Life in the Slow Lane: Ecology and Conservation of Long-Lived Marine Animals

Preface

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569155.fmatter

After almost 40 years of studying the ecology of chondrichthyan fishes and 20 years of studying sea turtle ecology, I came to realize that the two groups shared many life history parameters that rendered both groups particularly vulnerable to excessive mortalities. Regardless of these similarities, shark biologists and sea turtle biologists were largely ignorant of each other’s work and had little communication with one another. Even close colleagues who worked on sharks thought that the J. A. Musick who published papers on sea turtles was a different person than the scientist who published on sharks and vice-versa. (My penchant for diversifying my research interests over the years is perhaps a product of my own schizophrenia or just a short attention span.) It became apparent to me that other groups of marine animals, such as the chondrosteans, and some teleosts, whales, and sea birds also shared the life history parameters of long life span, slow growth, late maturity, low intrinsic rates of increase, and for many groups, low fecundity or sporadic and infrequent recruitment. These groups also were particularly vulnerable to excessive anthropogenic mortality and were prone to rapid population collapse.