Oceans are the cradle of life

No Blue No Green. Healthy Oceans are fundamental for life to exist. Overfishing – including the removal of apex predators, climate change, pollution – including plastics are big threats to the health of the oceans right now. Deep sea mining for resources also threatens ocean ecosystems; eg. the BP oil disaster in 2010. Overfishing means that 90% of the large fish of the oceans are gone. 87% of fish species are either overexploited or fully exploited or depleted. This means we take at a faster rate than they reproduce which means they are in decline. Industrial fishing fleets have to travel further with great energy use to get a catch that is in less than it was in earlier years. Industrial fishing is not sustainable as it takes at a greater rate than replacement, bycatch kills millions of animals to get the target species and there are issues of habitat destruction (seabed trawling). Climate Change through warming is increasing the acidity of the oceans impacting coral reefs. Less than 1% of the world’s oceans are fully protected..