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
After brief rainfall in the heat of summer, the stench of ammonia over seabird colonies can be overpowering. Studies have found they can emit as …
Sharks and Rays
Whale sharks are massive energy-crunching behemoths that, ironically, spend their lives in the most nutrient-poor oceans. Why? Here’s the first paradox of ecology that stumps …
Latest posts about why the oceans are important
Poor people who can’t feed themselves can’t afford to save wildlife. So when we talk about stopping eating fish altogether, we must clearly caveat that with some exceptions. Because eating fish is not only essential for some, it’s may also be essential to protecting some critical fish 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.
The map (below) is the province of Maluku in eastern Indonesia and it has a population of about 2 million. The dots on the map are clusters of villages and the blue oval contains villages that are among the poorest on Earth.
The reason they are so important is because the people of these remote villages are custodians of coral reefs that may be among the few to survive 1.5ºC warming.
This is the latest published strategic information about coral reef conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More from the world’s leading coral reef scientists [2]. The top map shows the global distribution of the world’s most resilient and connected reefs [3]. Blue areas in the map (bottom) show relative scores of performance of coral reef units with respect to 30 measures that overall, determine their resilienceReferring to an ecosystem’s ability to maintain a steady stable-state. The need to build resilience is entirely anthropocentric and symptomatic of ecosystems that are damaged or declining, leading to loss of ecosystem services on which humans depend. More and connectivity.
Indonesia (inside the area marked as a rectangle “B”) contains almost 40% of reef systems identified in the study’s ‘maximum return scenario” i.e. those most likely to be saved by 2050 [1].
In early 2020, associates of mine that run a tourism boat in the region told me that these villages had not been visited for many weeks by freight ships that usually bring food and supplies between the principle islands. The people were starving so they left them with rice to sustain themselves through the uncertain time.
The small islands are fragile coastal ecosystems with indigenous populations completely dependent on the narrow coral reef edges. If they were to deforest their hillsides to plant vegetables, it would lead to erosion and increased nutrientEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More load onto the reefs, and reef ecosystem collapse.
What a small-scale fishery really looks like
This is a project one of my colleagues of TierraMar did in this area where they worked with local women and men, improved village income and reduced non-target bycatch. Yield was increased but only for target species that are well within the scope of sustainable local consumption.
The annual income for the entire island was less than US3,000.
Nonetheless, the project resulted in greater respect and empathy for endangered species and animals such as dugongs, which is a huge result for any project, as it leads to the kind of stewardship that stops larger corporations coming in over the top and taking away the value at a later date.
Importantly, the villagers were able to establish their own ideas and priorities, setting out their own local bylaws to protect their own reefs. It works. However, when outsiders try to restrict fishing it usually doesn’t.
Commercial versus local (sustainable) fishing
The sad truth is that 96 per cent of fisheries-dependent people work in small-scale fisheries like these and are overwhelmingly in developing countries. Meanwhile 86 per cent of fisheries subsidies globally go to large-scale fisheries–predominantly in the private sector from developed countries [4].
We’re already paying the rich to undermine the poorest nations’ ability to conserve the world’s fish.
The fact is, we owe it to the people of these island nations to be able to eat fish, because their dependence on their land, is linked to the preservation of the ecosystems vital to our own climate and food security globally.
The problem is not eating fish, it is who is eating the fish and how much.
If we were wise about this, we would be investing a lot more heavily in creating alternative likelihoods for the world’s poorest, enabling them to fish sustainably while maintaining their connection to country.
- Beyer, Hawthorne & Kennedy, Emma & Beger, Maria & Allen Chen, Chaolun & Cinner, Joshua & Darling, Emily & Eakin, C. Mark & Gates, Ruth & Heron, Scott & Knowlton, Nancy & Obura, David & R. Palumbi, Stephen & Possingham, Hugh & Puotinen, Marjetta & Runting, Rebecca & Skirving, William & Spalding, Mark & Wilson, Kerrie & Wood, Sally & Hoegh-Guldberg, Ove. (2018). Risk-sensitive planning for conserving coral reefs under rapid climate change. Conservation Letters. 11. e12587. 10.1111/conl.12587.
- McClennen, C. (2017) 50 Reefs ICRI Update. December 9, 2017.
- Hoegh-Guldberg, Ove & Kennedy, Emma & Beyer, Hawthorne & McClennen, Caleb & Possingham, Hugh. (2018). Securing a Long-term Future for Coral Reefs. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 33. 10.1016/j.tree.2018.09.006.
- Action for an ocean for all. Rethinking the blue economy to be inclusive, sustainable, fair and for everyone. https://www.iied.org/action-for-ocean-for-all 25 March 2019.
