Decline of Sharks May Effect the Availability of Scallops.

[NNadir]

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer
1 hour, 37 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Overfishing of powerful sharks — a top predator in the ocean — may endanger bay scallops, a gourmet delicacy.

With fewer sharks to devour them, skates and rays have increased sharply along the East Coast and they are gobbling up shellfish, particularly bay scallops, researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Ecologists have known that reducing key species on land can affect an entire ecosystem, but this study provides hard data for the same thing in the ocean, said lead author Charles H. Peterson of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina.

Co-author Ransom A. Myers of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Peterson were studying different ends of the food chain, Peterson said in a telephone interview.

"Myers was working on great sharks and I was working on cownose rays and their impact on bay scallops and other shellfish. We realized that separately we had interesting science, but together we had an absolute revelation," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070329/ap_on_sc/sharks_shellfish

[greyl]

1. Interesting, because many "scallops" are actually stamped out pieces of rays and shark.

With fewer sharks to devour them, skates and rays have increased sharply along the East Coast and they are gobbling up shellfish, particularly bay scallops, researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

www.endangeredfishalliance.org/news/20070216.htm

The fishing industry worldwide is wreaking utter havoc on our ecosystem.