World Oceans Day and the role of marine wildlife for a habitable planet

It’s World Oceans Day today so I thought I’d reshare a few articles about the importance of marine wildlife in creating a habitable planet. The Day’s theme is ‘protecting at least 30% of our blue planet’. Later in 2021, 196 governments are scheduled to meet in China to adopt new global 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 targets in what The Nature Conservancy are touting as ‘the world’s roadmap for wildlife and habitat 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, as well as updating countries’ goals for conservation and sustainable use of living resources’.

The reality is that our survival is not ‘as well’ as wildlife conservation. Wildlife plays THE ONLY critical role in creating ecosystem stability.

I’ve created a new page all about our ocean world and its wildlife

Every day should be World Oceans Day

The importance we bestow on the land is because we live there but the ocean is equally important to us. If life in the ocean dies, we suffer irreversible changes to land-based 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 and climate. It’s wildlife that regulates the planetary processes: climate, weather and food security, that makes our planet habitable. We cannot live in an ocean of algae and jellyfish. We can only survive if we surround ourselves with an abundance of all the animals we’ve grown up knowing: whales, dolphins, fish, whale sharks, manta rays, seals and sealions … we urgently need to bring animal-driven systems back into balance.

Every day should be World Oceans Day, because 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.