Power Law in the Ocean
The ocean is home to millions of different species and wildlife that can all be observed extensively to learn more about different ecological and scientific processes. After examining the interactions between different species, scientists have found that the Power Law is very evident in the natural processes that occur everyday in the Ocean, but humans are the reason for the disruption in the Power Law lately. A clear example of the law in the ocean is the relationship seen between the quantity of krill and tuna. Usually, the quantity of the larger less abundant species was correlated to the quantity of the smaller more abundant species. This is the relationship that scientists expect to see when they observe krill and tuna in different bodies of water. The scientists mentioned a more specific form of Power Law, the Sheldon Spectrum.
Unfortunately, human disruption in the ocean has changed this phenomenon and caused the quantities of the wildlife mentioned above to drastically change. Scientists argue that human impact has largely changed the energy flow in the ocean, which is detrimental to the ecosystem’s future growth. The only way to reverse this issue is to follow the natural course of action that the power law would explain- a change in one of the quantities of the fish would result in the change of the other fish quantity. Since the number of krill and tuna in the ocean show to rely on one another, there needs to be less human disruption in one of the populations for the other one to increase as well.
In the article, it is mentioned how there are other ways humans are disrupting this natural power law than just fishing for some of the species more than others. Scientists are trying to determine ways to reduce the amounts of human disruptions, but some say that humans have already damaged the dynamics in the ocean too much. As seen in the picture below, a significant portion of the ocean’s biomass has already been removed over the past decade.
Link: https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-have-broken-the-natural-law-of-life-s-size-spectrum-in-the-ocean
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-humans-guilty-oceanic-law-nature.html