UnNews:Motorboats blamed for plankton deaths

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21 April 2011

It is difficult to tell when zooplankton are dead because they don't look any different from when they're alive.

BERGEN, Norway -- A study has revealed that turbulence generated by speeding motor boats kills significant numbers of zooplankton.

Experiments on copepods, tiny crustaceans that live in water, show that a third die in waters frequented by propeller-driven boats. That is slightly higher than in bodies of water not used by boats.

This has come as a shock to some scientists, who have called for an end to unnecessary motorboating. "Zooplankton play a crucial role in water ecology and their deaths may have hitherto unknown impacts," a marine biologist told our reporter.

Others have been more sceptical. Motor boat enthusiast Richard A. Dick stated that: "Nobody gives a shit about zooplankton. I'm too busy driving my motor boat with a bunch of sexy ladies to watch out for holoplanktonic pedestrians. What the hell are zooplankton anyway?" Mr Dick's boat was later overturned by an unidentified force.

Animal Rescue, a popular charity dedicated to preventing the mistreatment of animals, has been called in to help. Unfortunately they were unable to do anything as they only deal with "cute" animals. "We only get government funding to save the animals people actually care about," their representative told us. "We can't waste our meagre budget on these ugly, barely-sentient crabs when there are fluffy badgers that need saving!" That evening, the staff of Animal Rescue headquarters in New York fled the building in terror - local police managed to piece together several hysterical accounts, many of which stated they were driven out by the souls of dead zooplankton.

Generally, the feeling that this is unimportant is widespread. When questioned by protestors, US President Barack Obama said: "When viewed at a global scale, the portion of zooplankton killed by boat-generated turbulence is probably minimal." Moments later, the president had to run for his life when an unexplained tidal wave smashed through the Oval Office. He narrowly escaped, but Vice President Biden sadly drowned.

In a related incident, a strange message was found written on a Norwegian beach in ten foot high letters, it read: "The dead will be avenged. Humanity will be wiped from this Earth. The time of the zooplankton has come!" Experts are unsure on the source or meaning of the message.

Sources

• Matt Walker "Motor boat turbulence kills zooplankton in estuaries" BBC News, April 19, 2011