Stark new assessment warns of mass extinctions and the “rise of slime”
When certain species have been decimated to the point of joining the endangered species list, measures are taken to more effectively conserve and revive their population bases.
To Jeremy Jackson, ocean ecosystems around the globe similarly have been degraded to the point that they should also be considered "endangered."
the effects of habitat destruction, overfishing, ocean warming, increased acidification, and massive nutrient runoff as culprits in a grand transformation of once-complex ocean ecosystems. Areas that had featured intricate marine food webs with large animals are being converted into simplistic ecosystems dominated by microbes, toxic algal blooms, jellyfish, and disease. Jackson has labeled the ongoing transformation "the rise of slime".