Protecting Marine Biodiversity - Worldwatch Institute Oceans in Peril.pdf · ·...

m i c h e l l e a l l s o p p, r i c h a r d pa g e ,pau l j o h n s t o n , a n d d av i d s a n t i l l o

Oceans in Peril

Protecting Marine Biodiversity

WO R L DWATC H R E P O RT 174

wo r l d wat c h i n s t i t u t e , wa s h i n g t o n , d c

michelle allsopp, r ichard page,paul johnston, and dav id sant illo

Greenpeace Research Laboratories, University of Exeter, UK

l i s a m a s t n y, e d i t o r

Oceans in PerilProtecting Marine

Biodiversity

WO R L D WAT C H R E P O R T 174

© Worldwatch Institute, 2007

Published: September 2007

ISBN: 978-1-878071-81-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007935003

Printed on paper that is 50 percent recycled, 30 percent post-consumer waste, process chlorine free.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Worldwatch Institute; of its directors, officers, or staff;

or of its funding organizations.

On the cover: Bycatch on an Irish trawler.

Photograph © Lyle Rosbotham

Reprint and copyright information for one-time academic use of this material is available by contacting Customer Service, Copyright Clearance Center, at +1 978-750-8400 (phone) or +1 978-750-4744 (fax), or by writing to CCC, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.

Nonacademic and commercial users should contact the Worldwatch Institute’s BusinessDevelopment Department by fax at +1 202-296-7365 or by email at [email protected].

Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

The Diversity of the Oceans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Dangers of Fishery Depletions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Changing Climate, Changing Seas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Polluting the Marine Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Freedom for the Seas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Figures, Tables, and Sidebars

Figure 1. Global Fish Harvest, Marine Capture and Aquaculture, 1950–2005 . . . . . . . . . . 13

Figure 2. Status of World Fish Stocks, 2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Table 1. Level of Protection of Critical Marine Ecosystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Sidebar 1. Effects of Climate Change on Arctic Marine Wildlife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Sidebar 2. Impact of Climate Change on Antarctic Krill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Sidebar 3. Recent Major Oil Spills and Their Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to extend special thanks to Sari Tolvanen, Karen Sack, Jim Wickens, OliverKnowles, Sebastián Losada, Daniel Mittler, Martin Attrill, and Mark Everard for their contribu-tions to and/or review of this work. Jennifer Jacquet with the Sea Around Us Project in BritishColumbia also provided helpful comments on an early draft of this report.

At Worldwatch, many thanks go to Senior Editor Lisa Mastny for her efforts in whittling downthe extensive text to the target length. Art Director Lyle Rosbotham lent his expert touch to thedesign and layout and worked closely with Greenpeace staff to select the diverse photos of marinelife. Others at Worldwatch who provided valuable input or feedback include Courtney Berner,Bob Engelman, Brian Halweil, Darcey Rakestraw, Patricia Shyne, and Julia Tier.

O C E A N S I N P E R I L w w w . w o r l d w a t c h . o r g4

About the Authors

Michelle Allsopp is a research consultant based at the Greenpeace Research Laboratories, locatedwithin the School of Biosciences at the University of Exeter, UK. Michelle obtained her PhD inbiomedicine from the University of Exeter and Postgraduate Medical School of the Royal Devonand Exeter Hospital in 1991. She has since written and published numerous reports for Green-peace over a period of more than 10 years, including recent reviews on the global distribution andimpacts of marine litter, on persistent organic pollutants in marine wildlife, and on the science ofocean fertilization.

Richard Page graduated in ecology from Kings College, London in 1983. He has worked forGreenpeace for the past 14 years, mainly on ocean protection issues. Richard has a longstandinginterest in the protection of whales and other cetaceans and is currently responsible for coordin-ating Greenpeace’s work to secure a global network of fully protected marine reserves.

Paul Johnston is principal scientist at the Greenpeace Research Laboratories and head of theScience Unit for Greenpeace International. He obtained his PhD from the University of London in1984 for research into the aquatic toxicity of selenium. Paul now has 20 years experience in pro-viding scientific advice to Greenpeace offices around the world, has published extensively on envi-ronmental pollution, marine ecosystem protection, and sustainability, and has contributed tonumerous expert groups and committees, including the recently concluded GESAMP WorkingGroup on sources of oil to the marine environment.

David Santillo is a senior scientist with the Greenpeace Research Laboratories, with more than 10 years experience in providing analytical support and scientific advice to Greenpeace officesworldwide. David is a marine and freshwater biologist who obtained his PhD from the Universityof London in 1993 for research into nutrient uptake by oceanic plankton. Aside from publishingpapers and reports on a range of science and science policy issues, David has represented Green-peace at various international treaties aimed at protecting the oceans over many years, includingmore than a decade as an observer within the London Convention.

Preface

nyone familiar with the state of theworld’s oceans would have a hard

time feeling optimistic. From coralreefs overwhelmed by coastal

runoff to tiny but ecologically vital planktonthat are suffering from climate change, thediversity of sea life is fading. Just as nutrition-ists are discovering how healthy and beneficialseafood really is, we face a growing shortage ofthis once-bountiful food source.

Yet we continue to invest in wasteful andshortsighted fishing techniques. Destructivebottom trawling not only catches tons ofunwanted species, it also destroys deep-watercoral reefs and other rich habitats that nurturethe fish we do want to catch. Fishing subsidiesare so bloated that roughly a third of the globalfleet is considered unnecessary. And as near-shore fish populations collapse, fleets are forcedto probe farther and deeper to find their targets.

The good news is that there is a way out ofthis predicament. By treating the oceans withmore respect and by using them more wisely,we can obtain more from these life-supportingwaters while also maintaining healthy anddiverse marine ecosystems. This is a key mes-sage of this latest Worldwatch report, Oceans in Peril: Protecting Marine Biodiversity.

This surprising conclusion, reached by thereport’s authors—a team of scientists withGreenpeace Research Laboratories in theUnited Kingdom—complements work thatWorldwatch’s own food and agriculture teamhas undertaken over the last decade. Throughour research and analysis, most recently inCatch of the Day (2006) and Happier Meals(2005), we have sought to illustrate that feed-

ing ourselves doesn’t have to come at theexpense of a healthy environment.

Just as meat that originates in a factory farmis different from meat that comes from animalsraised on pasture, the differences between“good” and “bad” seafood are many. For exam-ple, fish farming that focuses on large, carnivo-rous species like salmon and tuna consumesmany times more fish in the form of feed thanit yields for human consumption. Alterna-tively, raising fish that is low in the food chain,such as clams, scallops, and other mollusks,can provide healthy seafood without any feeds.

As this paper demonstrates, scientists, activ-ists, and the fishing industry itself are alreadyshowing what a shift in perspective—and ingovernmental policies—can mean for theoceans. Consider marine reserves, just one ele-ment of a new “ecosystem approach” to man-aging the seas that is critical to protecting theoceans for future generations. These reserves,which make swaths of the oceans off-limits todamaging human activities, can protect wholeecosystems and enable fish and other species torecover and flourish. But currently, only about0.1 percent of the oceans is fully protected.

“Current presumptions that favor freedomto fish and freedom of the seas will need to bereplaced with the new concept of freedom forthe seas,” write the authors of Oceans in Peril.The freedom they speak of is essentially free-dom from human exploitation—from nets,dredges, trawlers, hooks, and knives—and thefreedom to heal from past overuses. It’s a sim-ple change in perception, but the ramificationscouldn’t be more important.

—Brian Halweil, Worldwatch Institute

w w w . w o r l d w a t c h . o r g O C E A N S I N P E R I L 5

A


Summary

niquely among the universe’sknown planets, the Earth is a spheredominated by watery oceans. Theycover 70 percent of its surface and

are home to a myriad of amazing and beautifulcreatures. Life almost certainly originated inthe oceans, yet the biological diversity ofmarine habitats is threatened by the activitiesof one largely land-based species: us. The activ-ities through which humans threaten marinelife include overfishing, use of destructive fish-ing methods, pollution, and commercial aqua-culture. In addition, climate change and therelated acidification of the oceans is alreadyhaving an impact on some marine ecosystems.Essential to solving these problems will bemore equitable and sustainable managementof the oceans as well as stronger protection ofmarine ecosystems through a well-enforcednetwork of marine reserves.

Presently, 76 percent of the world’s fishstocks are fully exploited or overexploited,and many species have been severely depleted,largely due to our growing appetite for sea-food. Current fisheries management regimescontribute to the widespread market-drivendegradation of the oceans by failing to imple-ment and enforce adequate protective meas-ures. Many policymakers and scientists nowagree that we must adopt a radical newapproach to managing the seas—one that isprecautionary in nature and has the protectionof the whole marine ecosystem as its primaryobjective. This “ecosystem approach” is vital ifwe are to ensure the health of our oceans forfuture generations.

An ecosystem approach promotes both con-servation and the sustainable use of marine

resources in an equitable way. It is a holisticapproach that considers environmental protec-tion and marine management together, ratherthan as two separate and mutually exclusivegoals. Paramount to the application of thisapproach is the establishment of networks offully protected marine reserves—in essence,“national parks” of the sea. These provide pro-tection of whole ecosystems and enable biodi-versity to both recover and flourish. They alsobenefit fisheries by allowing for spillover of fishand larvae or eggs from the reserve into adja-cent fishing grounds.

Outside of the reserves, an ecosystemapproach requires the sustainable managementof fisheries and other resources. Demands onmarine resources must be managed within thelimits of what the ecosystem can provide indef-initely, rather than being allowed to expand as demographic and market forces dictate. Anecosystem approach requires protection at thelevel of the whole ecosystem. This is radicallydifferent from the current practice, where mostfisheries management measures focus simplyon single species and do not consider the roleof these species in the wider ecosystem.

An ecosystem approach is also precaution-ary in nature, meaning that a lack of knowledgeshould not excuse decision-makers from tak-ing action, but rather lead them to err on theside of caution. The burden of proof must beplaced on those who want to undertake activi-ties, such as fishing or coastal development, toshow that these activities will not harm themarine environment. In other words, currentpresumptions that favor freedom to fish andfreedom of the seas will need to be replacedwith the new concept of freedom for the seas.

U

The Diversity of the Oceans

ar from being watery voids, the Earth’soceans are home to a rich and colorfulvariety of life. They cover 70 percentof the planet’s surface and provide

shelter and food for some 210,000 knownspecies.1* Of the 33 animal phyla that existworldwide, 32 occur in the sea, 15 are exclu-sively marine, and 5 are nearly so.2 In contrast,only one phylum occurs exclusively on land.

The most diverse marine ecosystems, suchas coral reefs, may have levels of species diver-sity similar to the richest terrestrial ecosystems,such as lowland tropical rain forests.3 Thisdiversity is distributed among differing habi-tats including the deep sea, the open ocean,and specialized coastal ecosystems such ascoral reefs, mangroves, and seagrasses.

The Deep Sea

The deep sea, averaging 3.2 kilometers indepth, comprises nearly all of the oceans’ extentexcept for the shallow continental shelves nextto the Earth’s landmasses.4† Despite its dark-ness, near-freezing temperatures, and scarceenergetic supplies, it supports a surprisinglyhigh diversity of life.5 About 50 percent of thedeep-sea floor is an abyssal plain, mainly ofmud flats, on which are superimposed trenchesand other features that provide habitat forcreatures ranging from sea stars, sponges, andjellyfish to some 2,650 known species of bot-tom-dwelling deep-sea fish.6 Deep-sea sedi-ments are home to an even higher diversity of small animals, including worms, mollusks,

crustaceans, and tiny single-celled organismsknown as Foraminifera.7 Estimates of the totalnumber of undescribed species in the deep searange from 500,000 to as high as 10 million.8

Undersea mountains rising to 1,000 metersor more above the sea floor appear to host aparticularly wide diversity of deep-sea life.However, animal life has only been studied onsome 230 of the estimated 50,000 seamountsworldwide.9 Because enhanced currents carry a flow of food particles to the mounts, theytend to be dominated by filter or suspensionfeeders, including visually striking corals,anemones, and sponges.10 Other invertebratespresent include crustaceans, mollusks, seaurchins, brittle stars, sea stars, and bristleworms.11 Many fish species are also associatedwith seamounts, some of which form huge


F

*Endnotes are grouped by section and begin on page 38.

†Units of measure throughout this report are metricunless common usage dictates otherwise.

Crab on sponge,Davidson Seamount,Pacific Ocean. © NOAA and MBARI/Greenpeace


aggregations; one study described 263 differentspecies on seamounts near New Caledonia.12

Migratory tuna, marine mammals, and sea-birds frequently congregate over the features aswell.13 In total, 2,700 species are known to

occur in and around these “underwateroases.”14

New species have been found on nearlyevery seamount studied. In a study off south-ern Tasmania, between 24 and 43 percent ofthe invertebrate species collected were new toscience.15 Some seamount studies also reporthigh rates of endemism, or species foundnowhere else on Earth. On two seamountchains in the Pacific off Chile, 44 percent offishes and 52 percent of bottom-dwellinginvertebrates were endemic, as were 31–36 percent of species in seamounts south of NewCaledonia.16 Because of their endemism, slowgrowth, and long life (from about 70 to hun-dreds of years), many seamount species areespecially vulnerable to depletion.17

Seamounts have faced intensive pressurefrom trawl fisheries—which can scour theocean floor with giant nets—since the 1960s.18

Stocks of pelagic armorhead over Pacificseamounts northwest of Hawaii have beendepleted to the point of commercial extinctionin less than 20 years, and stocks of orange

roughy have been depleted on seamountsaround Australia and New Zealand.19 A studyoff southern Tasmania found that heavilyfished seamounts had 46 percent fewer speciesper sample than unfished seamounts, and con-siderably less total biomass.20 Trawling impactson local reefs were also dramatic, with thecoral substrate and associated communitylargely removed from the heavily fished areas.

