Wow who could have thought fish could live in such a harsh environment I'm sure quite a few of them pulled through
Given slow enough changes and long enough time frames, living creatures can adapt to a
really astounding variety of conditions. Generally, although this is massively oversimplifying
the idea, evolution broadly goes along the concepts of 'find more food' or 'don't die here'.
So if a species has a robust enough genetic heritage then changes over time in the environment
will allow the members of a species that are most successful at exploiting the new niche,
conditions, or resources to out compete and out breed other less successful members. Hence
we wind up with desert pupfish, deep sea angler fish, and all sorts of other oddball creatures
taking advantage of hyper specific niches. Given time even the purple sea urchin overpopulation
issue will resolve itself (with time meaning thousands or tens of thousands of years). The local
environment will be absolute chaos until a new balance is reached though.
It kind of makes me wonder (in a fantastical amused sort of way, not in a seriously contemplative
sort of way) if the legends people have about werewolves and vampires are really primitive
myths or whether they are actually foreshadowing about a new predator species emerging to
take advantage of an overabundant and nutrient rich food source...
