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Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water “dead zones,” toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks — all are accellerating, they said on Monday in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world’s top ocean experts.

Sponsored by the International Program on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.

All five mass extinctions of life on the planet, reaching back more than 500 million years, were preceded by many of the same conditions now afflicted the ocean environment, they said.

“The results are shocking,” said Alex Rogers, an Oxford professor who heads IPSO and co-authored the report. “We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime.”…… .”The rate at which carbon is being absorbed is already far greater now than during the last globally significant extinction of marine species 55 million years ago,” when some 50 per cent of deep-sea life was wiped out, the report said……………Pollution has also taken a heavy toll, rendering the oceans less resilient to climate change……”We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation,” said Daniel Laffoley, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas, and co-author of the report.
“And we are also probably the last generation that has enough time to deal with the problems,” he told AFP by phone……http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/oceans-in-distress-mass-extinctions-20110621-1gc8i.html