High biological diversity is also a feature of hydrothermal vents on the sea bottom.21

Such vents, which gush hot water into the cold, deep ocean, are concentrated mainlyalong the Mid-Oceanic Ridge system, a 60,000-kilometer seam of geological activity.22 Hun-dreds, if not thousands, of vent sites may existalong the ridges, but only an estimated 10 percent of the system has been explored forhydrothermal activity.23

In 1977, scientists discovered that the ventswere populated with an extraordinary array of animal life, despite their seemingly hostileenvironment. The fluid from vents is hot (upto 407 degrees Celsius), without oxygen, oftenvery acidic, and enriched with hydrogen sul-fide, methane, and various metals.24 Yet morethan 550 different species have been found atthe 100-some vent sites studied so far.25 Ventanimals are unique in that they do not relyultimately on sunlight as an energy source, butrather on chemosynthetic bacteria that live offthe hydrogen sulfide in the vent fluids.26

At any given vent site, the diversity ofspecies may be relatively low, but the abun-dance of animals is generally high. While mostvent diversity is attributed to small, inconspic-uous animals, the sites tend to be dominatedby a few large and visually striking species,such as tube worms, vent clams, and the blindvent shrimp.27 Enormous densities of a giantclam-like organism and a giant mussel havebeen found near vents of the eastern Pacific.28

Vent environments also support among thehighest levels of microbial diversity on theplanet, as well as several species of fish.29

The more-accessible hydrothermal vents are potentially threatened by human activitiessuch as submarine-based tourism, scientificresearch, and seabed mining.30 One specialized


A dense bed ofhydrothermal mus-sels and shrimp clusters around anundersea volcanonear Champagnevent in the westernPacific.Pacific Ring of Fire 2004Expedition. NOAA Office of OceanExploration; Dr. Bob Embley, NOAAPMEL, Chief Scientist


deep-sea submersible, scheduled for use in2009, is capable of reaching depths of 1,700meters and will dredge the seafloor for copper,gold, and zinc.31 However, scientific researchmay pose a greater threat to some of themost-visited vent sites due to concentratedsampling and other practices.32

This and other “bioprospecting”—theexploration of biodiversity for scientific andcommercial purposes—poses a growing threatto the marine environment.33 Many plants,animals, and microorganisms contain uniquebiochemicals that could be useful in the health,pharmacology, and chemicals sectors. Whilemost marine bioprospecting has taken place in shallower waters, scientists are beginning toappreciate the valuable resources of the deepocean, and there is currently no legal regime toregulate such activities.

The Open Ocean

As in the deep sea, the abundance and diversityof biological communities in the open ocean—away from the coast or seafloor—is only beginning to be understood. In this zone,biodiversity is highest at the intermediate latitudes, with optimal habitats characterizedby warm, oxygen-rich waters. Open-ocean features that favor high biodiversity includeoceanic “fronts” where cold and warm watercollide and “upwellings” where deep, dense,cooler, and usually nutrient-rich water movestoward the ocean surface, supporting phyto-plankton growth. One 125,000-square-kilome-ter oceanic front off the coast of Baja in thePacific Ocean has supported very high landingsof swordfish and striped marlin over the past35 years, and is also frequented by blue whales.34

Upwelling systems, meanwhile, sustain a largeproportion of the world’s fisheries.35

Drift algae, which float on the sea surface in occasional clumps, as elongated lines, or asexpansive mats spanning several kilometers,form another important open-ocean habitat.They provide vital support for at least 280species of fish, four turtle species, many inver-tebrates, and several seabirds.36 But in someareas, drift algae are under threat from com-mercial harvesting for food, livestock fodder,

fertilizer, and medicine, as well as from pollu-tion, commercial fishing, and vessel traffic.37

The Coastal Zone

Shallow coastal waters, nurtured by plentifulsunlight and warm temperatures, are home to some of the richest marine ecosystems,including coral reefs, mangrove forests, andseagrass beds.

Coral reefs cover an estimated 284,300square kilometers of oceans, occur in morethan 100 countries, and comprise roughly athird of tropical coastlines.38 They can formvery thick limestone structures, among themisland atolls and the 2,000-kilometer-longGreat Barrier Reef off Australia.39 The abilityof corals to construct these massive frame-works sets them apart from all other marineecosystems.40

Because coral reefs are the most biologicallydiverse oceanic ecosystems, they have beencalled “rainforests of the sea.” 41 As many as100,000 reef species have been named anddescribed, though estimates range as high as 1 to 3 million.42 Centers of particularly highdiversity are the southern Caribbean Sea andthe tropical Indo-West Pacific Ocean, wherethe most biologically rich reefs house as manyas 600 coral species alone.43 Most corals deriveat least some of their nutrition from photosyn-thesis by algae that live within them. Otherreef-dwelling species include sponges, jellyfish,worm-like animals, crustaceans, mollusks, seacucumbers, and sea squirts.44

An estimated 4,000 to 4,500 fish speciesinhabit the world’s coral reefs—more than aquarter of all marine fish species.45 Sea turtlesand certain seabirds and marine mammals are also associated with reef environments.48

And new reef species are still being discovered.Recent research off the coast of Indonesia’sPapua Province found more than 50 speciesthat are likely new to science, including 24 fishand 20 corals.47 Among the fish discoveredwere two species of bottom-dwelling sharksthat use their pectoral fins to “walk” across theseafloor. Scientists are now working with theIndonesian government to protect the areafrom commercial fishing and destructive fish-



ing practices.Globally, reef fisheries provide food and

livelihood for tens of millions of people in thetropics and subtropics.48 Of the estimated 30million small-scale fishers in the developingworld, most depend to some extent on coralreefs for harvesting fish, mussels, crustaceans,sea cucumbers, seaweeds, and other products.49

In some regions, people harvest a large diver-sity of reef species: for example, some 209species are taken at Bolinao in the Philippines,250 in the Tigak Islands of Papua New Guinea,and 300 around Guam.50 A growing threat toreefs is the booming commercial fisheriestrade, which supplies export markets, therestaurant and hotel industries, and the live-fish trade of Southeast Asia.51 In total, reef-associated fisheries account for at least 10percent of world marine fishery landings.52

Coral reefs also help to shelter beaches andcoastlines from storm surges and wave action.Anecdotal evidence and satellite photographyboth suggest that reefs provided valuable pro-tection from the impacts of the December2004 Indian Ocean tsunami: in Sri Lanka,some of the most severe damage occurredalong coastlines that had suffered heavy reefmining and damage.53 Reefs also supportextensive recreational and tourist activities.And reef organisms themselves have provenuseful in pharmaceutical development—providing an HIV treatment, a painkiller, andinputs to cancer drug research.54

Yet coral reefs are in serious decline globally.As of 2004, an estimated 20 percent of theworld’s reefs had been destroyed, showing noimmediate signs of recovery; 24 percent wereunder imminent risk of collapse throughhuman pressures; and 26 percent were underlonger-term threat of collapse.55 Problemsinclude a decline in coral cover and biodiver-sity, coupled in some areas, such as the Carib-bean and southern Florida, with a shift towardfleshy seaweed-dominated ecosystems.56

The greatest immediate threats to reefs are overfishing and pollution from poor land-management practices. In 1999, a global surveyof over 300 coral reefs in 31 countries reportedthat overfishing had occurred on most reefs,

reducing key fish and invertebrate species tolow levels.57 Some 50 reef fish species are nowlisted as “threatened,” most due to exploitation,and in many areas it is now rare to see a fishover 10 centimeters long.58 Overfishing canremove species that perform critical functionsfor reef maintenance, and may explain themassive outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfishon the Great Barrier Reef since the 1960s,as species that prey upon the starfish weredepleted.59 Intensified urbanization and agri-culture, meanwhile, can increase the run-off ofsediments and nutrients to reefs, reducing lightpenetration and/or oxygen levels and smother-ing corals.60 In a study in Indonesia, reefs sub-ject to such pollution stresses showed a 30 to60 percent reduction in species diversity.61

Other threats to reefs include coral miningand removal, coral disease, and, increasingly,coral “bleaching” as sea temperatures rise.62

Coral mining for building materials has causedextensive reef degradation in parts of thePacific, leading to declines in coral cover, diver-sity, and fish; reefs mined before the mid-1970shave shown little recovery.63 Many live corals,fish, and invertebrates are also collected for sale to aquarium lovers in the United States,Europe, and Japan.64 Fishers often use cyanideto stun and collect the creatures, leading toserial depletion of large reef fishes and thedeath of other species.65 Meanwhile, the num-ber of new coral diseases and disease outbreakshas increased dramatically since the 1990s,affecting more than 150 species in the Carib-bean and Indo-Pacific alone.66 In the Carib-bean, two of the most dominant reef-buildingcorals have largely disappeared as a result ofoutbreaks of white band and white pox dis-eases. Increased disease, in turn, may be due to greater seaweed growth, elevated nutrientconcentrations on reefs, or physical debilita-tion of corals following repeated bleachingevents.67 (See pp. 19–20 for a discussion ofcoral bleaching.)

Other rich coastal ecosystems under threatare the world’s mangrove forests, located justnorth and south of the Equator. Mangrovesgrow in the intertidal zone between land andsea and support numerous species as well as



protecting coastlines from storms. Yet despitetheir importance, an estimated 35 percent ofthe original area of mangrove forests has beenlost in the last two decades alone.68 Total loss is estimated at more than 50 percent, withmangroves now occupying only 25 percent oftropical coastlines, down from 75 percent historically.69 Of the approximately 175,000square kilometers of mangrove forests thatremain, about a quarter are in Indonesia andanother 20 percent are in Brazil, Nigeria, andAustralia.70

A total of 69 mangrove species has beendocumented worldwide, with the highestdiversity occurring in Southeast Asia.71 Man-grove forests support extensive populations ofbirds, fish, crustaceans, microbes, and fungi,as well as reptiles and mammals.72 As many as117 fish species were recorded in the Matangmangrove waters of Malaysia, 260 in Vietnam-ese mangroves, and 400 in the Sundarbanmangrove forest of Bangladesh.73 Mangrovesalso support several endangered species, suchas the milky stork, crab-eating frog, and leafmonkey in Southeast Asia; manatees in Flor-ida; Bengal tigers in India and Bangladesh; andrare orchids in Singapore.74

In addition to being important habitats,mangroves help stabilize coastlines and reduceerosion. In Phang Nga province in Thailand,the presence of mangrove forests significantlymitigated the impact of the 2004 tsunami.75

In Bangladesh, China, and Vietnam, man-groves have been planted to prevent stormdamage.76 Mangroves also maintain waterquality in coastal zones by trapping sediments,organic material, and nutrients—an activitythat can help the functioning of nearby coralreefs.77 Loss of mangroves can cause inlandsaltwater intrusion and deterioration ofgroundwater quality.78

Mangroves provide a rich source of nutri-ents for the many invertebrates and fish thatinhabit them.79 They also export food thatsupports near-shore species such as shrimpsand prawns.80 Although few fish are perma-nent residents, many marine species use man-groves as nursery areas or predation refuges forlarvae and juveniles.81 A recent study of man-

groves in the Caribbean showed that wherecoral reefs were connected with mangrovehabitat, the abundance of several commerciallyimportant species more than doubled com-pared to reefs that were not near mangroves.82

The study also sug-gested that thelargest herbivorousfish in the Atlantic,the rainbow parrot-fish, may have suf-fered local extinctiondue to loss of man-grove habitat.

Coastal commu-nities in many devel-oping countries arevery dependent uponmangrove ecosys-tems for sustainableharvests of fish,crabs, shellfish, andnon-seafood prod-ucts such as wood,livestock fodder, andmedicinal plants.83

At a commerciallevel, mangrovessupport many valu-able fisheries species,including an esti-mated 80 percent of all marine species of com-mercial or recreational value in Florida. In Fijiand India, roughly 60 percent of commerciallyimportant coastal fish are directly associatedwith mangrove habitats.84 Research in the Gulfof Mexico and in parts of Asia suggests thatgreater mangrove cover is associated withhigher catches of shellfish and fish than man-grove-poor areas.85

Large-scale mangrove destruction is a rela-tively recent phenomenon, as forests are con-verted for aquaculture, industrial forestry, andagricultural, industrial, and tourist facilities.86

In many cases, mangroves have been consid-ered wastelands by governments and plannerswhose approach has been to drain them andfill them in.87 In addition, large areas of forestshave been destroyed to make room for shallow,


Crystal-clear watersand unique coralreefs have made the Red Sea one ofthe world’s prime diving destinations.Yet reefs likeSamadai in Egypt’sTondoba Bay, above,are threatened byoverfishing, pollu-tion, and uncon-trolled coastal devel-opment.© Greenpeace/Marco Care


dyked ponds for shrimp farming.88 The recentmassive losses of mangrove forests haveresulted in the release of large quantities ofstored carbon, contributing to human-inducedclimate change.89

A final key area of marine biodiversityunder threat is seagrass beds. Seagrasses growsubmerged in shallow marine and estuarineenvironments along most continental coast-lines and represent some 60 species of under-water flowering plants.90 They vary in structurefrom the tiny 2–3 centimeter rounded leaves ofsea vine in Brazil’s tropical waters to the strap-like, four-meter-long blades of eelgrass in theSea of Japan.91 Because seagrasses are highlyproductive and provide physically complexenvironments, they support a large variety of species, including sponges, sea anemones,corals, worm-like animals, crustaceans, mol-lusks, sea squirts, fishes, turtles, and certainwaterfowl and wading birds.92 Seagrass bedsalso provide a critical food source for two

threatened marine mammals, the manatee and dugong.93 In addition, seagrass detritusmay represent an important food input tocoastal fisheries.94

