Some major threats to the Ocean:
Having recently crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to the Caribbean on a sailing boat, I saw first hand some of the major threats facing our Oceans today.
- Plastic pollution; even in the middle of the Atlantic, where we were closer to the International Space Station then any other human beings, we were still seeing plastic rubbish pollution. From small plastic water bottles to plastic bags. This is an issue in the forefront of peoples minds, because it is a visible issue, we can see how it affects the ocean in very simple ways from the polluted beaches to seeing pictures and videos of animals entangled or having ingested our waste products. A major problem here is the way we produce plastic, and the limited ways we have to dispose of it safely. 350 million tons of plastic are produced annually; 8 million tons of plastic goes into the sea each year. Half of all plastics are single use items. However, one of the biggest plastic polluters is the fishing industry.
- Fishing; seeing discarded nets, lines and floating pots is significant. These are part of the plastic pollution problem. However the fishing industry has much more drastic affects on our oceans. What you don’t see is the amount of by catch in the fishing industry. The amount of damage fishing does to the ecosystem includes reduction of biodiversity, rapidly depleting the ocean of large predatory fish, subsequently influencing community structure. Bottom trawling also damages habitats, making the communities less resilient to change.
- Climate change has major implications for all ocean ecosystems. The increasing temperatures of the ocean are causing huge issues. It is clearly visible in the huge swathes of sargassum seaweed creating lines on the horizon visible for miles around. This is thought to be in part caused by the nutrient enrichment of the water by chemicals such as fertilisers used on land and increasing sea temperatures. Huge algal blooms such as this can reduce the amount of oxygen entering the ecosystem, exacerbating the problem no end. Coral bleaching is easy to spot when snorkelling around reefs by looking for the white patches, this is caused by sustained higher temperatures, which will eventually kill the coral reefs completely. Climate change also affects the ability if seagrasses to sequester carbon, and the growth of kelp forests which provide nursery habitats for vulnerable juvenile fish. Climate change is also affecting species distribution across the planet, with increasingly warming temperatures causing habitat shrinkage, this is particularly obvious in the polar regions where ice melt is increasing.
On arrival to the Caribbean we also participated in a local coral gardening nursery dive, witnessing first hand the local people this affects, and their passion in trying to combat the problems they are facing.
