4: Marine conservation principles Flashcards
Give some examples of human impacts on marine ecosystems
Land-based:
- Coastal development
- Habitat destruction
Marine-based:
- Commercial activity
Why are mangrove forests in mexico important?
Important nursery habitats for many fishes
Important for tropical storm protection
Important for carbon sequestration
Give some examples of commercial activities
Oil rigs, gas, offshore renewables, communications pipelines
Shipping
what are some of the consequences of shipping?
Direct impacts (e.g collisions)
Invasive species (in ballast water)
Pollution (noise, oil, rubbish)
Define acute pollution + example
→ sudden event that causes a massive release of pollution
e.g deepwater horizon oil spill, 2010:
7 years later still impacts on coastal birds and deepsea
Define chronic pollution + example
→ going on all the time without ‘major catastrophic events’
E.g Plastic pollution: Great Pacific Garbage patch
Marine plastics
Everywhere we have looked in the sea, we’ve found plastic
Bio and eco impacts of this remain unclear
Give 3 examples of the effects of climate change
Increased temp and sea level
Depleted seawater carbonate conc.s
Decrease in ocean pH (ocean acidification)
How has climate change affected planktons regime?
plankton experiencing a poleward shift to colder areas
Describe coral bleeching
Corals bleach in response to increasing ocean temperatures
- happens because they’re a sessile species that cannot shift their distributions to more favourable areas
- have been 4 mass events on the GBR since 2016
Describe ocean acidification
- reasons and effects
→ chemical consequence of CO2 levels increasing in the atmosphere, 25% gets absorbed into the ocean
- 530 billion tonnes of CO2 have been disposed of in the ocean since the industrial revolution
- CO2 reacts with seawater to produce carbonic acid and so lowers pH (expected to reach levels not seen for 25 MY)
- Reduced amount of carbonate available to calcifying marine organisms
- Reduced rates of calcification → important for e.g corals, many phytoplankton and many other organisms…
In marine conservation, why is history important?
Explicit statement of what conservation aims to achieve
We need to know what state were restoring something to
History can inspire us
It can also put recent conservation success/decline into context
Some kind of return to ‘natural’ often implied e.g ‘rewilding’ → But what was natural?
Give an example of how marine ecosystems have changed in recent decades
Species of high conservation value used to be commodities → e.g the 19th century was lit by sperm whale oil
Species that are high valued commercially today were next to worthless in the past
E.g Bluefin Tuna