Like coral reefs and mangroves, seagrassbeds serve to stabilize shorelines and reducewave impacts.95 Because of their interlacingrhizome/root mat, they have been reported to remain intact even through high wind andwave action during hurricanes in the Carib-bean.96 In Phang Nga province in Thailand,the presence of seagrass beds was reported tohave significantly mitigated the impact of the2004 tsunami.97 Seagrass beds also providefood, shelter, and nursery habitat for manymarine species, including juveniles of exploitedfish and shellfish.98 (In fact, most commer-cially valuable species appear to be seasonal ortemporary seagrass residents.) Seagrasses arealso thought to function as important nurs-eries for many coral reef fishes. For example,a recent study showed that seagrass beds insome areas of the Caribbean provided keynursery habitat for the threatened Indo-Pacifichumphead wrasse.99

Increasing coastal development over thepast several decades has led to seagrass lossesthroughout the world. Over the last decade, atotal loss of 290,000 hectares has been docu-mented, though the true figure may be above1.2 million hectares.100 Several reports haveassociated the loss of seagrass habitat withdeclining fish catches.101 Threats includedredging operations, reduced water clarityfrom nutrient and sediment inputs, and pollu-tion. At Laguna Madre, Texas, increased tur-bidity from continuous maintenance dredgingcaused the loss of 14,000 hectares of seagrassesby hindering plant growth.102 Other dangersinclude boat propellers and the dragging offishing nets and dredges across beds to collectshellfish. Rising sea temperatures could alsoalter seagrass growth rates and other physio-logical functions.103 In many cases, seagrassdeclines have been linked to multiple stresses,but only in a few places are measures beingimplemented to address these threats.104


A Mediterraneanrainbow wrasseswimming over a seagrass bed inthe MediterraneanSea off Turkey.© Greenpeace/Roger Grace

Dangers of Fishery Depletions

ver the past century, the ever-increasing demand for seafoodhas had powerful implications formarine species and ocean ecosys-

tems. The adoption of more powerful boats,freezer trawlers, acoustic fish finders, and otheradvanced technologies has led to a massiveincrease in global fishing effort.1 As near-shorefish stocks have declined, fishers have extendedtheir range from the continental shelves tomore distant, deepwater habitats.2

According to the United Nations Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO), fishers world-wide harvested nearly 158 million tons of fishin 2005, a sevenfold increase over 1950. Marinecapture accounted for about 60 percent of thetotal, and fish farming, or aquaculture,accounted for the remainder.3 (See Figure 1.)About three quarters of fish production is fordirect human consumption, with the rest goingto fishmeal, fish oil, and other products.4

The growth in the global fish catch has ledto declines in the status of many marine fishstocks. In 2005, at least 76 percent of stockswere considered either fully exploited, over-exploited, or depleted.5 (See Figure 2.) Areaswith the highest shares of overexploited ordepleted stocks include the southeast andnortheast Atlantic, southeast Pacific, and, fortuna and tuna-like species, areas of the Atlanticand Indian oceans.6 In most cases, overfishinghas been the primary cause for the declines,though in some cases environmental condi-tions have also contributed.7

Catch records reveal that between 1950 and2000, fishery “collapse”—a sustained period of very low catches following a period of highcatches—occurred in 366 out of 1,519 fisheries,


OM

illio

n To

ns

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

150

200

100

50

0

Source: FAO

Aquaculture

Marine Capture

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Depleted

Recovering

Over-exploited

FullyExploited

ModeratelyExploited

UnderExploited

Source: FAO

Percent

1

7

17

52

20

3

Figure 1. Global Fish Harvest, Marine Capture and Aquaculture, 1950–2005

Mill

ion

Tons

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

150

200

100

50

0

Source: FAO

Aquaculture

Marine Capture

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Depleted

Recovering

Over-exploited

FullyExploited

ModeratelyExploited

UnderExploited

Source: FAO

Percent

1

7

17

52

20

3

Figure 2. Status of World Fish Stocks, 2005


or nearly one in four.8 Smaller fisheries andstocks, as well as bottom-dwelling species, werethe most vulnerable. Perhaps the best-knowncollapse involved the Atlantic cod fishery offNewfoundland.9 The decline began in the

1960s, and stocksfinally collapsed in1991.10 A morato-rium imposed in1992 closed the fish-ery to commercialfleets, causing a lossof at least 20,000 jobs and severelydamaging New-foundland’s econ-omy.11 The fisheryremains closed andthere is little sign ofrecovery of offshorecod in the area.12

Losses of preda-tory fish may be a good indicator of changes in theoceans overall. In2003, an analysis of 31 species in the north Atlanticrevealed that over the past 50 years,

the amount of predatory fish—including cod, dogfish, herring, mackerel, and salmon—had declined by approximately two thirds.13

Another study from 2005 found that the abun-dance of large, predatory, open-ocean fish, suchas tuna, swordfish, and marlin, had declined by an estimated 90 percent since 1952.14 (Tunaand billfish showed a loss in species diversity of 10 to 50 percent in all oceans.15) Othermarine species that have undergone large-scaledeclines due to fishing pressure include manysharks, rays, and skates; sea cucumbers; whiteabalone; and deep-sea fish such as the round-nose grenadier and spiny eel.16

Aggregated globally, there has been a meas-urable decline in the mean “trophic level” offisheries catches—the position a species holdswithin the food web.17 Fishers are gradually

removing the larger, longer-lived predatory fish and are subsequently targeting smaller,shorter-lived fish that are lower down the web.Research indicates that “fishing down themarine food web” is happening on a globalscale.18 Near Newfoundland, as the averagetrophic level dropped sharply between 1957and 2000, the average size of fish caught alsodeclined by a meter.19

The ecological impacts of overfishing preda-tory fish are bound to be widespread and pos-sibly difficult to reverse.20 The direct impact isa loss in abundance of the target species, asoccurred with Atlantic cod. In addition, selec-tively removing the larger, faster-growing fishcould alter the genetic diversity of a populationand hence its survival capabilities.21 From amarine diversity perspective, the practice offishing down the food web will reduce thenumber and length of pathways that link fisheswith other organisms, resulting in a simplifiedweb. A less-diverse food web may make itharder for predators to compensate for envi-ronmental fluctuations—for instance, byswitching prey if their main food sourcedeclines in abundance due to climatic andother changes.

Although fishery collapses may be rever-sible, the time to recovery may be considerablylonger than was previously thought. An assess-ment of 90 fish stocks that had suffered pro-longed declines showed that even 15 years after the reductions, many bottom-dwellingfish showed little if any recovery—particularlythose species typically caught using highlydestructive trawling methods.22 Greater recov-ery was only evident in species like herring and sprat, which tend to mature early in lifeand are caught using more selective fishingtechniques.

The practice of bottom trawling has beenlikened to forest clearcutting.23 As fishers dragheavy nets and other gear across the sea floor,this causes massive collateral damage to coralsand other features that offer protection andhabitat for many creatures.24 Bottom trawlinghas caused substantial damage to deep-watercorals off the coasts of Europe and NorthAmerica and on seamounts near Australia and


A longline fishermanprepares his hooksin the port ofArgostoli, on theGreek island ofKefalonia in theMediterranean Sea.© Greenpeace/Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert


New Zealand.25 In regions off Norway and the United Kingdom, photographs show gianttrawl scars up to four kilometers long, includ-ing some in areas where 4,500-year-old reefsexist. Off Atlantic Florida, an estimated 90–99percent of Oculina reef habitat has beenreduced to rubble.26

Bottom trawling kills seabed lifeforms bycrushing them, by burying them under sedi-ment, and by exposing them to predators. Inthe North Sea, skates and rays, which have ahigh age at maturity and are slow to reproduce,have disappeared from large areas due tointensive bottom-trawl fisheries.27 Bycatch—the incidental catch of non-target species—from bottom-trawling fisheries is also high. Astudy on bottom-trawl discards in the Mediter-ranean from 1995–98 reported that 39 to 49percent of the catch was discarded dead ordying back into the sea.28 In another study inthe Mediterranean, bottom-trawling catchescomprised 115 species that were kept for themarket and 309 that were discarded.29 On aver-age, discards accounted for one third of thecatch by weight.

Although many deep-sea fisheries lie withinthe control of coastal nations, management ofthese stocks has been particularly poor, withlittle attention to the impacts of heavy trawlinggear on habitat.30 Meanwhile, the search fornew stocks has extended into the high seas—areas beyond national jurisdiction—wherethere is little or no management and littleinformation on the impact of bottom trawlingon habitats. In 2001, just 11 countries wereresponsible for 95 percent of the reported high-seas bottom-trawl catch: Denmark/FaroeIslands, Estonia, Iceland, Japan, Latvia, Lithua-nia, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia,and Spain.31

Industrial fishing, or the targeting of wildfish for conversion into fishmeal or fish oil, isanother growing activity that is likely unsus-tainable. Since its beginnings in the 1950s,industrial fishing has been linked to the declineand collapse of several populations of smallopen-ocean fish, including mackerel and her-ring stocks in the North Sea and anchovy offthe coast of Peru in the 1970s, and capelin

stocks in the Barents Sea in the 1980s.32

Industrially fished species are low in marinefood webs and are therefore important foodresources for many predatory fish, seabirds,and marine mammals. Consequently, loss of

these stocks may have adverse impacts on these predators. For example, overfishinginduced the collapse of the Norwegian spring-spawning herring stock in the late 1960s, andthe population has struggled to recover. Whenstocks were at their lowest between 1969 and1987, this severely affected the breeding successof Atlantic puffins in the Norwegian Sea due toa reduction in food supply. Fledgling success ofchicks was less than 50 percent in all but threeseasons, and in most years completely failed.33

Currently, more than a third of the fish usedto make fishmeal worldwide goes into produc-ing feeds for aquaculture.34 Aquaculture—thefarming of seaweed, shellfish, crustaceans, orfish in freshwater or marine environments—has been practiced for up to 4,000 years. Butover the past three decades, it has undergone a rapid expansion, particularly as ocean fishstocks have declined.35 What was once a low-input method of maintaining animals for food,decoration, or recreation has developed into anintensive, high-input industry.36 It is now thefastest-growing animal-food production sectorin the world, providing over 40 percent of allfish consumed.37


Yellowfin tuna await-ing the morning auction at the fishmarket in Honolulu,Hawaii. Stocks of the tuna are destinedto be critically lowwithin three years iffishing of the speciescontinues unabated.© Greenpeace/Alex Hofford


While aquaculture as a whole adds to theworld’s fish supply, the farming of certaintypes of marine fish and shrimp results in a netloss.38 This is because in some intensive aqua-culture systems, the weight of fishmeal inputs(i.e., ground-up wild fish) is greater than theweight of farmed fish produced.39 Producingcarnivorous fish such as marine finfish, eel,marine shrimp, salmon, and trout requiresbetween 2.5 to 5 times as much fishmeal (byweight) as output of fish.40 For tuna caughtand fattened in ranches, the weight of wild fish used in production is about 20 times theweight of tuna produced.41 And to meet itsfeed demands, the European salmon-farmingindustry requires a marine support area equiv-alent to an estimated 90 percent of the primaryfisheries production of the North Sea; as aresult, the industry relies heavily on fishmealimports from South America.42

As it expands, the aquaculture industry can-not rely indefinitely on finite stocks of wild-caught fish.43 A study of six industrially fishedspecies used for aquaculture feed found thatmost of these fisheries did not meet require-ments of sustainability.44 It concluded, forexample, that the Chilean jack mackerel wasoverfished; the catch limit on horse mackerelwas too high to sustain stocks; the harvest ofblue whiting was unsustainable; and capelinand sandeel needed to be managed using a precautionary approach.

Other threats that aquaculture poses to wildfish populations and marine ecosystems include:• Depletion of Wild Stocks for Seed.Marine aquaculture often relies on the captureof wild juvenile fish or shellfish to supplystock, rather than using hatcheries to rearthem. In some cases—as with natural shrimpstocks—this has led to overexploitation.45 Thepractice also results in the capture of juvenilesof other species that are discarded and die.In India and Bangladesh, up to 160 othershrimp and fish fry are discarded for everytiger shrimp collected.46

• Habitat Loss.Aquaculture for tropical shrimp and fish hasled to the destruction of thousands of hectaresof mangroves and coastal wetlands.47 In 1991,

it was reported that 60 percent of total man-grove loss in the Philippines was due to aqua-culture, mainly for shrimp and milkfish.48 InThailand, every kilogram of shrimp farmed byaquaculture facilities developed in mangrovesresults in the loss of an estimated 400 grams offish and shrimp from fisheries.49

• Effluent Discharge.Despite occasional benefits to the diversity ofbottom-dwelling species from modest nutrienteffluent flows, at higher levels the added nutri-ents from aquaculture are more likely to reducespecies numbers.50 Effluent discharges fromshrimp ponds into estuaries can threaten fishcommunities and cause changes in planktoncommunity structure, leading to excessive plantgrowth and oxygen depletion.51 In China, sig-nificant pollution has been reported in coastalcreeks adjacent to intensive shrimp ponds.52

• Chemical Contamination.Chemicals and drugs are often added to aqua-culture cages and ponds to control pathogens;when wastewaters are released, these inputscan contaminate the nearby environment.53

One of the factors that led to the collapse ofthe Thai shrimp farming industry in 1988 wasthe indiscriminate use of antibiotics, which ledto the development of resistant bacteria strainsthat caused disease in the shrimp.54

• Escape of Non-Native Species.Non-native aquaculture species can spread disease to, compete with, or predate on nativepopulations.55 Interbreeding may alter thegenetic make-up of a wild population andcompromise its resilience to natural environ-mental change.56 In 1973, seaweed speciesbeing farmed in Hawaii escaped and spreadacross coral reefs.57 In southern Chile, salmonand trout escapees may be competing withnative southern hake and mackerel.58 And theJapanese Pacific oyster, widely used in aqua-culture, has now become established on almostall northern hemisphere coasts.59

• Introduction of Diseases.Serious epidemics of two diseases in Atlanticsalmon have been linked to movements of fishfor aquaculture and re-stocking.60 Infectioussalmon anemia and sea lice are both wide-spread problems in European salmon farming



and have also affected U.S. farms; there is adanger they could spread to wild salmon.61

The whitespot virus has caused multimillion-dollar losses in Asia’s shrimp farming industrysince the early 1990s and has been found morerecently in Latin America and the UnitedStates, where it has caused losses in Texasshrimp farms and may also be killing wildcrustaceans.62

Many fishing practices can have seriouseffects not just on fish, but on other, non-tar-get species. Each year, substantial numbers of seabirds, marine mammals, and sea turtlesbecome entangled or hooked accidentally byfishing gear, and many die as a result.63 To prevent some of this “bycatch,” the UnitedNations, in December 1992, placed a globalmoratorium on the use of driftnets longer than2.5 kilometers—a type of gear that had beenkilling large numbers of marine creatures—on the high seas.64 Yet the problems continuetoday with illegally placed driftnets and the useof a variety of other net types. Longline fish-ing, the practice of stringing lines of baitedhooks across the ocean and setting them at thesea surface or on the seabed is also highly dam-aging.65 Animals are attracted to the fishers’discards and baits, ingest the hooks, and arepulled underwater by the weight of the lineand drown.66

Longline fishing fleets kill an estimated300,000 seabirds a year, including some100,000 albatrosses as well as petrels, shear-waters, and fulmars.67 In total, longlining isresponsible for the deaths of at least 61 differ-ent species of seabirds, 25 of which are listed as critically endangered, endangered, or vul-nerable by the World Conservation Union(IUCN).68 While some nations have intro-duced measures to reduce the number of birdscaught, most longline fleets still do not employeffective mitigation methods.69 Longlining hasalso resulted in the incidental take of sea tur-tles, including an estimated 200,000 logger-heads and 50,000 leatherbacks in 2000 alone.70

Populations of these two species in the Pacifichave declined by 80 to 95 percent in the past 20years, illustrating the high risk of unmitigatedlonglining to species survival.

