Threats

Covering about 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface, oceans are vital to life on Earth. They provide every second breath we take, help regulate the climate and house an unmatchable diversity of creatures. Our oceans also provide a primary source of protein and livelihood for millions of coastal peoples around the world. But they are in peril. Overfishing, marine pollution and global warming are a lethal combination for our oceans, and aquaculture - as it is currently practiced - is no solution.

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Marine Pollution

For hundreds of years, oceans have been seen as vast expanses, rendering humans and their impact puny in comparison. We have plundered their depths, thinking that the fish could never run out, and allowed millions of tonnes of garbage to flow into their waters like drops in a bucket.

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Global warming

The world’s climate is changing, and our oceans are feeling the heat. Oceans cover 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface, and small changes in the oceans’ temperature mean severe and wide-ranging impacts on the climate and marine ecosystem stability.

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Aquaculture

Aquaculture as it is currently practiced is not the answer to depleted wild fish stocks. On the contrary, the booming global aquaculture industry is seriously threatening marine and freshwater ecosystems and undermining food security across the planet.

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Pirate Fishing

The term ‘pirate fishing’ can bring to mind images of parrots, gold and adventure, but pirates of today are known for only one attribute: their ability to fish illegally and exhaustively. Pirate fishing fleets – more precisely known as Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing – are pillaging our oceans in a ruthless and bloodthirsty pursuit of high profit.

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Bycatch

Industrial size nets measuring up to two kilometres in diameter (such as gillnets, bottom trawls, or purse seines) catch anything that is larger than the size of their mesh, while longlines dangle thousands of baited hooks in the water, attracting any hungry passerby including diving seabirds. An estimated 3.3 million sharks die every year on longlines, while entanglement is the leading cause of death for small cetaceans (such as porpoises, dolphins and whales) with one dying every two minutes. Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles and sea birds are also killed on longlines and caught in nets, landing many species on endangered and critically endangered lists. The Pacific loggerhead turtles, which have lived in the ocean for millions of years, are estimated to become extinct within the next five to 30 years if current trends continue.

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Bottom trawling

As industrial fishing fleets sweep through the ocean, they are catching much more than what lands on our plates. Fishermen can now locate and track schools of specific fish species and scoop up tonnes at a time with kilometres of nets and hooks. But, due to the indiscriminate nature of many types of gear, targeted species are not the only ones caught in these traps.

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Commercial whaling

The cycle of greed behind the global whaling industry has driven one whale population after another towards oblivion. It is still not known if some species will ever recover, even after decades of protection. The blue whales of the Antarctic are at less than one per cent of their original abundance, despite 40 years of complete protection.

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Overfishing

One of the biggest threats to marine ecosystems today is overfishing. Our appetite for fish and seafood is exceeding the oceans’ ecological limits with devastating consequences for marine ecosystems, food security and the livelihoods of the 200 million people working directly or indirectly in the global fisheries industry.

Threats

Marine Pollution

Global warming

Aquaculture

Pirate Fishing

Bycatch

Bottom trawling

Commercial whaling

Overfishing

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