Human-dominated marine ecosystems are experiencing accelerating loss of populations and species, with largely unknown consequences.
We analyzed local experiments, long-term regional time series, and global fisheries data to test how biodiversity loss affects marine ecosystem services across temporal and spatial scales.
Overall, rates of resource collapse increased and recovery potential, stability, and water quality decreased exponentially with declining diversity.
Restoration of biodiversity, in contrast, increased productivity fourfold and decreased variability by 21%, on average.
We conclude that marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean’s capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations.
Yet available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314/5800/787
Convention on Biodiversity http://www.biodiv.org/default.shtml
‘Only 50 years left’ for sea fish
There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.
Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating.
Writing in the journal Science, the international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6108414.stm
15,023 days remain to save our oceans
This new report in Science shows that marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean’s ability to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations.
If these trends continue, pretty much all the fish will be gone by 2048. In fact, according to the report, a whopping 30% of the world’s commercial fisheries are already collapsed.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/3/9224/49414
Disposable Oceans
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/disposable-oceans
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