Large numbers of sea turtles are also killedin shrimp trawl fisheries, particularly in theGulf of Mexico, northern Australia, and Orissaon the east coast of India.71 In the 1980s,an estimated 50,000 loggerheads and 5,000

Kemp’s ridley sea turtles drowned each year in the southeastern United States and Gulf ofMexico fisheries alone.72 As a consequence, theU.S. National Marine Fisheries Service workedwith the industry to develop the turtle excluderdevice (TED), a metal grid fitted at the top orbottom of a trawl net from which large ani-mals like turtles and sharks can escape.73 TEDSwere required to be fitted into shrimp trawlnets on U.S. vessels by 1991, but because seaturtles mature slowly, it may take decades tosee the long-term effects of implementation.74

Moreover, not all fishers comply with the lawin the Gulf of Mexico, and sea turtles as well assharks continue to drown in shrimp nets.75

Fishery operations can also kill or seriouslyinjure marine mammals that are “captured,”drowned, and then discarded. Researchers esti-mate the annual bycatch of whales, dolphins,and porpoises at over 300,000 and put sealsand sea lions in a similar range.76 For severalpopulations, including the highly endangeredvaquita porpoise in the Gulf of California andHector’s dolphin off New Zealand, fisheries


In a photo takenfrom the Interna-tional Space Station,sunglint reveals thedensity of aquacul-ture empoundmentson the coast ofLiaoning Province,northeast China, in 2002.Image Science and AnalysisLaboratory, NASA-Johnson SpaceCenter (http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/)


pose the single greatest threat to their contin-ued survival.77 Bycatch also contributes to thepoor conservation status of the North Atlantic right whale, of which only some 350 animalsremain.78 Since 1986, there have been 50 re-ported deaths of the whales, at least six due toentanglement, as well as 61 confirmed cases ofentanglement.79 Several populations of whales,dolphins, and porpoises are likely to be severelyreduced or lost in the next few decades if noth-ing is done to address incidental capture.80

A significant—and growing—contributorto both marine bycatch and fisheries deple-tions is large-scale “illegal, unregulated, and

unreported” (IUU) fishing.81 Operating out-side of fisheries management and conservationrules, IUU fishers “steal” fish from the largelyunregulated high seas as well as from regulatedareas that have little capacity for monitoring,control, and surveillance.82 It has been esti-mated that IUU fishing accounts for up to 20percent of the global catch and is worth $4–9billion a year.83* Of this, some $1.25 billionoriginates from exploitation of the high seasand the rest from the exclusive economiczones (EEZs) of coastal states. Affected regionsinclude the Southern Ocean as well as coastalareas of West Africa, the Pacific, and theMediterranean.84

IUU fishing results in large part from over-capacity in the world’s fishing fleets, which hasled to increased competition. As industrializedcountries see their own fish stocks decreaseand impose stricter controls in their waters,fishers find ways to evade the constraints,including moving their activities to areas(often in developing countries) where effectivecontrol is absent.85 IUU fishers frequentlyoperate without a license and fly “flags of con-venience” to hide their true origins. Theseflags can be bought easily over the Internetfrom several countries that ask no questionsabout the legality of the purchaser’s fishingpractices.86 Fishers also launder stolen fish by“transhipping” their catch to reefers at searather than offloading them directly in ports.

IUU fishing is a growing threat to marinediversity and a serious obstacle to achievingsustainable fisheries.87 As in the legal fishingrealm, IUU fishers use bottom trawlers andother methods that cause extensive ecologicaldamage to marine ecosystems as well as to the target fish stocks of regions where it takesplace.88 In the case of bycatch, illegal longlinefishing for the Patagonian toothfish is esti-mated to kill up to 145,000 seabirds annually.89

IUU fishing jeopardizes the livelihoods of localfishing communities, threatens the food secu-rity of coastal countries, and results in signifi-cant economic losses.90


Greenpeace activistsboard the factorytrawler Murtosa inthe Barents Sea offNorway in 2005,bearing a bannerthat reads “Stop Fish Piracy.” TheTogo-flagged vesselis fishing for codwithout a quota inthe international section of theBarents known asthe “loophole.”© Greenpeace/Dick Gillberg

*All dollar amounts are expressed in U.S. dollars unlessindicated otherwise.

Changing Climate, Changing Seas

uman-induced climate change is predicted to have profoundimpacts on the world’s oceans andon marine life. Since the beginning

of the Industrial Revolution, the concentrationof carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmos-phere has increased from an estimated 280parts per million (ppm) to more than 379ppm; by comparison, in the 8,000 years pre-ceding industrialization, levels rose by only 20ppm.1 About two-thirds of human-caused CO2

emissions is related to the burning of fossilfuels, and the remaining one-third is fromdeforestation and other land-use changes. Theresult has been an increase in atmospherictemperatures, with wide-ranging effects on theEarth’s climate systems.2

Research indicates that the global ocean has warmed significantly over the past half-century and could warm an additional 1–2degrees Celsius (°C) by the end of this cen-tury.3 Many marine organisms already live attemperatures close to their thermal tolerances,so even a small degree of warming could have a negative impact on their physiological func-tioning and survival.4 Modeling data for sockeye salmon suggest that elevated watertemperature could impair fish growth andincrease mortality.5 Climate change couldreduce the abundance of many marine speciesand increase the likelihood of local, and insome cases global, extinction.6

Rising sea temperature is thought to be theprimary cause of the many and widespreadepisodes of coral “bleaching” worldwide since1979.7 Reef-building corals have a symbioticrelationship with algae that live within themand supply energy from photosynthesis. Small

increases of even 1 °C above the summer meanmaximum can cause the partial or total loss of these algae and their pigments, causing thecoral to turn a brilliant white.8 The bleaching is often temporary, but it can reduce the repro-ductive capacity and growth of corals, increasetheir susceptibility to disease, and even resultin death.9

Six major cycles of mass coral bleaching,affecting hundreds or thousands of kilometersof reefs, have occurred over the past 20 years,with a pattern of increasing frequency andintensity.10 Since 1995, most reefs worldwidehave been affected by mass bleaching. Theimpacts on corals range from relatively mild(in the case of seasonal bleaching) to large-scale mortality.11 Mortality near 100 percentwas observed in Indonesian and eastern Pacificreefs following a bleaching event in 1982–83,and 46 percent mortality was recorded in the


H

Black band diseaseadvancing from right to left in coral,Diploria strigosa,Islas del Rosario,Honduras. The inci-dence and preva-lence of the diseasecan increase when corals are stressedby above-normaltemperatures.Sven Zea, Universidad Nacional deColombia/Marine Photobank


western Indian Ocean after a 1997–98 event.12

The extent of coral mortality appears toincrease with the intensity of the bleachingevent, which in turn is determined by the sizeand duration of the sea-temperature increase.13

In 2001–02, exten-sive bleaching onAustralia’s Great Barrier Reef causedsignificant coralmortality in thehottest patches, butno damage in coolerareas.14 In somecases, other reef-dwelling species that depend on coral for shelter and sustenance haveshown little recoveryfrom severe bleach-ing events.15

As sea tempera-tures continue torise, the thermalthresholds of coralsin most areas of thetropics and subtrop-ics could be exceededby 2030 to 2050.16

Unless there is achange in these ther-

mal tolerances, reef bleaching on a worldwidescale could become an annual or biannualevent by this period.17

Corals could cope with the rising tempera-tures in at least two possible ways: acclimati-zation, whereby their physiology changes sothey are more tolerant of higher tempera-tures, and adaptation, wherein more-resilientindividuals within a population survive andincrease in numbers.18 Yet there is no evi-dence that corals will be able to undergo thenecessary changes quickly enough to keeppace with predicted temperature increases.19

It is possible that more thermally tolerantspecies will become more dominant, leadingto a decrease in reef diversity. Even if coralsare not killed outright by more-persistent

bleaching, they may fail to reproduce.20

Many of the diverse species that exist withincoral reef ecosystems worldwide are likely todisappear if corals are removed by rising seatemperature.21 The loss of reefs would alsoaffect the estimated tens of millions of peoplewho rely on reefs for daily sustenance.22 Unfor-tunately, the global prognosis for reefs isunlikely to change unless there is an acceler-ated effort to stabilize atmospheric greenhousegas concentrations.23

Many marine fish seek preferred tempera-tures, and increasing sea temperature is likelyto affect their distribution as well as theirabundance. As the western Mediterranean Seahas warmed over the last 20 to 30 years, therehave been increases in the abundance of certainalgae, echinoderms, and fish that thrive at hightemperatures. In the polar regions, where fishhave narrow limits of temperature tolerance,even slight changes could shift their geographi-cal distribution and affect their physiologicalperformance.24 Research on a Californian gas-tropod and a Caribbean coral has shown thatboth have shifted poleward due to warming.25

A northward shift in the distribution of someNorth Sea fish also occurred in response to ris-ing sea temperatures between 1977 and 2001.26

The impacts of sea temperature rise willlikely be complex and unpredictable. Forexample, recent warming trends in northwest-ern Europe have led to earlier spawning ofthe mollusk Macoma balthica, but not to ear-lier spring phytoplankton blooms.27 This hascaused a temporal mismatch between the mollusk larvae and their food supply. Further-more, the larvae are now suffering fromincreased predation by shrimp whose peakabundance time has also shifted.

Changes have also been observed in marineplankton abundance and community structurein recent decades.28 Phytoplankton (smallplants) and zooplankton (small animals) lie at the base of the marine food web, providingfood for fish in their larval and adult stages. Astudy of plankton in the North Sea concludedthat rising temperatures since the mid-1980shave modified the plankton community in a way that may have reduced the survival of


Bleached coral onthe Great BarrierReef, Australia.© Greenpeace/Roger Grace


young cod, exacerbating existing declinescaused by overfishing.29 The warmer environ-ment may also hamper the reproductive suc-cess of cod.

Climate variability is known to affect thereplenishment of stocks with juvenile fish, par-ticularly toward the edge of a species’ range.There is little evidence, however, that world-wide stock declines are linked in any majorway to climate change.30 On the other hand,there is abundant evidence that overfishing hasresulted in significant declines in many fishspecies. Importantly, it has been suggested thatheavily overfished stocks may be more sensitiveto climate variability due to a loss in biologicaldiversity, resulting in impaired resilience.31

Fishing pressure and climate change could thusact in concert and reduce exploited fish num-bers below a population size from which theycannot easily recover.32

Also of concern to marine biodiversity issea-level rise, caused by the expansion of seawater as it warms and by the melting of land-based ice. Between 1961 and 2003, the globalsea level has risen by about 1.8 millimeters ayear on average.33 It is projected to keep risingover the next several decades, though theamount will depend largely on the degree ofmelting at the polar ice caps.34 Presently, thin-ning of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears tobe nearly balanced by thickening of the EastAntarctic Ice Sheet; losses from the GreenlandIce Sheet, however, are now more than doubleprevious estimates, or more than 0.5 millime-ters per year.35 Even if greenhouse gas concen-trations were stabilized immediately, sea levelwould continue to rise from thermal expan-sion, and ice sheets would continue to react toclimate change.36

Sea-level rise could lead to increased erosionand flooding of coastal areas, and to intrusionof seawater into estuaries and freshwater aqui-fers.37 By the 2080s, this could result in the lossof as much as 22 percent of the world’s coastalwetlands, affecting wildlife that depends onthese habitats.38 One study found that a pro-jected sea-level rise of half a meter would sub-merge up to 32 percent of the beach area ontwo Caribbean islands that are known nesting

sites for four marine turtle species.39 Anotherstudy predicted significant loss of terrestrialhabitat on two low-lying Hawaiian islands,affecting the endangered Hawaiian monk seal,the threatened Hawaiian green sea turtle, andthe endangered Laysan finch.40 Rapid sea-levelrise could also effectively “drown “ coral reefsby reducing penetration of the light requiredfor coral-dwelling algae to photosynthesize.41

