What happened to all the marine life underwater in the Indian Ocean?

[tedzbear]

As the waves traveled thru the ocean at 500 mph, does it knock the animals around who are swimming under water?
Or do they just bob around like I do when I'm floating over a wave before it breaks at the beach?

I guess the energy is traveling at 500 mph through the water, not the water itself.

Hello science majors???

[tk2kewl]

1. I don't think it has any effect on marine life in deep water

but i read in the paper today or yesterday that it can really screw up nearshore marine habitat because it destroys the bottom and vegetation

[Maple]

2. Well a lot of it is lying dead

on the beaches of those countries. Mixed in with the human bodies.

[TahitiNut]

4. Only the coastal pelagics ... and not all, or even most.

The reef sharks, however, are getting their bellies full. (They're scavengers.)

[Inland]

3. Nothing.

The bobbing analogy is a good one. The wave only takes a crest when it gets close to shore. Somebody on the tube said a boat on the ocean wouldn't even notice the wave.

[TahitiNut]

5. There were scuba divers down ... and except for a tidal ebb and flow

... were unscathed. The death comes from drowning (which doesn't happen to sea life) and trauma (which affects larger land mammals more than pelagics) from the crested wave and the flooding.

[arcos]

6. Nothing... here's the story of a diver...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/28/tsunami.diver/

(CNN) -- An American woman who was scuba diving with her husband in Thailand as one of Sunday's tsunamis roared overhead said she was oblivious to the disaster until after they surfaced, her mother told CNN on Tuesday.

Faye Wachs, 34, was diving with her husband, Eugene Kim, Sunday morning off Ko Phi Phi Island in Thailand when they noticed the water visibility worsened and felt as though they were being sucked downward, Helen Wachs said.

Their dive master signaled to them to surface, "but we still didn't know what happened," Faye wrote in an e-mail to her mother Tuesday.

The enormity of what was happening while they were scuba diving was not immediately apparent after they surfaced, Helen Wachs said her daughter told her.

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. Coastal ecosystems could be seriously damaged by erosion

Animals that attach to the bottom near the shore could be ripped off, and if sand or other near-beach material is eroded away, then what is left behind will determine what can re-colonize. Swimming forms are going to be mostly OK unless carried inland and stranded, or unless their living area has been wiped out.

[Blue Diadem]

8. I heard something on

TV not sure what channel, about dead sharks laying around. They were discussing all the possible diseases that can occur and they brought up human bodies, dead animals and the dead sharks. I actually think they mentioned dead croc's too..but I can't be sure of that. I would think maybe they got battered to death upon being washed ashore.

I also saw a pic somewhere of a dead octopus laying amidst the debris.

[shance]

9. Nothing? Do some of you say that to feel better and avoid the reality of

the damage it does?

Im editing because I was posting regarding testing going on in the Indian ocean. Apologies***

[DrWeird]

10. No, it wasn't a nuclear bomb. It was an earthquake.

A 9.0. So if you're wondering, that's about as much energy released as a million Hiroshimas.

But earthquakes and nuclear explosions are two different things. First off, most of the energy of an earthquake is used to move the earth. Being at the epicenter of this quake for a fish would be like being at an earthquake on the San Andreas, only less so, since a since a fish can't fall down and scrape its knees, or have shelving fall on its head.

Secondly, the deaths on land is do to drownings (it's hard to drown a fish) and being hit by debris. If you were on a ship at sea you'd hardly notice a tsunami. It's only when it's amplfied by shallow water that it becomes a problem. I'd much rather have been floating on a surfboard in the water than strolling along the beach that day.

Wishful thinking? No, we just know how tsunamis work. Most of us passed high school science. But I can't speak for anyone else, I care a lot more about the 60,000+ human being that lost their lives than a few sharks and octopi.

[shance]

11. There is quite a blending of many different situations/stories/theories

I was reading earlier about testing going on in the Indian ocean and how that has been greatly affecting the large mammals and wildlife there.

Earlier here at DU, there were shoot outs going on about the earthquake being man made or not man made/live or memorex.

I believe both nature and homo sapiens played a part in the earthquake in addition the wealth of natural imbalances taking place around the planet.

It all seems to be playing in to the same equation, and for whatever reasons, we do have a multitude of large mammals and ocean wildlife dying and being beached at shores. And of course I feel for us as a species tremendously, animals are the easy victims so often of our carelessness, our ways of living, and our so called "advancements".

[DrWeird]

12. Anybody who says it was man made isn't worth listening to.

That degree of scientific illiteracy and out and out stupidity is contemptable.