by simon
Why are the oceans important? The importance of wildlife.

The importance of the oceans, their wildlife and ecosystems

The land and oceans are part of one system: Earth. So when we ask, why are the oceans important? We’re asking about our own future. Life began in the ocean billions of years before the first plants or animals colonised land. Oceans regulate the state of our atmosphere because they are 99 per cent of the volume of living space for animals and wildlife is the mechanism that drives stability.

Climate change has always been the symptom of biodiversity loss … that’s to say, the breakdown of the complex connectivity between lifeforms that allows Earth to flex in response to changing conditions. Ocean wildlife has, for the large part, acted as a buffer against the most catastrophic effects and since about fifty million years ago, has kept our climate quite stable.

Industrial fishing only happened recently in our planet’s history and this reduction in the abundance of wildlife represents our greatest challenge for survival.

Below you will find a range of articles designed to inspire an understanding of the magnitude of animal impact on our oceans.

What’s more important, the ocean or the land?

The importance we bestow on the land is anthropocentric because we live there. It’s naturally important to us that we protect it. Nonetheless, if life in the ocean dies, we suffer irreversible changes to land-based ecosystems and climate.

In this article, we take a look at many of the ways that land and oceans are linked together.

The answer to the question, ‘why are the oceans important’, is that we live on the land but the oceans regulate Earth’s temperature. The oceans are equally vital to the land we live on.

Latest posts about why the oceans are important

Galapagos Penguin and the Pacific Equatorial Countercurrent. Drawing, Simon Mustoe

Life is serendipitous as we’re all victims of circumstance, born into our local environment. The Galápagos Penguins’ Pacific climate deal ensures that it can survive but only just.

This animal owes its existence to freak coincidences that began four million years ago when a crack in the ocean crust formed, about the same time as an ice-age retreat [1]. Lava spilt forth and the famous Galápagos islands were formed, becoming a hotbed of evolution and inspiring Darwin’s theories. These avian castaways carved a living in the new world through hundreds-of-thousands of years of unintentional trial and error. By chance they still survive today.

Until people arrived in 1535, for the last 10,000 years there is little evidence of extinctions on the Galápagos[2] [3], and the islands’ ecosystems are so new they are still evolving and dynamic.

Limited Pacific travel reduces survival risk

Galápagos Penguins live on the equator. They never see icebergs and being flightless, make a living confined to a small area. Venturing far away isn’t an option for this pint-sized penguin. Heading offshore risks predation by sharks. It also saps valuable energy, both high risk strategies for a small bird in a cold ocean. 

Galapagos Penguin and the Pacific Equatorial Countercurrent. Drawing, Simon Mustoe. Galápagos Penguins' Pacific climate deal
Galapagos Penguin and the Pacific Equatorial Countercurrent. Drawing, Simon Mustoe

To survive the penguins need an abundant and reliable food source within swimming-distance of their nest. In Australia, Little Penguins deliver food daily to newborn chicks. One parent remains at home to keep the fledgling warm. With a maximum swim-speed of about 3kph their effective shopping radius is only 10-20km.

Galápagos Penguins are even more range-constrained. 

Galápagos Penguins need a fair climate for living

The key to Galápagos Penguin survival is an unlikely union with one of the Pacific’s biggest oceanographic features, the Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent. The scale of this ocean feature is vast. It’s 3,500 miles long and 250 miles wide. Yet it’s only provided marginal opportunity for the evolution of this unorthodox seabird. 

The current strengthens and weakens over time. During El Niño, when the Pacific Ocean warms and trade-winds effectively reverse, the current almost stops and Galápagos Penguin populations crash through lack of food. You could say the relationship is a bit one-sided. It is a fascinating example of how sensitively wildlife existence is balanced. 

To understand the significance of any species on Earth, you need to visualise the context of its existence. Human beings are no different. We live within extremely narrow environmental boundaries too. Relatively small changes in the distribution of energy on Earth leads to it becoming uninhabitable.

The Pacific climate and ocean mixing

The Pacific Ocean is a steep-sided mixing bowl. Water flows in a conveyor-belt motion, with the surface in the opposite direction to the bottom.     

A few hundred metres below it moves a mass of 30 million cubic metres a second steadily eastwards. The trade-winds that blow surface water east to west, are created by the rotation of the Earth. It’s these trade winds that reverse during El Niño years, effectively halting its flow.  

The Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent fuels marine ecosystems around the Galápagos Islands. Drawing, Simon Mustoe.
The Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent fuels marine ecosystems around the Galápagos Islands. Drawing, Simon Mustoe.

When the undersea current collides with the Galápagos Islands’ western volcanic slopes, nutrients rise to the surface. The Galápagos Penguins’ Pacific climate deal is similar to ours – we’re not in control.

The thing is, the compromise [on carbon reduction] is between countries and not a compromise with the Earth and that’s really who you need the extension from. When you get an extension, it’s from the teacher. The other students can’t be like, the class decided we’re all getting an extension on this exam. We don’t want to take it until next week. And then the teacher is like, “well that’s cute … you all fail!”

― Hari Kondabolu, The Bugle, December 2019

In the deep waters of the mid-Pacific, there is gargantuan biomass of foraging squid and fish. A voracious food chain generates huge quantities of decay and nutrients. If it were not for these massive currents, they would settle into the abyss. Though when they are swept into tropical coastal waters, which are traditionally resource poor, it nourishes the ecosystem. Ultimately the penguins’ favourite prey flourish and the penguins can enjoy a productive breeding season.

Life on the precipice of existence

Galápagos Penguins are limited to feeding only a couple of kilometres offshore. They also need waddle-able beach-access to colonies. These are distributed along less precipitous coasts of northern and eastern Fernandina and in the Elizabeth Bay area of Isabela. The western islands are closest to the current’s nutrient upwelling action. 

Uncertainty about the strength of the current has meant that Galápagos Penguins have had to adopt more extreme survival strategies than their southern ocean counterparts. All other penguins have a specific breeding season, while Galápagos Penguins reproduce whenever conditions are favourable. Some years they may breed twice, other years not at all. Spreading out across different colonies means populations can ‘hedge’ survival risk. 

Being ready to breed at any time, though, is a costly strategy but one that has served to maintain Galápagos Penguin populations.

A new survival outfit every year

One of the more energy-intensive tasks for any penguin is to moult its body feathers. This is also essential for survival. Moulting is really energy-intensive.It means replacing all feathers in one go while fasting on land for two weeks or more.

Galápagos Penguins lead a life of double jeopardy. Daytime air temperatures on the colony soar to 40ºC while water temperatures are as low as 20ºC. The internal temperature of a moulting bird in seawater can drop by six degrees in just 30 seconds. So, moulting is critical to maintain insulation – it’s literally the bird’s survival suit.    

Galápagos Penguins have a serendipitous existence

Volcanic eruptions 4.2 million years ago created the Galápagos Islands. A new set of conditions for the rapid evolution of species, including Galápagos Penguins, started about 2 million years ago. Their appearance was premised on a geological twist of fate. A crack in the ocean crust appeared and lava was thrown up to create the islands, 1,000km from Ecuador.

These avian cast aways carved out a new ‘niche’ in the only way possible. Through hundreds-of-thousands of years of unintentional trial and error and the Galápagos Penguins’ Pacific climate deal. It’s almost unimaginable how they have persisted for almost two million years. That is what makes them among the most successful and exquisitely adapted species on Earth.

Ecosystems are far more than the sum of their parts

We cannot imagine the impact of Galápagos Penguins, which is why we should not imagine a world without them. The systems that sustain life on Earth are from processes so complex, we can never fully comprehend. Every animal is a part of that.  

Galápagos Penguin teach us is that ecosystems are finely balanced around the interaction of animals with the environment: their ‘ecology’. This arises from influences at a bewildering array of scales from molecular to planet-wide. From the Galápagos Penguin to the animals and birds that live in your local park, we can build similar stories. After all, we all came from the same place. We share the same planet and we all depend on a fair climate for our survival.  


References

1.      Baker, A., et al., Multiple gene evidence for expansion of extant penguins out of Antarctica due to global cooling. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 2006. 273: p. 11-7.

2.      Steadman, D., et al., Chronology of Holocene vertebrate extinction in the Galápagos Islands. Quaternary Research, 1991. 36: p. 126-133.

3.      Steinfurth, A. Marine ecology and conservation of the Galápagos penguin, Spheniscus mendiculus. 2007.

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