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20 June 2011 Last updated at 08:24 ET
World's oceans in 'shocking' decline
Richard Black By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

BBC News - World's oceans in 'shocking' decline
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13796479

The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to
an expert panel of scientists.

In a new report, they warn that ocean life is "at high risk of entering
a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history".

They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate
change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.

The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.

The panel was convened by the International Programme on the State of
the Ocean (IPSO), and brought together experts from different
disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and
fisheries scientists.

Its report will be formally released later this week.

"The findings are shocking," said Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific
director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University.

"As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the
oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.

"We've sat in one forum and spoken to each other about what we're
seeing, and we've ended up with a picture showing that almost right
across the board we're seeing changes that are happening faster than
we'd thought, or in ways that we didn't expect to see for hundreds of
years."
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“Start Quote

    The challenges are vast; but unlike previous generations, we know
what now needs to happen”

Dan Laffoley IUCN

These "accelerated" changes include melting of Arctic sea ice and the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, sea level rise, and release of
methane trapped in the sea bed.

But more worrying than this, the team noted, are the ways in which
different issues act synergistically to increase threats to marine life.

Some pollutants, for example, stick to the surfaces of tiny plastic
particles that are now found in the ocean bed.

This increases the amounts of these pollutants that are consumed by
bottom-feeding fish.

Plastic particles also assist the transport of algae from place to
place, increasing the occurrence of toxic algal blooms - which are also
caused by the influx of nutrient-rich pollution from agricultural land.

In a wider sense, ocean acidification, warming, local pollution and
overfishing are acting together to increase the threat to coral reefs -
so much so that three-quarters of the world's reefs are at risk of
severe decline.
Carbon deposits

Life on Earth has gone through five "mass extinction events" caused by
events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity's
combined impact is causing a sixth such event.
Fish at market Some marine fish are already fished way beyond their
limits - and may also be affected by other threats

The IPSO report concludes that it is too early to say definitively.

But the trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say - and far
faster than any of the previous five.

"What we're seeing at the moment is unprecedented in the fossil record -
the environmental changes are much more rapid," Professor Rogers told
BBC News.

"We've still got most of the world's biodiversity, but the actual rate
of extinction is much higher [than in past events] - and what we face is
certainly a globally significant extinction event."

The report also notes that previous mass extinction events have been
associated with trends being observed now - disturbances of the carbon
cycle, and acidification and hypoxia (depletion of oxygen) of seawater.

Levels of CO2 being absorbed by the oceans are already far greater than
during the great extinction of marine species 55 million years ago
(during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum), it concludes.
Blue planet

The report's conclusions will be presented at UN headquarters in New
York this week, when government delegates begin discussions on reforming
governance of the oceans.
Flowers between solar panels In the long run, greenhouse gas emissions
must be cut to conserve ocean life, the report concludes

IPSO's immediate recommendations include:

    stopping exploitative fishing now, with special emphasis on the
high seas where currently there is little effective regulation
    mapping and then reducing the input of pollutants including
plastics, agricultural fertilisers and human waste
    making sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon dioxide levels are now so high, it says, that ways of pulling the
gas out of the atmosphere need to be researched urgently - but not using
techniques, such as iron fertilisation, that lead to more CO2 entering
the oceans.

"The challenges for the future of the ocean are vast; but unlike
previous generations, we know what now needs to happen," said Dan
Laffoley, marine chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas and an
adviser to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

"The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now."
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Acid oceans turn 'Nemo' fish deaf 31 MAY 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13605113
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Related Internet links

    IPSO  http://www.stateoftheocean.org/
    IUCN  http://www.iucn.org/

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