Archive - Thursday, 15 February 2001


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Survival

EXISTING within a range of temperatures more limited than those on shore, many marine creatures might expect longer lives than those of land contemporaries. Dropping to 4 degrees Celsius in March, the North Sea rises to 15 degrees by September.

Although freezing to death is not a danger to ocean dwellers, attacks by predators are a constant hazard while the turbulence of winter seas, wrenching seaweed holdfasts from rocks, can be lethal, destroying the protection afforded by the weed to myriads of sheltering sea creatures.

Dwellers on northern shores are heirs to temperatures ranging from 30 degrees down to minus ten. Towards the bottom of this range, many creatures and also plants perish. Insects fall victim to the cold so birds, dependent upon them as food, also die. Attacks by predators are ever present but not nearly so prevalent as in the ocean.

How fortunate that life in the media of air and water is not interchangeable. A clattering invasion force of giant lobsters, bent on stretching out claws in summer sun, could create a fluttering in more than the dovecote as, of course, might an armada of flippers slurp-slurping its way to an equable briny.

Updated: 15:54 Thursday, February 15, 2001