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
Posters in Scotland have conservationists all of a flutter. They claim that seagulls pollute the sea. The answer to the question: ‘Can seagulls pollute the …
Sharks and Rays
Why are sharks important? Is a question I put to the head of global conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals …
Latest posts about why the oceans are important
How Blue Whales help regulate climate is by stirring and fertilising the ocean. In Indonesia’s Banda Sea, just north of Australia, they contribute to cold layer mixing and significantly contribute to cooling the planet. Acting like the pump on a fridge, this process moderates global weather. Australia happens to be on the hot-side of the process, so when the intensity of the feeding event in 2019 increased, due to a longer-than-normal monsoon season, it increased the effect of Australia’s bushfires.
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Each year when the Central Asian plateau warms and air rushes up the sides of Mount Everest, the winds that are sucked in over the Banda Sea from the south east, drive upwellings that attract Blue Whales to feed on an abundance of planktonA soup of micro-organisms. Usually refers to all the zooplankton and algae in the ocean but can also be used to describe tiny insects in the atmosphere (see aerial plankton). More. In late 2019, Blue Whales had a prolonged feeding season and were in particularly large numbers in the shadow of Banda Neira’s main volcano. It was also a bumper year for Hammerhead Sharks.
Climate, Whales and the Indian Ocean Dipole
In any normal southeast monsoon season, the Banda Sea surface cools by about three degrees, compared to other times of year but it only takes a fluctuation of about 1.2ºC to trigger the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), a climate phenomenon that drives Australia’s weather systems and agriculture. 2019 was one of the most persistent IODs recorded and the southeast monsoon winds continued weeks longer than normal.
The prolonged monsoon winds meant the whales could feed more actively, thus reducing world temperatures, by pumping harder. Animals are Earth’s cooling pumps and if they break down completely, we have an even bigger climate problem.
We don’t appreciate that marine vertebrates are responsible for up to a third of ocean mixing, equivalent to all tides and wind combined. The top 150m layer of the Banda Sea is warm water from the Pacific and flows in one direction, while below it, is cooler water flowing in the opposite direction, emanating from the deep. Whales, sharks and fish, swim up and down through the boundary layer, stirring the cool and warm water, driving the system like a massive refrigeration pump.
The unusually strong winds meant an abundance of plankton, so Blue Whales and other animals went into over-drive, feeding longer and more persistently, forcing even greater mixing and cooling. The whales also lift nutrientsEnergy 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 to the surface where sulfides oxydise with ammonia from seabirds and fish droppings, creating cloud seeds. This way, seabird colonies influence rainfall on a continental scale. The cloud albedo effect also reflects the Sun’s heat and further cools the ocean.
Why are bushfires worse when the climate cools?
Cooler conditions means drier air and combined with southeast winds and the hot Australian desert, makes for little or no rainfall. In 2019, this led catastrophic bushfires.
Blue Whales regulate climate because they are a significant component in ocean cooling. It’s not just about Blue Whales though. The Banda Sea has a staggering density and diversity of wildlife. Just as significant are the sharks, turtles, fish and seabirds. They all hold up their pillar of the food pyramid and are doing their part to keep these life support planetary systems under control.
Ironically, this does mean that the whales and other marine life, contributed to the bushfires and destruction of huge areas of farmland and forest across southeast Australia in 2019. Animals are part of climate-ecosystem-coupled process and feeding is a mechanism to lock free energyThe energy of a system that is emitted as waste and is not part of ecosystem processes. There is always some free surplus energy as this creates the basis for evolution where new species exploit gaps in the ecosystem where free energy becomes available. Surplus energy can occur as a result of disruption or disturbance. When free surplus energy reaches More safely away from the atmosphere and oceans (because animals that can feed and evolve successfully must, by definition, be able to stabilise their environment).
But this makes the strongest case for the 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 of Blue Whales and all wildlife, when you realise the story in full. Banda’s Blue Whales are a portent of what happens when we allow wildlife populations to decline. BiodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More collapse means 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 become hotter and more unpredictable, which debilitates farming and fisheries. The oceans aren’t habitable – our world isn’t habitable, without marine animals to regulate climate.
Why must we conserve animals such as whales to regulate our climate
At the back of your fridge, the pipes that flow around the coolant can get very hot. If you remove the processes that circulate the coolant, your compressor can overheat and cause a kitchen fire. You don’t disable the pump to fix the problem, you replace it, so your fridge doesn’t get damaged.
In 2019, Blue Whales were responding to an enormous influx of free energy which was the consequence of global heating. The kitchen that was threatening to burn, was Australia’s backyard. The prolonged monsoon winds meant the whales could feed more actively, thus reducing world temperatures, by pumping harder. Animals are Earth’s cooling pumps and if they break down completely, we have an even bigger climate problem.
Unfortunately, bushfires in 2019 were a by-product of a climate that has changed due to the loss of animals already. In the last few hundred years, there has been a massive 96% decline in the movement of marine vertebrates around the world. In the Banda Sea alone, most vertebrate populations have been reduced by 90% in the last 50 years.
Animals were moderating Earth’s heat engine well before we started burning fossil fuels so if we have any chance of avoiding catastrophic events in future, even if we reach our 2050 carbon-reduction targets, we are going to need to not only conserve, but rebuild animal populations too.
As for Australia, we happen to live on the wrong side of the cooling system … the side that gets hot when the pumps are working overtime. This means we have a lot more to lose than other nations.
The take-home message is that our nation’s future food security and climate stability will depend on regrowing populations of animals, including Blue Whales, in future.
