News - Ransom A. Myers
By MELANIE PATTEN HALIFAX (CP) - It was the sign of a booming industrial fishery: Atlantic bluefin tuna so plentiful that hundreds of the giant fish were crammed wall-to-wall inside European markets between the 1940s and '60s.
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.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia - Ransom Myers, a Canadian scientist renowned for his groundbreaking research and blunt warnings about the extinction of marine species, has died from brain cancer, according to colleagues at Dalhousie University. He was 54.
The great predators of the seas - tuna, swordfish, marlin and others - could be on the way out. Canadian researchers who surveyed the catches from ocean fishery "hotspots" warn that not only are numbers in decline, but also the variety of species in any region.