Stronger Laws, Global Baseline May Slow Marine Biodiversity Loss
Filed under: Census of Marine Life,Discovery,News & Resources
(Click to enlarge image) A school of fish at the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.
Census of Marine Life 2010 will provide first global baseline for sea life
(From America.gov / by Cheryl Pellerin) — Washington — The rich array of animals and plants in the oceans is being damaged by overfishing, pollution and the many effects of a changing climate, but some of the harm is being reversed by powerful national laws and new approaches to monitoring and managing Earth’s marine biodiversity.
More than 230,000 known species of marine plants and animals, ranging from microbes to whales, play critical roles in many of the processes that hold the biosphere in balance. From ocean life, for example, comes about 100 million tons of food every year, along with natural substances and ingredients for biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.
Marine ecosystems produce and mineralize organic material and store carbon dioxide. They also store pollutants and waste products from land and lessen the effects of climate and climate change. Mangroves, dune-beach systems and coral reefs protect coastal areas.
“Marine biodiversity is a contributor to worldwide food security,” Steven Murawski, director of scientific programs and chief science adviser for the National Marine Fisheries Service, told America.gov April 7. “We know that for 20 percent of the world’s population, marine protein is the major source of protein in their diet. Over 1 billion people on the planet are vitally interested in preserving biodiversity for the food value.”
Recent reports show that a significant proportion of the world’s fisheries is overfished, he added, meaning that their rate of extraction is greater than the rate of replacement.
“Other human uses of marine biodiversity are also pivotal,” he said. “Tourism in the world around the coasts in many areas is vitally linked to things like healthy coral reefs and recreational fishing, whale watching, snorkeling — a whole variety of uses.”
THREAT AND PROMISE
The most critical contributors to changes in marine biodiversity, according to experts, are fishing and removal of the ocean’s invertebrate (jellyfish, sponges, octopus, squid) and plant stocks, many of which are overexploited; chemical pollution; physical alterations to coastal habitats; invasions of exotic species; and global climate change.
These activities have dramatically reduced the number of edible fish and shellfish; reduced or caused the loss of species important for biomedical products; altered coastal habitats such as coral reefs, bays, marshes, rocky shores and beaches; and created vast changes in the species composition and abundance of ecologically important animals and plants.
(Click to enlarge image) This photo from the Census of Marine Life shows brittle stars, relatives of sea stars and sea cucumbers.
But there’s also good news for marine life.
“The United States has one of the most powerful laws for fishery management in the world,” Murawski said. “The Magnuson-Stevens [Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006] says that by 2010 — this year — we have to eliminate overfishing in the United States, which means putting in more control mechanisms to catch only what the ecosystem produces on an annual basis.”
Several other countries have adopted a similar law or made their own laws stronger, he said, some in response to a 2002 call by the World Summit on Sustainable Development to restore depleted fish stocks worldwide by 2015.
In October 2009, the Fisheries Service released Our Living Oceans: Report on the Status of U.S. Living Marine Resources, which the agency calls “a report card to the American public.” Murawski called it a “landmark document” that he measures against a similar report published in 1999.
“Overall, we’ve made a lot of progress on ending overfishing,” Murawski said. “For example, in 1999, we had 77 stocks around the country where overfishing was occurring. Now we’ve got it down to 38 stocks where overfishing is occurring, primarily on the Atlantic seaboard and in the Gulf of Mexico.” According to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the Fisheries Service will have to deal with those 38 stocks by the end of the year.
CENSUS OF MARINE LIFE
In October of this year, the organization behind the Census of Marine Life will release the world’s first assessment and explanation of the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the oceans. Scientists and researchers in more than 80 nations, including the United States, have been engaged in this 10-year effort.
According to the Census of Marine Life Web site, much of the ocean is unexplored and most of the records in the Census database are for observations from the surface down to 1,000 meters. No observations have been made in most of the deep ocean, and most of the ocean is deep.
Since the Census of Marine Life began in 2000, researchers have added more than 5,600 species to the list of 230,000 known species and will add more this year. The database of the Census already includes more than 16 million records, old and new. By October, the goal is to have all the old and the new species in an online encyclopedia with a Web page for every species. The project will also estimate how many species remain to be discovered.
“If we want to know if marine ecosystems are becoming less or more diverse, we need a place to start,” Murawski said. “We can’t go back to pre-human times — we only have a geological record from that time. So this is really the first global baseline.”
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(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
