On April 13, 2029 the asteroid Apofiz-99942 will be at its closest distance to the Earth for 200 years, Smirnov said.

The asteroid will pass the Earth at a distance of 30,000 to 40,000 km. "This crosses the geo-stationary orbit, where all the telecommunications and a lot of military satellites are," he said.

Whatever happens, the Earth will feel the effect of the asteroid, and in the worst case, it will collide with the Earth, and at best it will damage equipment in space in the geo-stationary orbit.

"If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime -- by 2048,'' Worm said. "It is a very clear trend.''

The scientists found that the risk of a species dying out increases when it shares an ecosystem with fewer other creatures. The loss of wildlife also affects the quality of the water, which becomes more polluted, they said.

"The elimination of locally adapted populations and species not only impairs the ability of marine ecosystems to feed a growing human population but also sabotages their stability and recovery potential,'' the scientists said. "Business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality, and ecosystem stability.''

Maintaining a variety of fish in an area means the fishing industry can choose from several targets, giving an over-fished species a chance to recover, the scientists said.

Regional Extinctions

Over-fishing has already led to the extinction of species in some regions. These include the bluefin tuna in the Baltic Sea, the Atlantic sturgeon in the U.S. East Coast's Chesapeake Bay, and the gray whale, Atlantic salmon and European oyster in the Wadden Sea off the Netherlands.

The decline in the stocks of fishing grounds can be stopped by the establishment of protected marine reserves, the scientists found after studying 44 such areas. Closing the fisheries and creating reserves led to a 23 percent average increase in species diversity, they said. At the same time, fishing around the reserves became four times more productive.

"We can turn this around,'' Worm said. "We won't see complete recovery in one year, but in many cases species come back more quickly than people anticipated -- in three to five to 10 years. And where this has been done we see immediate economic benefits.''

Aside from seafood, the "services'' provided by marine creatures include the filtration and detoxification of water, and the processing of carbon dioxide into food and oxygen. Coastal habitats such as mangroves and marshland also provide a defense against flooding.

The scientists conducted experiments, examined coastal areas and analyzed data from the world's main ocean fishing sites to gauge the effect of species diversity on survival.

TV scientist Olivia Judson and journalist Giles Coren travel the world to visit the places where these animals are now being reared. There is even a genuine "allotment" of growing human noses.

Channel 4 director of television Kevin Lygo said: "This is an exciting science series about genetic modification. Everything on the Channel 4 Farm is real. You may think these creatures are the future but they are the reality, living right now.

"We've discussed how to do science endlessly and how to make it accessible and I think this does just that. It's looking at what is going on, what it means and asking what the implications are for our world. It's high time someone did this on telly."

The channel also unveiled a new TV reality series starring show business mogul Harvey Goldsmith, to be screened in February, in which he takes six failing entertainment businesses and aims to place them back on the road to success.

Channel 4 is keeping the identities of the six under wraps, but said they include a well known British pop star who disappeared to Hollywood and has not been seen since, a British heavy metal band with a European following but ignored in the UK and a local radio station with big-name DJs but small audiences.

Goldsmith is renowned for his blunt talking attitude and colourful language. A sneak preview of the pilot of Harvey Goldsmith Presents shows him branding a struggling circus a "complete shit heap" and DJ Mike Reid as having "lost the plot".

Also unveiled today as part of Channel 4's winter season is a new Apprentice-style TV show in which Jamie Oliver offers one disadvantaged youth the chance to run a restaurant.

The documentary series, Cutting The Apron Strings, will pick up where Jamie's Kitchen left off four years ago, gathering the unemployed trainees he recruited to man Fifteen and offering one the chance to manage his or her own venture. Oliver's charitable Fifteen Foundation-has bought a pub in Essex from which to run the project.

Oliver said today: "Never underestimate what young people can do once they've got their heart in the right place."

Other highlights include Mark Of Cain, an incendiary new drama about young British soldiers in Iraq by acclaimed writer Tony Marchant.

An eight-part drama starring David Morrissey, Kate Wrath, tells of a family moved to a Utopian town under a witness protection scheme - but enters spooky David Lynch territory as they discover everyone else there is also under witness protection.

Americans failed to meet the Montreal Protocol deadline and since have been getting annual exemptions allowing methyl bromide's continued use on certain crops in specific states. Other nations have sought far smaller exemptions.

The latest exemption requests are being considered this week at an international meeting in New Delhi, India.

Though smaller than prior years, the amount of methyl bromide the United States wants approved for 2008 concerns some allies, especially given the stockpiles.

The U.S. request "is certainly undermining the spirit of the Montreal Protocol and setting a bad example for other countries, especially developing countries, and their aspirations to comply with the ban," Swedish delegate Husamuddin Ahmadzai said. "Everybody is concerned with the issue."

This year marks the first time other nations, trying to curtail new methyl bromide production, have seen the size of the U.S. stockpile.

The administration says the inventory is needed to ease growers' adjustment to the methyl bromide phase-out that was ordered 14 years ago. Importantly, they say, both stockpiles and production are steadily declining.

Each year, countries seek treaty exemptions for so-called critical needs. U.S. officials want allocations for growers of tomatoes, strawberries, peppers and other crops who mostly use the potent chemical to destroy pests before planting. The restrictions have pushed many farmers to switch to other pesticides, but the United States says the substitutes don't work in all cases.

Negotiators met behind closed doors Thursday to tackle exemptions for 2008. Dissension emerged in a technical committee report that recommended substantially paring the U.S. request for nearly 7,100 tons, an amount greater than the other nations' combined.

The Bush administration says the stockpiles existed before the 2005 ban and thus are not subject to the same restrictions as newly produced methyl bromide.

"The U.S. position is that we are appropriately managing the strategic reserve," said Drusilla Hufford, director of the
Environmental Protection Agency's stratospheric protection division. "We've drawn it down every year."

She said the United States has spent $150 million on alternative pesticides and has achieved a 75 percent reduction from 1991 methyl bromide levels.

"There's a lot going on but in order to continue the progress so you don't have supply shocks or sudden unanticipated changes in the market, we found in the past that it is useful and helpful to the cause of ozone protection to have that reserve," she said.

Environmental advocates say the stockpiles far surpass what is needed for a market cushion. They say the U.S. approach undercuts the goal of limiting methyl bromide because stockpiles can be used to meet demands that the treaty has rejected.

"Imagine if a country used this approach for narcotics. It would be as though we strictly controlled doctors' and patients' access to morphine for essential medical needs, like pain relief, but let anyone else take as much as they want from the storeroom," said David Doniger, climate policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. In New Delhi, he urged treaty countries to block further U.S. production.

Former EPA Administrator William Reilly said the current U.S. stance, 14 years after methyl bromide was added to the treaty's target list, undercuts world efforts to protect the Earth's ozone.

"The point of the Montreal Protocol was to get us out of ozone depleters and provide a certain transition, with some small exemptions," he said. "We provided for that, but a 14-year transition is a little hard to justify for mainline uses."

The EPA in September disclosed that the methyl bromide inventory, owned by 35 companies, reached almost 11,000 tons at the beginning of this year, down from more than 18,000 tons two years earlier.

U.S. farmers are allowed nearly 8,900 tons this year under treaty exemptions, of which about 7,600 tons could be newly manufactured or imported. The rest would be drawn from stockpiles.