SCIENCE

Interior Department spokesman Hugh Vickery said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide whether the petition merits a full review.

"Obviously, not all petitions are created equal," Vickery said. "The key question is whether the petition presents sufficient scientific evidence."

The species listed in the petition are Emperors, Southern Rockhopper, Northern Rockhopper, Fiordland Crested, Snares Crested, Erect-crested, Macaroni, Royal, White-flippered, Yellow-eyed, African and Humboldt.

Brendan Cummings, who directs the Center for Biological Diversity's oceans program, said overfishing has affected some species, such as the Humboldt and African penguins. "It's essentially food competition," he said.

-- Juliet Eilperin

Sea Grass Loss Said to Be Crisis

Sea grasses, which grow in underwater meadows along many coastlines, are essential to the well-being of many marine species and to the health of coastal ecosystems. But they are sensitive to pollution and sudden explosions of underwater nutrients, and are endangered in many places.

"Seagrasses are the coal-mine canaries of coastal ecosystems," according to William Dennison of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, co-author of a report in this month's issue of the journal BioScience. "The fate of seagrasses can provide resource managers advance signs of deteriorating ecological conditions caused by poor water quality and pollution."

The researchers found that the undersea meadows, which rival rice paddies in their rate of photosynthesis and are important nurseries and habitat for many fish and prawns, are on the decline from the eastern Mediterranean to Japan to the Chesapeake Bay; the decline parallels drops in the health of coral reefs, salt marshes and coastal mangrove forests. The authors said human activity has the most direct and immediate impact on sea grasses.

Sea grasses, which flower underwater, evolved from land plants during the time of the dinosaurs and have adapted to a fully submerged existence. There are only 55 species, compared with 5,000 to 6,000 species of seaweed, which is a form of algae.

The authors wrote that the loss of sea grasses is a "crisis" that is being ignored compared with the attention paid to coral reefs and salt marshes.

-- Marc Kaufman