Daniel Pauly (left) and Johannes Müller (right).
In a world where the dramatic effects of global warming on land dominate news headlines, there is a tendency to overlook the massive impacts of warming and deoxygenation on oceans and freshwater ecosystems. However, the effects of climate change on the species that inhabit these ecosystems are, in some respects, more drastic than the challenges faced by terrestrial animals.
Coral reef in Raja Ampat. Photo by Bird’s Head Seascape / Jones/Shimlock / Secret Sea Visions, Wikimedia Commons.
World Oceans Day (WOD), the initiative proposed in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and officially recognized by the UN in 2008, aims to catalyze collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate.
Some of the yearly campaigns thousands of organizations run, inspired by this goal, are guided by the annual action theme that NGO The Ocean Project proposes for WOD. The Ocean Project, together with the World Ocean Network, led efforts to get the UN to recognize June 8th as World Oceans Day.
Purse seine. Photo by Hüseyin Ergül, Pexels.
The global fishing industry should be appropriately represented within climate change mitigation frameworks, where it remains overlooked, a new letter published in Science suggests.
Caribbean spiny lobster. Photo by James St. John, Wikimedia Commons.
Most of The Bahamas’ signature seafood stocks are being fished harder than the sea can replace them, a new paper led by Sea Around Us researchers and published in Frontiers in Marine Science shows.
Bottom trawler. Photo by Lisa, Flickr.
A new study suggests the hidden climate costs of bottom trawling in European waters may far outweigh its economic benefits, raising questions about the future of one of the world’s most widespread fishing practices.