Alarming report on the health of our oceans

The sheer vastness of the oceans on this planet make it seem almost impossible that our actions could bring them to the point of no return, but a new report has found that we are causing an alarming decline of marine ecosystems and the species who rely on them.

According to the World Wildlife Fund‘s (WWF) recently released Living Blue Planet Report, marine populations have declined by an astonishing 49 percent between 1970 and 2012, with with some fish species, including tuna, declining by almost 75 percent. The report is based on trends of 5,829 populations of 1,234 mammal, bird, reptile and fish species found in the Living Planet Index, which is maintained by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

“The ocean works hard in the background to keep us alive, generating half of the world’s oxygen and absorbing almost a third of the carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels. It also feeds billions of people around the globe, some of whom rely solely on the oceans to survive. These devastating figures reveal how quickly human beings are changing the wildlife in our oceans and are a stark warning of the problems we might face as a result,” said Professor Ken Norris, Director of Science at ZSL.

The dramatic decrease is unsurprisingly driven mainly by human activities ranging from overfishing, resource extraction, pollution and development to climate change, which is causing warming and acidification.

Source:

Environmental News Network. 20 Sept, 2015.  http://www.enn.com/topics/climate

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