DEEP SEA ORGANISMS IMMUNE TO CLIMATE CHANGE - II

Continued from part - I
as follows: ...."a cold patch become severely depleted but not extinct".

John Gage , a marine biologist with the Scottish Association for Marine Science, believes the research in significant, as it suggests that deep sea species are more resilient to changing environmental conditions than was previously thought. He also believes that the result could help to predict the impacts on living organisms of dumping material such as disused oil rigs and platforms into the deep sea.

In the year 1996, the Dutch oil company Shell had to reverse its decision to dispose of disused oil platform, known as Brent Spar, in the Atlantic following a public and environmentalists out-cry in Europe against the move. One of the reason cited by the protesters was that deep sea living organisms may not be able to survive the disturbance caused against dumping the platform. But Gage says, "if the system is able to bounce back albeit over thousands or tens of thousands of years over the larger scale, then local scale recovery might be faster."

The research challenges current thinking on the link between biodiversity and climate in an other way. Many scientists hold that deep sea communities are largely unaffected by changes in climate, and that biodiversity is promoted by a stable environment. But "results show that biodiversity is also inherently unstable". Gage adds that it shows, "the very high species richness of deep sea sediments is not the result of long-term stability."

....... to be continued to part - III as ended one.

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