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Peering into the murky depths, Jane Lubchenco searched for sea life, but all
she saw were signs of death.
Video images scanned from the seafloor revealed a boneyard of crab skeletons,
dead fish and other marine life smothered under a white mat of bacteria. At
times, the camera's unblinking eye revealed nothing - a barren undersea desert
in waters renowned for their bounty of Dungeness crabs and fat rockfish.
"We couldn't believe our eyes," Lubchenco said, recalling her initial impression
of the carnage brought about by oxygen-starved waters. "It was so overwhelming
and depressing. It appeared that everything that couldn't swim or scuttle away
had died."
Upon further study, Lubchenco and other marine ecologists at Oregon State
University concluded that that the undersea plague appears to be a symptom of
global warming. In a study published in the journal Science, the researchers
note how these ...