usually indicate that it is totally devoid of life, being so poisonous. Bleeeeaah.!

..so I'm off to Blackpool for a dip, the water's lovely there :)

I choked on a bone once, I nearly died, this must be their karma for nearly killing me.

People, people, do you remember some 'blah blah' about how we would need the resources of other planets to feed the world and bring all nations up to the same living standards that we enjoy?

It's so easy to fix this with CONTRACEPTION, "Oh I can't find food to feed my family" stop bl00dy breeding them then.

Or...we could always switch to killing and eating each other...I bet 'Longpig' tastes better than fish anyway ;-)

SoilentGreen Corp was trading at $22.52 per share in New York this morning.

My coat is the spacesuit hanging by the door. No, you can't borrow it--I will need it to get off this rock by the time we kill off the oceans.

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

Fe fecks sake, he was probably being ironic.

"Er, I don't think seawater is drinkable anywhere, not even the Baltic (which is the least saline of all seas)."

Having kayaked in that very sea, I can tell you from first-hand experience that the seawater there is eminently undrinkable. And not just because of Tallinn-bound helicopters falling into it and passenger ferries going belly-up, but because it's the least saline, as opposed to non-saline. No seawater, anywhere, is of "pristine drinkable quality". But yes, it would be good to qualify these results somehow...

But what ARE the white bits? Also, what happened to the brown continents?

OOOOH I know! The continents are white because they're covered with snow from the ice age that global warming brought about.

Easily solved !!

1) Ban fish and chips

2) Ban Rick Stein

3) Cover all British controlled waters with offshore windmills

4) Hang everyone who buys salmon

Where I come from, the clean and green Godzone, we don't have any of your problems, and don't want'em either, thanks. That's why we ship all of our waste back to China (where it was first manufactured anyhow), so we can keep on sucking you yanks and poms into coming to "the most beautiful country on Earth", and spending your almighty tourist dollar. At least, you tend to use airplanes to get here, and not many of them end up in the sea.

He most certainly was being ironic...but if you represent the "sensible majority", we're all f*ing doomed.

I know you won't be able to hear me down there with your head 6 inches in the sand, but the majority of the evidence shows that it *is* as bad as they make out. We *are* depleting Earth's resources in an unsustainable way. We *are* churning out more CO2 than can be "sunk". Just because it sounds implausibly bad, doesn't make it a lie - did you ever consider that we could geniunely be up sh*t creek? It doesn't make me a "eco-nazi" (I like my car and cheap flights as much as the next guy), but it sure as hell makes you look ignorant.

Yes, I jest about the population control police, but seriously - we need to do something about our numbers in a sensible, 'non-Soylent' fashion until we reach "a sustainable lifestyle" without resorting to living in caves again. And do it quickly. Our inteligence has removed all the normal checks and balances other species encounter when they become over populated - we need to apply that same inteligence to getting our numbers back under control until we can live sustainably.

Enjoy your Cod before it becomes extinct, "eco-emu".

Another fear mongering desk study ex cathedra from the green high priests. Not checked by any measurements, effects of selfcleaning by the ocean ecosystem are not taken into account etc. etc. And most people buy it instantly. Sigh.

Wade Burchette:

"I know the oceans are over fished. I know the oceans are too polluted in many places. But I also know it is not as bad as the money-loving scientist want you to believe."

You *know*, eh? Pray tell, where does that certainty come from?

AC #437:

"Now that the global warming frenzy is coming under serious (public) criticism the human-hating eco-freaks have to find another target quickly. Not saying that 'Shakje' is one of these but the article Shakje quotes sounds like a harbinger of things to come."

You're picking a bone (hey, the original article does have something to do with fish) with someone quoting a tube-rag newspaper article which, in turn, quoted a researcher commenting on their work... no doubt the gist of what the researcher reported in their publication made it through *completely* unaltered.

Folks, how irritating is it to sit in a meeting or around a lunch room table and have non-tech coworkers slag off IT or otherwise show off how pigshit-ignorant they are of anything to with computers? Unless your knowledge of environmental science comes from first-hand study or at least some in-depth knowledge of physical sciences and marine biology, could you please consider the notion that finding something personally threatening *does*not* qualify you to offer a definitive opinion on the matter, and when you say something like "the hippies want us all wearing sandals and eating tofu" or "the scientists are just in it for the money", you might just be coming across as an ignorant fucktard. In other words, unless you know *exactly* what you're talking about, STFU, seriously.

For all those guys asking about the meaning of / high impact /:

The authors "grounded" their model by comparing their mathematically derived / meaningless numbers to real-world observations using 16 regions from around the world containing coral reefs (guess that's where they could get good data)

It's a big extrapolation but unfortunately more science than fiction: things like missing/dead fish and corals are real even if they are somewhat abstract to a mountain-dweller like me.

no cod? then I'll take that tilapia thing!

Fret not dear chap, you are, without a doubt, more intelligent and better informed that the fuckwits who reported this data. The first rule of marine biologists is to recognise that the oceans are an interconnected, freeflowing continuously intermixing ecology... and so by definition, CANNOT contain an "unaffected" part... (4% hey wait a [F]ing minute - THAT's a bloody statistic and we all know how reliable they are).

Still like the idea of a "flaming boffin" icon.

the white bits are where all the oceanic pollution originates from