Arphipken, Alexander. “Octopus and Squid Populations Exploding Worldwide.” Scientific American Blog Network. N.p., 25 May 2016. Web. 11 Sept. 2016.
Octopus and squid populations are increasing very rapidly in a short period of time. The vacant space left by the overfishing of the top predators of the ecosystem lets some types of sea creatures to increase in population. That is exactly what has happened to the Cephalopods or to be more specific; squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. These cephalopds die quickly and produce a lot of offspring. They are able to adapt to their environment faster than other creatures, and as a result we are seeing a spike in population.
This relates to the environment as when one thing increases in an ecosystem it can set off a system’s equilibrium. If the cephalopods population increase then their prey will decrease. Fish that eat cephalopods will also have an easier time. This could also drive some species at the lower end of the food chain extinct.
I think this brings a interesting idea up, that by killing off the top predators like sharks that we’ve come to fear so much for no good reason really has led to massive populations of squid, which i’ve actually heard of men being killed while fishing because a squid grabbed the net he was fishing with and pulled him in and he was swarmed by the squid that shouldn’t have been there. Those things are terrifying, and this may be off topic, as not all cephalopods have killing potential, but I think these thing are much worse than sharks
I agree that we see top predators as more of threats than squid just because their scarier or whatever. This has led to a spike in cephalopods. You could argue that cephalopods are in a way worse than sharks. Thank you for reading my article!
I can’t tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll assume that it’s bad because in general any ecosystem imbalance creates turmoil in any case. Why is the population exploding
Good question, this is bad because it messes up the whole ecosystem, as these fish will drive fish that they eat for food extinct. It is exploding because these creatures have no predators, and adapt faster to the environment than their predators. Thank you for reading my article.