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.
The importance of whales and dolphins in 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.
Seabirds
The necklace of remote Cook Islands landforms is a renowned safe haven for yachties and a sanctuary for 100,000 seabirds birds. But the islets became …
Sharks and Rays
Ecology is a complex science and so often, our simplest assumptions about how things work, don’t hold up in practice. Take sharks for example. How …
Latest posts about why the oceans are important
Here are some of the various subjects I’ve been reading about lately. Three articles on animal autonomy, whale personhood and eating rats. All are very enlightening ideas that relate to animal impactWhat is Animal Impact? Without wildlife, Earth would not be habitable for humans, because it's animals that stabilise ecosystems. It’s a fundamental law of nature that animals (and humans) exist because we are the most likely lifeforms to minimise environmental chaos. Animal impact, therefore, is a measure of how much all wildlife is collectively responsible for creating a habitable Earth. The More and give us pause for thought about ourselves in the mix.
The Whale Sanctuary Project
The Whale Sanctuary Project recently posted:
When we speak of creating sanctuaries for whales, one of the foundational tenets is to provide an environment that “maximizes well-being and autonomy”. We all know what well-being is, and we continue to learn more about “whale-being”, but what exactly is autonomy? It is defined as the state or condition of self-governance, self-determination, or leading one’s life according to reasons, values, or desires that are authentically one’s own.
Autonomy is a natural condition for animals in the wild. They are self-governing, guided by the rhythms and patterns of nature that their ancestors have lived by for millions of years.
When confined in the artificial environments of captivity, autonomy is one of the first – and most fundamental – intrinsic rights taken from animals. They become ruled by human will, constricted into human time, and these environments are the complete inverse of their lives in the wild.
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This fascinated me. Immediately it reminds me of the autonomy we all sacrifice as being humans. Whales, of course, have complex and strict societal structures and rules around their communal existence … while maintaining their autonomy to ‘be wild’. Which in my book (literally, my book Wildlife in the Balance’) means existing to balance and create the habitable environment around you, in synchrony with other animals around you. Despite killing other whales, Killer Whales have found that balance. We have a lot to learn about being good animals ourselves.
Change.org: Vote for personhood recognition of whales
If autonomy is an inherent foundation for survival (and we all co-depend on this), then why not better recognise the rights of whales? This is what Bonnie Monteleone of the Pacific Ocean Project is trying to do.
If you think this is strange, remember that for thousands of years, animals were given these sorts of rights by people. Most indigenous people survived by electing members of their tribe to represent certain animals. These are sometimes called ‘totems.’ People were often chosen by the animals, as having a particular connection, and would speak on their behalf. This is what Ralph Chami is doing here at the United Nations.
Antarctica doesn’t have indigenous humans to help make decisions about the welfare of its ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More. Since humans and all other animals exist in a tangled web of interaction that gives them a shared future … why not share some of the decisions with other animals, for their welfare? Like this perhaps …
Join the growing call for the designation of #personhood” for whales, now supported by #Maori tribes across the pacific. This status has been awarded #bees in #CostaRica, #seaturtles in Panama, and a river in #NewZealand. Since #whales migrate across the oceans visiting many countries, they need to be protected at a global level.
Have your say here: https://chng.it/NhgfkdGVyF
Will we end up eating rats? Tyson thinks so
Tyson Yunkaporta writes:
I’m making tiny boomerangs (on my computer!) to work though an inquiry into the implications of evolutionary pressure towards mammalian dwarfism in Australia in coming decades.
Last time we had this kind of climate change (drying and warming) our megafaunaThe largest animals that represent the top of the trophic pyramid. These are the final building blocks in ecosystem structures for maximum entropy production. Megafauna can be measured at any spatial scale. The largest animal that ever lived on Earth is the Blue Whale. In a grassland, spiders could be considered megafauna The term is generally reserved for animals larger More scaled down to human/roo size. This time we think smaller, like rat/cat size, and that’s what we’ll be hunting for meat if we can’t afford a 500 dollar beefsteak. Over a couple decades, maybe.
And then over two centuries we humans would shrink as well. (About time. Huge Mammoth-hunting dudes became irrelevant millennia ago.)
What will Australasian pygmy futures look like? Built environments, economies, governance, environmental care, food systems…
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As we erode the structures that supported humans today we make way for what we call ‘pests’ today. They are only pests because our bodies are designed to live alongside larger animals. It makes sense that we would need to adapt to survive in the new Earth we’ve created for ourselves. A fascinating insight from a wonderful thinker.
