The world’s oceans are beleaguered by fishing, mining, drilling for oil, and other man-driven activities. Only seven percent of the world’s oceans have any type of protection from these activities or from the dumping of trash and waste. Only about one third of that protected ocean has a high enough level of protection for marine life.
The Pristine Seas Project: Professor Enric Sala and the National Geographic Society launched the Pristine Seas project in 2008 to help create marine reserves to protect ocean waters from overfishing, pollution, and man-made development. Professor Sala’s goal is to preserve up to one third of the world’s oceans for sustaining biodiversity, replenish fish stocks, and storing carbon.
Professor Sala and the Pristine Seas project began their research by identifying and documenting areas on earth that remain largely undamaged by overfishing, pollution, and climate change for the last 500 years. Those areas would provide the benchmark for what future reserves need to aspire to.
The Pristine Seas project has gone on numerous explorations of various parts of the world’s oceans to discover endangered areas and to help establish marine reserves. As the research continues, it will help determine those areas that will need preservation efforts in the future.
The Pristine Seas project reckons that protecting 35 percent of the world’s oceans with the same maximum protection that currently 2.5 percent receives would provide 64 percent of biodiversity benefits, shield 28 percent of sediment held carbon, and increase the global fish catch by 10 million metric tons.
Overfishing: The major environmental risks that face the world’s oceans come from overfishing, disturbed or destroyed habitats, and global warming that increases ocean temperature and also acidity. The fishing industry complains that they are trying to increase fishing tonnage to feed the many billions of human beings on the planet. But Professor Sala counters that the worst enemy of fishing is overfishing. The more areas where fishing is prohibited translates to the more fish species that recover from overfishing and the more fish available for future fishing.
Marine Reserves: Marine reserves protect fishing habitat but permit fishing stocks to spill over into nearby unprotected areas thereby aiding the fishing industry. Professor Sala says they function like an investment account with untouched principal. The annual returns show up in the form of replenished areas that are available for fishing.
Marine reserves also help combat climate change. Marine sediments absorb and store more carbon than the land soil, thereby breaking down carbon dioxide. If these underwater fields of sediment are left undisturbed, the stored carbon can be retained for thousands of years. If the sediments are disturbed by seabed mining or trawling, the stored carbon is release back into the environment.
Conclusions: The current and future generations that live on this planet have a long way to go to restore and protect the oceans. Only 7% of the earth’s oceans have any protection at all. The National Geographic’s Pristine Seas project believes that raising that percentage to only 35 % will reap major biodiversity benefits, protect carbon-holding sediments on the ocean floor, and increase the global fish catch by 10 million metric tons.
Sources: The Power of Protection, Kennedy Warne, National Geographic, September, 2020.
David, I am beginning to lose faith in humans realizing their mistakes and taking action to do something about them. I hate doom and gloom predictions, but I fear the only thing that will save this planet is a catastrophic event that reduces the human population. Thanks for the posts.
Don