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The bigger you are, the harder you fall

By Fred Pearce

30 March 2002

THE big beasts are doomed. That’s the bleak message from a marine biologist who has found that body size is an excellent predictor of which fish species are likely to become extinct. And he says the same rule should apply to land animals, insects and even plants.

Nick Dulvy from the University of East Anglia in Norwich was frustrated that few people seemed to have noticed that many fish species are disappearing from the oceans. “Counting fish is an impossible task, so I wanted to find another way of predicting which species were most vulnerable,” says Dulvy.

Luckily, fishers boast…

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