In addition to raising sea levels, it is possiblethat climate change could affect the global cir-culation of ocean water.42 The so-called GreatOcean Conveyor Belt, driven primarily by tem-perature and salinity differences, is responsiblefor transporting a huge amount of tropicalheat to the north Atlantic via the Gulf Stream.During the wintertime, this heat is released toeastward-moving air masses, warming the cli-mate of northern Europe.43 Ocean warmingand the input of freshwater from melting gla-ciers and sea ice could weaken or switch off theconveyor belt in the north Atlantic, reducingthis warming effect.44 While the likelihood ofthis is unknown, the possibility of an abruptchange in ocean circulation and impact on cli-mate is very real. 45

Of all the Earth’s regions, the poles haveseen particularly rapid warming, with resultingimpacts on marine habitats and biodiversity.46

In the Arctic, researchers have reported a 40-percent reduction in the thickness of sea icebetween 1958 and the 1990s, and a 10–15 per-cent decrease in the extent of sea-ice coveragein the spring and summer since the 1950s.47

The mean annual surface temperature in theregion is predicted to increase another 4–7 °Cby the end of the century.48 By this time, theArctic Ocean is expected to be predominantlyice-free in summer.49

This degree of melting will likely have nega-tive consequences within the next few decadesfor Arctic animals that depend on the ice,including fish, birds, seals, whales, and polarbears.50 (See Sidebar 1, p. 22.) As the warmingmoves northward, some species that arepresently abundant will be restricted in theirrange, which could have severe impacts oncommercial fisheries, indigenous hunting, andecosystem function. The loss in Arctic biodi-



versity will likely also result in increased sus-ceptibility to disease, pests, and parasites.51

In the southern polar region, records for thewestern Antarctic Peninsula indicate a rapidrise in atmospheric temperature of nearly 3 °Csince 1951, and a concurrent 1 °C rise in sum-mer sea-surface temperatures.52 Warmer tem-peratures appear to have led to retreats of fivePeninsular ice shelves over the last century,including the collapse of the Prince Gustav and parts of the Larsen ice shelves in 1995.53

The majority of glaciers in the region haveretreated over the past 50 years, and averageretreat rates are accelerating.54

The warming ocean waters, reduction of seaice, and increased glacial melting (with its sub-sequent effects on ocean salinity) could all sig-nificantly affect life in the Antarctic. A recentstudy at the South Orkney Islands reportedthat populations of both Adélie and chinstrappenguins have declined in the last 26 years inparallel with regional warming and a signifi-cant reduction in the extent of the sea ice onwhich Adélie penguins depend.55 These changesalso appear to be having a negative impact onnumbers of Antarctic krill, a key species in theSouthern Ocean food web and an importantfood source for the penguins.56 (See Sidebar 2.)

Many bottom-dwelling Antarctic species areparticularly sensitive to temperature variation.In a 2004 study, researchers found that a mere1 °C rise in summer sea temperatures impairedthe biological functioning of three species ofmollusk.57 One scallop species, for examplelost the ability to swim. The study concludedthat some populations of Antarctica’s 4,000-plus known bottom-dwelling species would be at risk of decline from a 1–2 °C increase insummer sea temperatures.

The rising carbon content of the atmos-phere is not just contributing to the warmingof the oceans, but is also making them moreacidic. Over the past 200 years, the oceans haveabsorbed about half of the human-caused CO2 emissions, lowering the pH of the oceanby about 0.1 unit.58 By 2100, it is estimatedthat the predicted rise in atmospheric CO2

will cause a further drop in ocean pH of 0.5—a reduction well outside the range of naturalvariation and one that has probably not been experienced for hundreds of thousands of years.59

Ocean acidification could have a majorimpact on many marine organisms that buildshells and skeletal structures out of calciumcarbonate. These include corals and echino-derms, together with certain crustaceans,mollusks, and planktonic organisms. Thesestructures will become more difficult to pro-duce and maintain and may ultimately start to


Sidebar 1. Effects of Climate Change on Arctic Marine Wildlife

Fish. Rising sea temperatures may cause changes in metabolic, growth,and reproductive processes and affect the growth and survival of smallerorganisms on which fish prey. The distribution of Arctic fish will most likely change, with cod, herring, walleye, pollock, and some flatfish movingnorthward and possibly increasing in abundance. Other species includingcapelin, polar cod, and Greenland halibut are likely to have a restrictedrange and decline in abundance.

Birds. Arctic seabirds are likely to be affected mostly by changes in theirprey. The most sensitive species to climate change are potentially thosewith narrow food or habitat requirements, including the ivory gull, which is closely associated with sea ice. Research suggests there has been an 80percent decline in the gull’s nesting numbers, possibly due to an alteredwintering habitat. In the Canadian Arctic, increased rates of egg loss andadult mortality of Brünnich’s Guillemot in the late 1990s have been linkedto the increase in mosquito numbers associated with higher temperatures.

Seals. Ice-living seals depend on sea ice as a birthing, molting, and resting platform, and some species subsist on ice-associated prey. Sea icemust be sufficiently stable to rear pups, and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,years with little or no sea ice have resulted in almost no production of pupscompared to hundreds of thousands in good sea-ice years. Continuance ofcurrent and projected trends will have dire consequences for the harp andhooded seals in the region. Other Arctic seals that depend on sea ice are atsimilar risk, including ringed, bearded, and spotted seals.

Polar Bears. Climate change and sea-ice retreat will likely bringdeclines in polar bear numbers, leading to possible extinction. Mostfemale polar bears build their dens on land, but the bears depend heavilyon sea ice as their habitat and feeding ground. Earlier break-up of the icein spring and later freeze-up in autumn would mean a shorter feedingperiod, resulting in reduced fat stores. Females with lower fat stores arelikely to produce fewer cubs and have smaller cubs with lower survivalrates. In Hudson Bay, Canada, break-up is now occurring about 2.5weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, and polar bears have been comingashore in poorer condition and birth rates have declined. Ice loss couldalso reduce the availability of the bear’s main prey, ringed seals, as theirhabitat too disappears.

Source: See Endnote 50 for this section.


disintegrate, since calcium carbonate tends todissolve under acidic conditions.60 Acidifica-tion is likely to have major ramifications forthe biodiversity and functioning of coral reefsand associated ecosystems, including sea-

grasses and mangroves. It could also affectnon-calcifying marine organisms. The respir-atory processes of fish and invertebrates couldbe impaired and body tissues could becomeacidified, leading to decreased reproductivepotential, slower growth, and increased suscep-tibility to disease.61

A report on ocean acidification by the UK’sRoyal Society concluded that there was no realistic way to reverse the widespread chemi-cal effects of ocean acidification or the subse-quent biological effects.62 It suggested that theonly viable and practical solution to minimize

the long-term consequences of ocean acidifi-cation is to reduce CO2 emissions into theatmosphere. Without significant action to do this, there could be no place in the futureoceans for many of the species and ecosystemswe know today.


Sidebar 2. Impact of Climate Change on Antarctic Krill

Since the mid-1980s, significantly smaller populations of Antarctic krillhave been observed in the Antarctic Peninsula region. In the productivesouthwest Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean, krill densities decreasedby an estimated 80 percent between 1976 and 2003. The decline wasfound to correlate with the extent and duration of sea ice the previous winter, since the ice provides winter food from ice algae and is needed for survival and growth of krill larvae.

Antarctic krill also depend on summer phytoplankton blooms as a foodsource. However, a study of plankton community structure between 1990and 1996 at Palmer Station, Antarctica, revealed a shift in the organismscomprising the plankton to communities less-effectively grazed by the krill. The change was linked to increased glacial meltwater run-off, whichreduced the surface water salinity. Krill are also believed to favor coldwater, and rising sea temperatures in one of their key spawning and nurs-ery areas could affect populations as well.

Changes in Antarctic krill could have profound implications for theSouthern Ocean food web. Penguins, albatross, seals, and whales areespecially susceptible to krill shortages. Lower krill numbers in the early1990s may have contributed to decreasing populations of Adélie and chin-strap penguins observed since 1990. In addition, decreasing trends in birthweight of Antarctic fur seals and macaroni penguins in the early 1990swere reported, and the contribution (by weight) of krill in the diets of mac-aroni penguins began to decline significantly. Baleen whales, crabeater,and fur seals would also likely be affected by reduced krill abundance.


Catch of Antarctic krill from an Australianresearch expedition in 2003.Courtesy Australian Antarctic Division

Polluting the MarineEnvironment

n ongoing threat to marine life is therelease of polluting substances into

the oceans, including chemicals,radioactive substances, nutrients,

oil, and marine debris. These substances cancontaminate the marine environment, directlykill organisms, and undermine ecosystemintegrity.1

In recent years, there has been rising con-cern about the effects of mercury, PCBs (poly-chlorinated biphenyls), and other chemicals on marine species.2 Synthetic chemicals knowncollectively as persistent organic pollutants(POPs) are toxic, long-lived, and bioaccumula-tive, meaning that they build up in the tissuesof fish and other animals. They can also travellong distances from their point of origin.Various POPs have become subject to interna-tional control under the provisions of theStockholm Convention agreed to in 2001.3

But others have received relatively little atten-tion despite their known and potential effectson marine organisms.

One example is the brominated flame retar-dants (BFRs), compounds added to plastics,resins, textiles, paints, electronics, and otherproducts to increase their fire resistance.4

Between 1990 and 2000, global usage of thechemicals more than doubled from 145,000tons to 310,000 tons.5 Asia accounts for morethan half of the market demand for the sub-stances, followed by the Americas and Europe.6

BFRs have been shown to contaminatemarine wildlife all over the world. They havebeen found in coastal areas, in the deep oceans,and even in remote Arctic regions.7 They enterthe environment through emissions duringtheir production and by leaching from fin-

ished products during use or after disposal.8

Research from seals and pilot whales indicatesthat once absorbed, the chemicals may bepassed from mother to young across the pla-centa as well as through lactational transfer.9

There is also evidence that some of these sub-stances increase in concentration throughmarine food chains.10

While relatively little is known about thetoxic effects of BFRs in wildlife and humans,several of the most worrisome effects may beon the thyroid and estrogen hormone sys-tems.11 A study on wild grey seal pups reportedthat levels of one category of BFRs, polybromi-nated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), in their blub-ber were statistically linked to levels of thyroidhormones in their blood, in accordance withthe hypothesis that PBDEs are endocrine dis-ruptors.12 Other studies have demonstratedthat some BFRs are toxic to nervous andimmune systems and can alter liver function.13

A study of muscle tissue from skipjack tunacollected from offshore waters of several coun-tries in 1996–2001 found PDBEs in almost allsamples at levels ranging from less than 0.1nanograms per gram (ng/g) lipid to 53 ng/glipid, indicating very pervasive contaminationof the marine environment.14 Higher levelswere apparent in the northern hemisphere,possibly reflecting greater usage of the com-pounds in that region. The study also sug-gested that some developing countries aroundthe East China Sea that receive large amountsof waste electrical equipment are potential“hotspots” for releasing PBDEs into the marineenvironment.

Some studies have indicated a significantpresence of BFRs in seabirds, and the sub-


A

Polluting the Marine Environment

stances were also present in three sperm whalesfound stranded on the coast of the Nether-lands.15 Because the whales feed in deep off-shore waters, this implies that the compoundshave even contaminated deep-water oceanicfood webs. PBDEs were also detectable in polarbears from different regions of the Arctic.16

One study showed a possible PDBE break-down product, indicating that the bears maymetabolize the compound and that the levelstypically measured may in fact underestimatetheir total exposure.17 Some studies show anincreasing trend of PBDE levels in marinewildlife over time, while others indicate thatlevels have stabilized or even decreased inrecent years, possibly as a result of new con-trols on the substances in some countries.18

Persistent organic pollutants are just one ofthe diverse array of pollutants that presentwidespread and long-term threats to marineecosystems. Another significant, though per-haps more localized, threat is that posed byartificial radionuclides, substances that have no natural counterparts, have extremely longhalf-lives, and can act as potent carcinogensand mutagens.19 Nuclear weapons testing,predominantly between 1954 and 1962, hasbeen the largest single source of artificialradionuclides to the oceans due to fallout.Other sources include operational dischargesfrom nuclear power facilities, nuclear repro-cessing plants, and, historically, the dumpingof radioactive waste at sea.

