As the saying goes, there are always more fish in the sea, but what if there weren’t? What if one day all of them suddenly disappeared? Well, a biologist outlines that it wouldn’t be good and the cascading domino effect of their vanishing would be catastrophic.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00 As the saying goes, there are always more fish in the sea.
00:05 But what if there weren't?
00:07 What if one day, all of them suddenly disappeared?
00:10 Well biologist Corey Evans writes for the conversation, it wouldn't be good, and the
00:13 cascading domino effect of their vanishing would be catastrophic.
00:17 First, depending on how the fish left this world, it could be disastrous for our own
00:21 ecosystem.
00:22 For instance, if all the fish suddenly died off, that would be a massive carbon dump into
00:27 our planet's oceans.
00:28 This fish are the second largest biological carbon group on the planet.
00:32 Meaning if that carbon was released into the atmosphere, it would be an insane amount to
00:35 be let loose all at once.
00:37 But if they simply vanished, they would still leave an incredible hole in the food chain.
00:41 Even creatures that don't live in the sea feed on fish, with further reaching impacts
00:44 even on plant life.
00:46 Evans writes that salmon that travel upstream to spawn and die provide some 70% of the nitrogen
00:51 riverbank plants rely on.
00:53 This fish reliance also extends to species in the oceans as well.
00:56 With fish that live in and rely on coral for sustenance, providing their own utility, those
01:00 fish eat algae to prevent the coral from being choked out, and their poop eventually floats
01:05 away, becoming part of the white sandy beaches everyone enjoys.
01:09 -