For those who intently follow me, sorry for the late post, work held me up and well unfortunately kept me from being able to spout my knowledge into the interwebs. As you have probably figured out from the other fine 19 gentlemen joining me in this course, today we talked about tectonics. And as was the case with me, I’m sure you’re thinking…didn’t I learn that in 6th grade? …well yes actually you probably did. But of course we reviewed it and then were really asked on our own to consider why in the name of Poseidon’s beard, we would learn tectonics in a marine biology course. Well frankly here’s why. Our planet is mostly covered in water. The water sits on top of plates which then collide and let loose lots of crazy things such as CO2 molten lava, and a plethera of other nasty things. so although the tectonics themselves don’t actually affect the marine life…the reactions, such as earthquakes, chemical imbalance, volcanoes and much much more drastically change the living conditions in the water. So, as we learned yesterday, the larger species with longer life cycles then are dying out because they are not reproducing enough to have adaptive genes appear. This could cause an extinction of one species and an overpopulation of another. Or for those of you who are not quite understanding, the tectonics can change the environment in a negative way, without the help of destructive humans. So NOW we are dealing with double whammies, from ourselves and nature, and slowly but surely we are harming over half the planet. But enough of my rambling for the day, in short we learned that everything is connecting, even the most complex animal, and simple earth science.
Awesome marine bio pic of the day…