Presently, the most prominent sources ofradioactive pollution to the oceans are fromnuclear reprocessing plants in the United King-dom and France.20 In 1998, sediment from theseabed near the Sellafield plant in the UK wasfound to be so contaminated that some arguedit should be classified as nuclear waste.21 The“footprint” of contamination stretches fromthe Irish Sea to Arctic waters, due to the long-distance transport of radionuclides on oceancurrents.22 Despite some removal due to thenatural processes of ocean circulation, theremobilization of contaminated sedimentsfrom the seabed acts as a continued source ofthe radionuclides to waters above.23

One study detected radiocesium concentra-

tions in tissue samples of seals and porpoisesalong the UK coast at levels 300 times greaterthan in seawater.24 The levels of contaminationin the mammals decreased with increasing distance from Sellafield, indicating that the

plant was the major source of this contamin-ation. For plutonium, although dischargesfrom Sellafield peaked in the early 1980s, thepresence of the radionuclide in sediment continues to act as a source to overlyingwaters.25 Plutonium was found in seaweed col-lected from the Irish coastline between 1986and 1996, as well as in mussels and oysters onthe northeast coast of Ireland between 1988and 1997.26

Plant nutrients, mainly in the form ofnitrogen or phosphorous, are also importantmarine pollutants. They reach coastal watersfrom a variety of sources, including agricul-tural fertilizer run-off, sewage discharges, andvia atmospheric pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.27 Excess nutrient pollution incoastal waters can cause increased numbers ofphytoplankton and zooplankton, resulting inmarked changes in species composition. Asthese organisms die and sink, they are con-sumed by microbes either deeper in the wateror at the seabed. The increase in microbe num-bers may cause oxygen to be used up in theseareas, leading to breathing difficulties for


Looking up an out-flow pipe toward theSellafield nuclearpower station,Sellafield, UnitedKingdom.© Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing


fish and other marine animals.28 Fish tend tovacate these areas as oxygen levels fall, but less-mobile sediment-dwelling animals that cannotescape may begin to die.29

The process of nutrient overload and subse-quent oxygen loss has led to the formation ofvast, oxygen-depleted areas known as “deadzones.”30 The number of dead zones has risenevery decade since the 1970s, with a recentestimate of up to 200.31 The largest such zones(40,000–84,000 square kilometers) are found in coastal areas of the Baltic Sea, the northernGulf of Mexico, and, until recently, the north-western shelf of the Black Sea. Smaller andless-frequently occurring dead zones occur inthe northern Adriatic Sea, the southern bight

of the North Sea, and in many U.S. coastal andestuarine areas, as well as off South America,China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.32

Some of these zones are fleeting whereas otherspersist for a large proportion of the year.33

The increasing numbers of dead zones incoastal regions are associated with declines inbiodiversity and, in the Baltic and Black Seas,have led to the demise of some bottom fish-eries.34 Severe bottom hypoxia linked to nutri-ent pollution was first recorded around 1950 inthe Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.35 Accel-erated growth of the Gulf of Mexico dead zonefollows the exponential growth of fertilizer usebeginning in the 1950s.36 In the Baltic, there is clear evidence that excess use of fertilizers is associated with oxygen-depleted bottomwater.38 Municipal and industrial wastewaterand atmospheric deposition may also be respon-sible for nutrient pollution in some places.37

Oil spills in the marine environment can be catastrophic for wildlife and have long-last-ing impacts on ecosystem health as well.While large spills typically make the headlinesbecause of their dramatic effects, smaller spillsoccur every day from ships, offshore drillingoperations, and routine vessel and vehiclemaintenance.39 For example, from 1990 to1999, there were 513 spills from tankers andtank barges in U.S. coastal waters of at least100 gallons (379 liters) in size.40 In the NorthSea, lawful discharges of oil from offshore oiland gas installations accounted for the over-whelming bulk of oil inputs from this sector.41

While the size of a spill is important, theamount of damage also depends on other fac-tors including the type of oil spilled, the loca-tion of the spill, and weather conditions.42

Oil spills can have devastating impacts on theenvironment. Oil-coated shorelines result indead or moribund animals, often in large num-bers.43 (See Sidebar 3.) Seabirds and marinemammals are particularly badly affected: coat-ing of feathers or fur can destroy their water-proofing and insulating characteristics, leadingto death from hypothermia. Animals may alsobe poisoned by oil ingestion as they try toclean themselves or if their prey is contami-nated. In the long term, continual exposure to


Crude oil spilledfrom the sunkentanker Prestigecoats the beach ofBarranin, Galicia,Spain.© Greenpeace/Pedro Armestre


low levels of oil can have a significant effect onthe survival and reproductive performance ofseabirds and some sea mammals.44

A highly visible form of marine pollution isthat caused by marine debris. Far from beingjust a few pieces of rubbish scattered alongbeaches, marine debris has become a pervasiveproblem affecting all of the world’s oceans.45 Itis the cause of injury and death to numerousmarine animals, either because they becomeentangled in it or because they mistake it forprey and eat it. At least 267 different speciesare known to have suffered from entangle-ment or ingestion of marine debris, includingmany seabirds, turtles, seals, sea lions, whales,and fish.46

Studies have shown that marine debris isubiquitous in the world’s oceans and on itsshorelines, with higher quantities found in the tropics and mid-latitudes than toward thepoles. Large amounts are also found in ship-ping lanes, around fishing areas, and in oceanicconvergence zones. Studies report quantities of larger floating debris generally in the rangeof 0 to 10 items per square kilometer, thoughhigher amounts were reported in the EnglishChannel (10 to more than 100 items per squarekilometer) and Ambon Bay, Indonesia (morethan 4 items per square meter).47 Floating“micro” debris of a much smaller size occurs at high levels even well offshore; in the NorthPacific Gyre, a debris convergence zone,extrapolation of the data suggests that maxi-mum levels could reach nearly 1 million itemsper square kilometer.

On the seafloor, debris has been studied inseveral locations in European waters as well as in the United States, the Caribbean, andlocations in Indonesia. In Europe, the highestquantity recorded was 101,000 items persquare kilometer, and in Indonesia roughly690,000 items per square kilometer.48 In sur-veys of world shorelines, the largest quantitiesof marine debris were reported for Indonesia(up to nearly 30 items per meter of shoreline)and Sicily (up to 231 items per meter).49

An estimated 80 percent of marine debris isfrom land-based sources, with the rest comingfrom marine activities.50 The sources fall into

four major groups: tourism-related litter at thecoast (including food and beverage packaging,


Sidebar 3. Recent Major Oil Spills and Their Effects

Exxon Valdez, Alaska, 1989. When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ranaground in March 1989, it spilled an estimated 42,000 tons of crude oilinto Alaska’s Prince William Sound, contaminating at least 1,990 kilo-meters of pristine shoreline. The spill killed an estimated 250,000 birdsalmost immediately and had longer-term effects on abundance and distri-bution. Of marine mammals, an estimated 2,800 sea otters and at least302 harbor seals were killed directly, and both species showed severalyears of delayed recovery in the spill area. Oil contamination was still evi-dent on Alaskan coastlines 10 to 12 years after the spill, and as recently as2003 in some lower intertidal zones. As late as 2000, some populations of sea otters had not recovered from the spill.

Prestige, Spain 2002. On November 13, 2002, the oil tanker Prestigesank 210 kilometers off the coast of Spain, releasing an estimated 63,000tons of oil along coastlines in northern Spain and southwestern France.More than 23,000 oiled birds were collected after the spill, and the totalnumber of affected birds—including common guillemots, razorbills,Atlantic puffins, northern gannet, and European shags—was estimated atbetween 115,000 and 230,000. In Galicia, the most affected beaches lostup to two thirds of their total species richness. A study of mussels fromthe Bay of Biscay in 2003 indicated that exposure to toxic chemicals wasstill causing metabolic disturbances.

Lebanon, July 2006. On July 14 and 15, 2006, Israeli military strikes hitoil storage tanks at Jiyeh power station on the Lebanese coast, resulting in the release of an estimated 10,000 to 13,000 tons of heavy fuel oil intothe Mediterranean Sea. Cleanup operations were delayed for five weeksdue to the war, during which time the spill spread over some 150 kilome-ters of Lebanon’s coastline. Much of the spilled oil emulsified and solidi-fied along the shore, clinging to sand, rock, and stone, though the nearbyseabed was also smothered. Initial impacts on marine wildlife includedreports of thousands of fish and other species being found dead on shoresdaily. Because Lebanese marine ecosystems have high biodiversity, there isparticular concern about the spill’s impact on vermetid (marine snail) reefcommunities. The spill also threatened spawning fish and sea turtles thatnest on the coast.

Philippines, August 2006. A tanker chartered by Petron Corporationsank in rough seas off the Philippines on August 11, 2006, spilling some200 tons of oil initially but leaving an additional 1,800 tons on board. Thespill covered some 320 kilometers of coastline in thick sludge, destroyedcoral reefs, and badly damaged 1,000 hectares of marine reserve. Animpact assessment is being undertaken to assess damage to marine sanc-tuaries and coastal ecosystems, and environmentalists have called on thePhilippine government to hold Petron and its partners accountable fordamages to the environment and people’s livelihoods. Cleanup has beenhampered by slow decisions on the release of funds by the government,and to date Petron has not offered financial assistance in mitigation.



cigarettes, and plastic beach toys); sewage-related debris (including street litter, condoms,and syringes washed from storm drains orsewer overflows); fishing-related debris(including lines, nets, pots, and strappingbands from bait boxes); and wastes from shipsand boats (including garbage that is acciden-tally or deliberately dumped overboard).

Plastics and synthetic materials are the mostcommon materials found, and these cause the

most problems for marine animals and birds.As plastics weather in the ocean, they are brokenup either mechanically or by sunlight into smal-ler and smaller fragments, and eventually intopieces the size of grains of sand. These particleshave been found in seabed sediments and sus-pended in seawater.51 Even such tiny particlescan cause harm to the marine environment, assmall sea creatures ingest them and potentiallyconcentrate any toxic chemicals present. Plasticbags are the major debris item found on theseabed, especially near the coast.52

Derelict fishing gear, six-pack rings, and bait box bands kill marine mammals, sea tur-tles, and seabirds by drowning, suffocation,strangulation, starvation (through reducedfeeding efficiency), and injuries.53 Derelict fish-ing gear also damages coral reefs when nets orlines get snagged by the reef and break it off.And discarded or lost fishing nets and pots can continue to trap and catch fish even whenthey are no longer in use. This phenomenon,known as “ghost fishing,” can result in the cap-ture of large quantities of marine organisms,affecting conservation of fish stocks.54 Marinedebris can also act as rafts, possibly carryingmarine animals and plants long distances toareas where they are non-native.


A young boy playswith syringes on abeach in Lebanon,surrounded bygarbage and otherdebris that has been washed up by the tide.© Greenpeace/Serji

Freedom for the Seas

iven the many threats to the world’smarine environments, fundamentalchanges need to be made in theway our oceans are managed. While

governments have adopted a wide range ofwell-meaning oceans and fisheries regulations,many of these have been ineffective becausethey are either too weak or poorly enforced.1

Moreover, most fisheries management hasbeen based on consideration of single speciesrather that the whole ecosystem of which theyare part. When limits are imposed, these havetended to be in the form of catch quotas, tem-porary area closures, and limits on fishingeffort. But fisheries management has generallyfallen far short of adequate protection forwider marine ecosystems.2

What is needed to fill the present void inregulation is an integrated, precautionary, andecosystem approach to promote both the con-servation and sustainable management of themarine environment. In other words, currentpresumptions that favor freedom to pursuefishing and freedom of the seas will need to bereplaced with the new concept of freedom forthe seas.3

A Global Network of Marine Reserves

From a conservation perspective, safeguardingocean life means protecting not just a singlespecies, but the full variety of species and theirhabitats, as well as the complex interactionsbetween species that make up an ecosystem.This can be done most effectively by establish-ing fully protected marine reserves—effectively,“national parks” of the sea.

Marine reserves offer the highest level ofenvironmental protection of all marine pro-

tected areas (MPAs).4 They are areas of the seathat are closed to all extractive uses, such ascommercial fishing and mining, as well as todisposal activities. (Less-harmful uses, such asrecreational boating, passage of shipping, and,in specific cases, small-scale, non-destructivefishing, may be permitted up to certain levels,though many reserves contain core zones whereno human activity is allowed at all.) As such,marine reserves promote the sustainable use ofliving resources in an equitable way that isunderpinned by the precautionary principle.5

Currently, more than 4,000 MPAs existworldwide, almost all of which are small-scaleand coastal.6 There is an urgent need, however,for a global network of fully protected reservesthat also includes protection of the high seas,or areas beyond national jurisdiction.7 This isnecessary to safeguard against overfishing, ille-gal fishing, and other expanding human activi-


G

A clown fish seeksshelter in a seaanemone in the Apo Island MarineReserve, thePhilippines.© Greenpeace/Gavin Newman


ties in the deep sea and open ocean.8 In 2003,the World Parks Congress, an intergovernmen-tal body that meets once a decade to set theagenda for protected areas, recommended thatat least 20 to 30 percent of all ocean habitats be

included in a network of marine reserves.9

Others have called for an even more precau-tionary approach, suggesting that up to 50 per-cent of the sea should be protected to conserveviable marine populations, support fisheriesmanagement, secure ecosystem processes, andassure sufficient ecological connectivity.10

Despite the urgent need to provide suchcoverage, it has taken some 30 years to achievethe current level of ocean protection of roughly1 percent (compared with more than 12 per-cent on land).11 Of this, only about 0.1 percentis fully protected, and many critical oceanecosystems, including coral reefs, seamounts,and hydrothermal vents, remain vulnerable.12

(See Table 1.) Because of the associated func-tions of coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrassbeds, scientists have suggested that connectedcorridors of these key coastal habitats be pro-tected together.13

Marine reserves can result in long-lasting andoften rapid increases in the abundance, size,diversity, and productivity of marine organ-isms.14 Areas of the Great Barrier Reef that hadbeen reserves for 12–13 years showed significant

increases in the abundance of coral trout, themajor target of hook-and-line fisheries in theregion, compared to pre-reserve abundance.15

Similarly, reefs in East Africa that had beenprotected for several years had higher richnessand abundance of certain commerciallyimportant species compared to fished areas.16

Marine reserves can also benefit fisheries in surrounding waters as a result of spillover of fish, larvae, and eggs across reserve boun-daries.17 At the Soufriere Marine ManagementArea in St. Lucia, after three years of protec-tion, the biomass of commercial fish specieshad tripled within the closed reserves. Afterfive years, in areas outside the reserves, biomasshad doubled and average catches had increased46 to 90 percent depending on the size of trapused.18 Marine reserves in the Red Sea, estab-lished in 1995, saw a similar result: after onlyfive years of protection, the catch per unit ofeffort of a surrounding fishery had increasedby more than 60 percent.19

Marine reserves can address the problems of ecosystem damage in cases where a specieshas been depleted by overfishing and, at times,where a habitat has been damaged throughbottom trawling or other destructive activities.For instance, they can help to restore lost predator/prey relationships. Following the creation of a marine reserve in New Zealand,an area with over 50 percent bare rock that was being grazed by sea urchins was restored to seaweed beds after populations of large fishand crayfish (predators of the urchins) wereallowed to recover.20

Although marine reserves cannot directlyreverse the impacts of climate change or pollu-tion or severe physical damage, their ecosys-tems may become more resilient than those ofexploited areas, potentially mitigating some ofthe negative consequences.21 A well-designedglobal network of reserves could act as a seriesof stepping stones, providing refuges for popu-lations whose distribution is being forced tochange as a result of climate change.22 (Ulti-mately, however, the best way to address wors-ening climate change, ocean acidification, andmany forms of marine pollution is to preventthese threats from occurring in the first place,


Hawksbill turtle in the Apo IslandMarine Reserve, the Philippines.© Greenpeace/Gavin Newman


including by accelerating the transition toclean, renewable energy.)

