ATLANTIC * -PACIFIC- AT-LASTING : ECOSYSTEMS GLOBAL ESSAY

 

ECOSYSTEM 2011 of The World Students Society would probably go down in history as one of the most complex undertakings mankind ever attempted.

Here, on The World Students Society, let me get Esteemed Founder Framer of the World Students Society - Engineer Salar Khan Yusafzai, the Global Founder Framers of !WOW!, and the students of America, and the students of the world, thinking.

Ecological consequences of an expanded Panama Canal are becoming clear. The Panama Canal has for more than a century connected far-flung peoples and economies, making it an essential artery for global trade - and, in recent weeks, a target for President-elect Donald J. Trump's expansionist designs.

But of late the canal has been linking something else, too : the immense ecosystems of the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The two oceans have been separated for some three million years, ever since the isthmus of Panama rose out of water and split them.

The canal cut a path through the continent, yet for decades only a handful of marine fish species managed to migrate through the waterway and the freshwater reservoir, Lake Gatun, that feeds its locks.

Then, in 2016, Panama expanded the canal to allow supersize ships, and all that started to change.

In less than a decade, fish from both oceans -snooks, jacks, snappers and more - have almost entirely displaced the fishwater species that were in the canal system before, scientists with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, have found.

Fishermen around Lake Gatun who rely on those species, chiefly peacock bass, and tilapia, say their catches are growing scarce.

Researchers now worry that more fish could start making their way through from one ocean to the other. And no potential invader causes more concern than the venomous, candystriped lionfish.

They are known to inhabit Panama's Caribbean coast, but not the eastern Pacific. If they make it there through the canal, they could ravage the defenseless local fish, just as they've done in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Already, marine species are more than occasional visitors in Lake Gatun, said Phillip Sanchez, a fisheries ecologist with the Smithsonian.

'' They're becoming the dominant community, ''  he said. They're pushing everything else out,''

When it comes to the fish, however, it's not exactly clear what getting it right would entail. Adding more fresh water wouldn't necessarily stop invaders from swimming through the new locks.

Putting up electric barriers or curtains of air bubbles might keep some species out but not others. Barriers might also impede ship traffic.

With many invasive species, you can't predict whether they'll quietly live in their new homes or '' blow up, '' said Bella Galil, the curator emerita of crustaceans at the Steinhart Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv.

This Master Publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks Raymond Zhong.