Historical marine ecology
Zooarchaeological samples. From left to right: ancient duck bones, shells of marine snails and charred plant remains. Photo by Kristen Grace, Florida Museum of Natural History.
In my previous blog post I noted that the prehistoric settlers of the Caribbean Islands constituted an invasion of the pristine Caribbean seascape by an intelligent, highly adaptable, and predatory alien species. I asked to what extent did their engagement with a pristine ocean change that environment? Were their numbers too low and their hunting and fishing technologies too primitive for them to have had any significant impacts on the ocean environment? Or were they natural conservationists who managed their ocean resources sustainably? Or did they assume the role of a novel keystone species and modify the ocean environment in significant ways? In this post I begin to examine these questions.
Archaeological investigation of a prehistoric settlement site on a Caribbean island. (Credit: Scott Fitzpatrick, CC BY-ND)
In my previous post on the humanization of the Caribbean Sea I discussed how the first humans to settle the insular Caribbean—prehistoric, Archaic Age people—made extensive use of the ocean resources associated with their new island homes. These people occupied many of the islands of the Caribbean until about 2,500 years ago when a second wave of migrants dispersed into the Caribbean Sea. They almost entirely replaced the original inhabitants and settled new islands for the first time. In this post I discuss how, like their Archaic Age precursors, these new colonists pursued a way of life that was highly dependent on the exploitation of the abundant ocean resources surrounding their island homes.
Prehistoric queen conch shell midden on the British Virgin Islands (Credit: Flickr: Conch graveyard)
In my previous post on the humanization of the Caribbean Sea I traced the origins of the first humans—Archaic Age people who fashioned tools out of stone—to settle the vast, island-filled tropical marine system that we now call the Caribbean Sea. In this post I examine how these prehistoric settlers adapted to living on islands that had never experienced any form of human influence, and how their activities began to alter the natural landscapes and surrounding seascapes of these islands over thousands of years.
The Samaná Peninsula on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles was inhabited by some of the first settlers of the insular Caribbean (Credit: Dave Carr/Getty Images)
In this post I trace the origin of the first people to settle the vast, island-filled tropical marine system that we now call the Caribbean Sea. This was the first step in the modification by humans of this pristine seascape—the last region of the Americas to be exposed to the presence of humans.
The Caribbean Sea provides an exemplary case study of the course of humanization of an insular seascape over thousands of years. I will argue over a series of blogs that just as we had the power to radically modify and damage the Caribbean Sea, we also have the power to reimagine its future and restore species abundance, rebuild its ecosystems, and create an ecologically productive, resilient, and much more beautiful tropical marine environment than the one we have at present.
Green turtles in the pre-Columbian Caribbean Sea once numbered in the tens of millions. Today, as a result of over 400 years of intense hunting, only about 300,000 remain, or around 0.3 per cent of historical numbers. Adult green turtles feed mainly on turtle grass and in the past they acted as ecosystem engineers by structuring and maintaining healthy seagrass habitat. Their ecological extinction has had a profound effect on Caribbean marine ecosystems.