To be representative, a global network ofmarine reserves should include large-scalereserves on the high seas as well as a mosaic of smaller reserves in the coastal zone that areassociated with adjacent, well-managed, sus-tainable fishing areas.23 A network of smallercoastal reserves has the advantage of spreadingfishery benefits to nearby communities. If localfishers feel a sense of ownership for theirmarine resources and are invited to participatein siting of reserves, they are far more likely tosupport them.24 Much of the success of themarine reserves in St. Lucia can be attributedto the full involvement of various stakeholdersfrom the planning stages onward.25

A global reserve network should be repre-sentative of the broad spectrum of marine life,including places that are biologically rich, thatsupport outstanding concentrations of animalsand plants, and that have high numbers ofrare or endemic species.26 It is also critical toprotect areas that are important spawning andnursery grounds, that are important to air-breathing aquatic animals like seabirds, turtles,and marine mammals, and that are particularlythreatened or vulnerable to human impacts.Finally, certain areas on the high seas, such asupwellings and oceanic convergence zones,deserve protection because of their high pro-ductivity. In cases where the location of suchsites is not fixed, governments may be able touse satellite technologies to update fleets aboutthe positions of the designated reserves.27 Tem-porary and/or moveable reserves could also beused to protect migrating species like turtlesthat follow predictable routes across the oceans,as well as birds and other animals that riskbeing killed as bycatch.28

The concept of fully protected marinereserves is gaining broader acceptance in bothdeveloping and industrialized countries. InNovember 2005, local chiefs of Fiji’s Great SeaReef established five MPAs with permanentno-take “tabu” zones—an important steptoward meeting the nation’s commitment toprotect 30 percent of Fijian waters by 2020.29

And in 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush

designated the world’s largest marine conser-vation area off the coast of Hawaii, encom-passing nearly 140,000 square miles (363,000square kilometers) of U.S. waters, includingrelatively undisturbed coral reefs.30 In Europe,

a variety of regional conventions have calledfor MPA networks in the Baltic and Mediter-ranean Seas and the northeast Atlantic, thoughimplementation has been slow to date.31 Onceadopted, a new marine protection law underdevelopment in the EU may bring greater pro-tection of regional waters.32

At the global level, the 2002 World Summiton Sustainable Development’s “Plan of Imple-mentation” included an agreement to establisha global network of MPAs by 2012 as a tool for ocean conservation and management.33 In2004, parties to the Convention on Biological


Table 1. Level of Protection of Critical Marine Ecosystems

Coral Reefs Globally, some 980 MPAs cover 18.7 percent of theworld’s coral reef habitats; however, only 1.4 percent ofthese are within fully protected no-take reserves, many ofwhich suffer from poor management and enforcement.Researchers suggest that at least 30 percent of all reefs bedesignated as no-take areas to ensure long-term protec-tion of exploited fish stocks.

Mangroves About 9 percent of the world’s mangroves lie withinMPAs, though greater protection is required for effectivemangrove conservation.

Seagrasses No MPAs have been designated solely for the protectionof seagrasses; however, the grasses have been on lists ofkey habitats singled out when sites are recommended forprotection, as with Australia’s Great Barrier Reef MarinePark.

Seamounts So far, relatively few seamount sites have been designatedas marine reserves or MPAs.

Hydrothermal In March 2003, the Canadian government legalized the Vents Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents MPA southwest of Van-

couver as the nation’s first MPA, creating an area whereremoval of marine resources is not permitted without a license and approved research plan. In the northeastAtlantic off Portugal, WWF worked with the Azores regionalgovernment to have the relatively shallow Lucky Strike andMenez Gwen vent fields designated as MPAs in 2002.

Sources: See Endnote 12 for this section.


Diversity (CBD) also committed to the establishment of such a network within thistimeframe.34 However, no mechanism forimplementing this exists under the currentframework provided by either the CBD or theUnited Nations Convention on the Law of theSea (UNCLOS), the leading internationaltreaty that governs countries’ rights and dutiesin the high seas.

Equitable and Sustainable Management of the High Seas

One way to provide the necessary mandate toimplement a global marine reserve network—and to oversee a range of other currentlyunregulated activities on the high seas—is tocreate a new implementing agreement underUNCLOS.35 UNCLOS not only offers countriesthe right to use the oceans, but also requiresthem to take measures to protect and preservethe marine environment.36 What is needed to fill the present legal void in regulation is an integrated, precautionary, and ecosystem-based management approach to promote theconservation and sustainable management ofthe marine environment in areas beyondnational jurisdiction.

A new UNCLOS “high-seas agreement”would provide a formal mandate to protecthigh-seas areas for conservation purposes andcould be used to address a variety of existinggaps in high-seas governance. It could be mod-eled on the U.N. Fish Stocks Agreement, whichwas itself negotiated to implement some of theArticles of UNCLOS. There are advantages todeveloping such an implementing agreementunder UNCLOS, since the treaty’s broad remitalready covers most or all of the activities thataffect marine biodiversity and also provides abinding dispute settlement mechanism.

Among other things, the agreement could:• Provide a clear mandate and legal duty to

protect high-seas biodiversity, founded onecosystem-based management and the pre-cautionary principle;

• Establish an effective centralized monitoring,control, and surveillance mechanism forhuman activities on the high seas, withenough legal ‘teeth’ to ensure that these activ-

ities comply with international law;• Provide a clear mandate for the identification,

selection, establishment, and management of high-seas marine reserves;

• Require that an environmental impact assess-ment be carried out before approval of anybioprospecting activities in the high seas; and

• Encourage the sharing of knowledge on high-seas biodiversity through the creation of apublicly available list of species.37

Such an agreement would need to be sup-plemented by other efforts to address specificthreats to the high seas, from overfishing anddestructive fishing practices to marine pollu-tion and climate change. For instance, only afew ocean areas have been afforded protectionfrom the highly damaging practice of bottomtrawling. Several countries, along with marinescientists and environmental groups, have been lobbying the United Nations to impose a moratorium on this activity in the high seas.A legally binding international agreementwould not only help protect vulnerable marineecosystems, but it would permit a ‘time out’to make proper scientific assessments of theseareas and to develop effective policy solu-tions.38 In 2005, an advisory body to the U.N.Secretary General recommended that, “globalfisheries authorities agree to eliminate bottomtrawling on the high seas by 2006 and elimi-nate bottom trawling globally by 2010.”39

In December 2006, the U.N. GeneralAssembly agreed that some measures shouldbe taken to protect vulnerable deep-seaecosystems from destructive high-seas bottomtrawling.40 Countries that flag vessels thattrawl in these areas, as well as regional fish-eries management organizations with thecompetence to manage deep-sea fisheries, aretasked with regulating this activity to ensurethe protection of vulnerable ecosystems.Since the adoption of the U.N. resolution,the regional Convention on the Conservationof Antarctic Marine Living Resources(CCAMLR) has adopted what is essentially abottom-trawling moratorium in the SouthernOcean around Antarctica.41 But action onthese measures is still required to ensure ade-quate protection of deep-sea habitats.



Fair and Sustainable Fisheries

Another key to ensuring viable fish stocks andprotection of marine biodiversity is addressingthe movement toward liberalization in theinternational fish trade.42 As part of the recent“Doha Round” of trade talks in the WorldTrade Organization (WTO), several industrial-ized fish-exporting countries have proposed a“zero-for-zero” scenario whereby they wouldcut their tariffs to zero and expect developingcountries to do the same.43 However, tariffs areoften the last industrial policy instruments leftto developing countries to protect domesticfishing industries, and many countries inAfrica, the Pacific, and the Caribbean are con-cerned they will lose their current trade advan-tages if such liberalization goes ahead.

In a 2003 study, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) predicted that widespread liberaliza-tion of the fisheries trade could lead to over-exploitation of fish stocks as well as catchdeclines for both exporting and importingcountries.44 It also predicted that tariff reduc-tions would stimulate aquaculture production,leading to increased competition with fisheriesfor wild feed. Trade liberalization can alsoopen developing-country waters to foreignexport-oriented fleets, causing problems ofoverfishing, stock declines, and reduction ofmarine biodiversity. Overall, fisheries trade lib-eralization would likely benefit only a handfulof industrialized, fish-exporting countries andput increasing pressure on world fish stocks.45

In July 2006, the entire Doha Round ofworld trade talks was suspended, and negotia-tions have resumed only on an informal basis.This creates an opportunity to move discus-sions on fish and fish products out of the WTO and into other multilateral fora wherecommercial and trade interests do not domi-nate and where environmental concerns can be more closely addressed. These include pro-cesses under the U.N. Fish Stocks Agreement,the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) “Code of Conduct” for ResponsibleFisheries, and the World Summit on Sustain-able Development’s Plan of Implementation.Until these international instruments are uni-

versally adhered to and enforced, it would beirresponsible for WTO members to engage ingreater liberalization of fish trade.

Governments must also agree to phase outharmful subsidies that contribute to excess

fishing capacity, overfishing, and unsustainablefishing practices. Each year, the fishing sectorreceives an estimated $30–34 billion in externalsupport, $20 billion of which goes to boat con-struction, equipment, fuel, and other opera-tional costs that enable fleets to fish beyondtheir capacity.46 Negotiations are currentlyunder way at the WTO to reform internationalrules on fisheries subsidies—marking the firsttime that conservation concerns have led to thelaunch of a specific trade negotiation.47 If suc-cessful, they could lead to a broad prohibitionof harmful subsidies in marine wild-capturefisheries.48 But some critics, such as Green-peace, say the U.N. Convention on BiologicalDiversity, rather than the WTO, is a moreappropriate forum for such discussionsbecause it focuses specifically on the conserva-tion and sustainable use of biodiversity ratherthan on trade.49

A related measure is to bring an end tounfair and unsustainable fisheries agreementsthat allow industrialized countries to fish indeveloping-country waters. Such distant-water


Catch of the day in afish market in Galle,Sri Lanka.© Michael Renner


access agreements are often in the hands ofprivate companies that negotiate ‘sweetheart’deals with sometimes-corrupt governments.50

In the case of tuna fishing in the Pacific, theamount that foreign fleets pay countries for the

right to fish in their waters (in access fees andlicenses) is a mere 5 percent or less of the esti-mated $2 billion the fish is worth.51 By negoti-ating fairer deals, coastal states can managetheir resources in a sustainable way, ensurecontinued livelihoods and incomes, and buildthe capacity to gain the full economic andsocial benefits from their natural resources.

Stronger global effort is also needed toaddress illegal, unreported, and unregulated(IUU) fishing both in coastal waters and on thehigh seas. Governments need to close ports andmarkets to such fishers and their fish, prose-cute companies that support IUU fishing, andoutlaw flags of convenience. Several interna-tional agreements already in place, if properlyimplemented, would provide comprehensiveand effective measures against IUU fishing,including the FAO Compliance Agreement, theU.N. Fish Stocks Agreement, the FAO modelscheme for port control, and the FAO interna-tional plan to prevent, deter, and eliminateIUU fishing. Other solutions include establish-ing a central monitoring, control, and compli-ance authority for all vessels active on the highseas and working with seafood retailers to help

them adopt sustainable seafood policies, in-cluding full traceability of seafood products.52

Mitigating Bycatch of Seabirds, Turtles,and Marine Mammals

Tackling IUU fishing could also help addressthe serious problem of marine bycatch by minimizing unregulated and unscrupulousfishing activities.53 Other measures that haveproven successful in mitigating seabird bycatchinclude trailing streamers behind vessels wherethe hooks enter the water to scare birds, addingweights to longlines to accelerate sink rates,and working to make fishing activities less visible, such as by setting baited lines at night,setting them deep underwater through tubes,and dyeing baits blue.54 Canada, Japan, and the United States have all adopted mitigationmethods to manage seabird mortality forsome North Pacific longline fisheries; however,China, Korea, Mexico, Russia, and Taiwan lacksuch regulations, and use of mitigation meth-ods is also inconsistent or non-existent inmany Southern Ocean fleets.55

In 1998, the FAO set up an “InternationalPlan of Action for reducing the incidentalcatch of seabirds in longline fisheries,” knownas IPOA-SEABIRDS.56 A voluntary program, itaims to encourage countries involved in long-lining to identify where seabird bycatch is aproblem, to develop a national plan of actionfor how to reduce it, and to prescribe appropri-ate mitigation measures. In addition, in 2006,the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection ofBirds and BirdLife International created a joint“Albatross Task Force” to educate longline fishers on the use of mitigation methods.57

Regional fisheries management organizationscan also play a greater role in addressingbycatch, though so far only the Commissionfor the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Liv-ing Resources (CCAMLR) has taken compre-hensive mitigation action.58 Within the treatyarea, seabird deaths from bycatch declinedfrom 6,589 in 1997 to only 15 in 2003.

Greater use of mitigation efforts is alsoneeded to deal with the incidental capture orentanglement of marine mammals. Acousticalarms, which alert animals to the presence of


Unwanted bycatch,including a starfish,far outweighs thetarget catch oforange roughy froma deep-sea trawl ininternational watersof the Tasman Sea,between Australiaand New Zealand.© Greenpeace/Roger Grace


fishing gear or cause them to swim away, havebeen effective in the Gulf of Maine and theNorth Pacific.59 And time-area closures—thetemporary closure of fishing grounds duringanimal migrations—have been shown toreduce bycatch of endangered Hector’s dol-phins in New Zealand. Other mitigation meas-ures include the use of weights on the tops offishing nets that allow small marine mammalsto swim over, releasing live animals from fishing gear, and modification of fishing gearor practices.60

Marine mammal bycatch is also beingaddressed at the international level, under theAgreement on the Conservation of SmallCetaceans of the Baltic and North Seas, theAgreement for the International Dolphin Con-servation Program for the Eastern Pacific, andthe International Whaling Commission.61 TheCetacean Bycatch Resource Center, establishedin 2002 with the support of WWF, recom-mends that countries adopt national actionplans to reduce incidental mortality.62 InDecember 2005, WWF worked with the Mexi-can government to eliminate the use of gill-nets and shrimp trawls across the range of theendangered vaquita porpoise.63

In the United States, the U.S. Marine Mam-mal Protection Act has set a goal of reachingnear-zero levels of incidental mortality ofmarine mammals.64 As a result of innovativemitigation measures to guarantee “dolphin-safe” tuna—including changes in fishing gearand net-setting, and hand rescue by divers—dolphin mortality from the U.S. tuna fisherydropped from an estimated 133,000 in 1986 toless than 2,000 in 1998.65 But although recentmortality should no longer be significant froma population point of view, dolphin popula-tions have not yet recovered.66 The chroniceffects of prolonged chase and frequent cap-ture may be impairing breeding success.

U.S. bycatch of sea turtles has been ad-dressed in part by mandating the use of turtleexcluder devices (TEDs) in the shrimp trawl-ing industry.67 TEDs have also been imple-mented in 15 other countries that exportshrimp to the United States. This work hasbeen conducted by several U.S. government

agencies and by the Inter-American Conven-tion for the Protection and Conservation ofSea Turtles, an intergovernmental treaty thatprovides the legal framework for countries inthe Americas to take actions to benefit sea tur-tles.68 While TED programs have been cited asa “success story” of bycatch mitigation, non-compliance still occurs.69 More research is alsoneeded to develop effective turtle bycatch miti-gation techniques for longline fisheries.70

Targeting Seafood Buyers and the Aquaculture Industry

Because intergovernmental and even nationalpolicies can be difficult to implement, a bot-tom-up approach—stimulating consumermarket demand for “sustainable seafood”—can serve as a parallel means to encouragemore responsible fishing practices.71 One way to do this is by mandating strict seafoodlabeling that requires producers to disclosewhere and how the fish was caught. In theUnited Kingdom, for example, the supermar-ket chain Waitrose now provides informationon the origins of all seafood sold at its freshfish counters.72 The company no longer sellsmarlin, sturgeon products, shark, and orangeroughy due to concerns about fishing methodsor sustainability, and has committed to remov-ing all products caught using beam-trawls—adestructive type of bottom trawl used to targetflatfish and shrimp—from its shelves by theend of 2007.73

In a move that could have a significantimpact on the seafood market, Wal-Mart, theworld’s largest food retailer, has pledged to sellonly “MSC-certified” wild-caught fresh and fro-zen fish in North America within 3–5 years.74

The London-based Marine Stewardship Coun-cil (MSC), a leading accreditor of sustainablefisheries, has certified more than 20 fisheriesworldwide and grants its blue eco-label tomore than 600 sustainably sourced seafoodproducts.75 Even so, as of April 2007, onlyaround 6 percent (by quantity) of the world’swild capture fisheries were engaged in the MSCprogram.76 Given that the global demand forseafood continues to rise, much more can bedone to encourage both producers and con-



sumers to support sustainable seafood.But seafood labeling can be tricky. For

instance, both the fishing industry and govern-ments have promoted farmed fish as a “sustain-able” solution to fishery depletions. But mostaquaculture, with the exception of some her-bivorous shellfish farms and freshwater herbiv-orous fish farms, exacerbates the problems ofoverfishing due to the use of wild fish for feed.77

To address the negative effects of aquacul-ture, governments and the industry could promote farmed fish that can be fed on herbiv-orous diets and encourage the replacement offishmeal and fish oil with vegetable-basedfeeds.78 To protect coastal ecosystems such aswetlands and mangroves, governments can passenforceable regulations on the positioning ofaquaculture facilities. Governments could alsoeliminate subsidies for ecologically unsoundaquaculture and impose fines to help reduceescapes by farmed species into the wider envi-ronment. Effluent wastes from aquaculture canbe reduced by using integrated systems to effi-ciently utilize food and water resources, reducecosts, and increase productivity.79

Combating Marine Pollution

Wide-ranging efforts are also needed to tacklethe myriad sources of marine pollution. TheStockholm Convention on Persistent OrganicPollutants (POPs), which entered into force inMay 2004, requires governments to take meas-ures to eliminate or reduce releases of certainwell-known persistent chemicals, such as diox-ins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).80

But the treaty does not apply to any bromi-nated flame retardants, despite their potentialtoxicity to marine life (so far, one form of thechemicals has been proposed for the list andanother is under review for inclusion).81 Sev-eral of these substances are being regulated ona national or regional level in Europe, China,Japan, and the United States, but global actionwill ultimately be needed.82 Unfortunately,even if many POPs are phased out globally,they will leave a legacy for years to come asthey continue to leach out from materials andpersist in the environment.

In 1998, members of the Commission for

the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) took anotable precautionary approach to chemicalpollution by agreeing to stop the discharge,emission, and loss of all hazardous substancesto the marine environment by 2020.83 Sincethen, the list of hazardous substances identifiedby OSPAR for priority action has grown from12 to more than 40, including the most com-monly used brominated flame retardants.84

But implementation has been slow, in partbecause of parallel efforts to develop stricterchemicals regulations within Europe. The newREACH (Registration, Evaluation and Author-isation of CHemicals) legislation, agreed to inDecember 2006, shifts the burden of prooffrom governments to industry and requirescompanies to substitute for many of the mosthazardous chemicals when safer alternativesare available.85 Although it remains uncertainhow effective REACH will be in practice (andwhether it provides sufficient tools to meetOSPAR’s chemical pollution target), it repre-sents a significant step forward.

Alongside its chemicals target, OSPAR has also adopted a precautionary strategy to tackle radioactive pollution.86 The agreementrequires progressive and substantial reductionin discharges, emissions, and losses of radio-active substances to the marine environmentby 2020, with the ultimate target of near-back-ground or near-zero levels. However, imple-mentation has been limited here too by theongoing (and, over some periods, increasing)discharges from nuclear fuel reprocessingplants, an issue of long-standing disagreementin northern Europe.87 In the end, real progressmay be achieved only as existing nuclear facili-ties reach the end of their working lives, ratherthan through any radical change in policy orpractice. In the meantime, the legacy of radio-active pollution of marine ecosystems in thenortheast Atlantic will continue to grow.

With regard to oil pollution, in 1995 theInternational Maritime Organization agreed to regulations for a global phase out of single-hulled oil tankers.88 Environmental groups arenow demanding that the industry pay for thedamage caused by accidents through full and



unlimited liability along a chain of responsibil-ities, from the owners, managers, and operatorsof vessels to any charterers or owners of thecargo. In light of the toxicity of oil spills andthe emerging threats of climate change, how-ever, there is an urgent need to phase out theuse of oil and to move toward clean, renewableenergy. Together with more sustainable farm-ing methods, this would also help lessen nutri-ent inputs to the coastal marine environment,helping to slow the expansion of dead zonesand ultimately reversing this trend.89

A variety of global, international, andnational initiatives aim to protect the oceansfrom marine debris. The most far reaching ofthese, the International Convention for thePrevention of Pollution from ships (MAR-POL), has been ratified by 122 countries andincludes language calling for a ban on thedumping of most garbage and all plastic mate-rials from ships at sea.90 There is some evi-dence that the implementation of MARPOLhas reduced the marine debris problem; how-ever, given that most of this debris originateson land, even with full global compliance withthe treaty these sources would remain.91

Other measures to address marine debrisinclude manual clean-up operations, campaignsto prevent losses due to poor industrial prac-tice, and school and public education pro-grams. Ultimately, however, reducing theproblem of marine debris will require a “zero-waste” strategy that encompasses waste reduc-tion, reuse, and recycling as well as producerresponsibility and eco-friendly design.

The Future

There is still much to learn about the complexecology of our oceans. However, enough isknown for the world’s governments and otherstakeholders to take positive action to ensurethat protection of the marine environment isat the core of their marine policies and activi-ties. Although the state of the Earth’s oceanshas deteriorated rapidly in recent years, there isalso growing scientific evidence that these neg-ative trends could be reversed. The implemen-

tation of the ecosystem approach, through theestablishment of networks of large-scale, fullyprotected marine reserves and the sustainablemanagement of surrounding waters, is the keyto restoring the health and vitality of our oceansand maintaining the livelihoods of the manycoastal communities that depend on them.

Protecting the myriad of marine life—fromthe largest whales to the smallest planktoniccreature—is necessary not only for its ownsake, but for ours too. Unless urgent action istaken, future generations will be denied thechance to experience or enjoy the benefits ofthe life that thrives within the internationalwaters of Earth’s oceans, the greatest remainingglobal commons.


A school of jacks in Apo Island Marine Reserve, the Philippines.© Greenpeace/Gavin Newman


Endnotes


1 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),Global Biodiversity Assessment (Nairobi: 1995); Ronald K.O’Dor, The Unknown Ocean: The Baseline Report of theCensus of Marine Life Research Program (Washington, DC:Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education,2003), p. 25.

2. J.S. Gray, “Marine Biodiversity: Patterns, Threats andConservation Needs,” Biodiversity and Conservation, vol. 6(1997), pp. 153–75.

3. UNEP, op. cit. note 1.

4. UNEP, Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas, UNEP Regional Seas Report and StudiesNo. 178 (Nairobi: 2006).

5. J.F. Grassle, “Deep-sea Benthic Biodiversity,”Bioscience, vol. 41, no. 7 (1991), pp. 464–69.

6. UNEP, op. cit. note 4, p. 14; J.D. Gage and P.A. Tyler,Deep Sea Biology: A Natural History of Organisms at theDeep-Sea Floor (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2001); 2,650 from J.A. Koslow, A. Williams, and J.R.Paxton, “How many demersal fish species in the deep sea?A test of a method to extrapolate from local to globaldiversity,” Biodiversity and Conservation, vol. 6 (1997), pp.1523–32.

7. Gage and Tyler, op. cit. note 6.

8. Gray, op. cit. note 2.

9. A.D. Rogers, “The biology of seamounts,” Advances inMarine Biology, vol. 30 (1994), pp. 305–50; 230 from Sea-mounts Online, electronic database, http://seamounts.sdsc.edu, viewed 1 August 2007; 50,000 from A. Kitch-ingman and S. Lai, “Inferences on potential seamountlocations from mid-resolution bathymetric data,” in T.Morato and D. Pauly, eds., Seamounts: Biodiversity andFisheries, Fisheries Centre Research Reports, vol. 12, no. 5(2004).

10. J.A. Koslow et al., “Seamount benthic macrofauna offsouthern Tasmania: community structure and impacts oftrawling,” Marine Ecology Progress Series, vol. 213 (2001),pp. 111–25; K. Stocks, “Seamount invertebrates: composi-tion and vulnerability to fishing,” in Morato and Pauly,op. cit. note 9.

11. Stocks, op. cit. note 10.

12. Huge aggregations from Rogers, op. cit. note 9; F.

Fock et al., “Biodiversity and species-environment rela-tionships of the demersal fish assemblage at the GreatMeteor Seamount (subtropical NE Atlantic) sampled bydifferent trawls,” Marine Biology, vol. 141 (2002), pp.185–99; 263 species from D.M. Tracey et al., “Fish speciescomposition on seamounts and adjacent slope in NewZealand waters,” New Zealand Journal of Marine andFreshwater Research, vol. 38 (2004), pp. 163–82.

13. Stocks, op. cit. note 10.

14. K. Stocks, “Seamounts online: An online resource fordata on the biodiversity of seamounts,” in Morato andPauly, op. cit. note 9.

15. Koslow et al., op. cit. note 10.

16. Seamounts have ‘apparently’ high rates of endemism,as it is not yet possible to know whether the species pres-ent do occur elsewhere in the oceans. Stocks, op. cit. note10, p. 20; New Caledonia from B.R. Richer de Forges, J.A.Koslow, and G.C.B. Poore, “Diversity and endemism ofthe benthic seamount fauna in the southwest Pacific,”Nature, 22 June 2000, pp. 944–47.

17. Stocks, op. cit. note 10; Koslow et al., op. cit. note 10.

18. P.A. Johnston and D. Santillo, “Conservation ofseamount ecosystems: Application of a marine protectedareas concept,” Archive of Fishery and Marine Research,vol. 51, nos. 1–3 (2004), pp. 305–19.

19. Ibid.

20. Koslow et al., op. cit. note 10.


22. C.T.S. Little and R.C. Vrijenhoek, “Are hydrothermalvent animals living fossils?” Trends in Ecology and Evolu-tion, vol. 18, no. 11 (2003), pp. 582–88.

23. E. Ramirez-Llodra, T.M. Shank, and C.R. German,“Biodiversity and biogeography of hydrothermal ventspecies: Thirty years of discovery and investigations,”Oceanography, vol. 20, no. 1 (2007), pp. 30-41.

24. Little and Vrijenhoek, op. cit. note 22; Census ofMarine Life, “Extreme Life, Marine Style, Highlights 2006Ocean Census,” press release (Washington, DC: 10December 2006).

25. Ramirez-Llodra, Shank, and German, op. cit. note 23.


27. Little and Vrijenhoek, op. cit. note 22.

Endnotes


29. Microbes from L. Glowka, “Putting marine scientificresearch on a sustainable footing at hydrothermal vents,”Marine Policy, vol. 27: (2003), pp. 303–12; fish from M.Biscoito et al., “Fishes from the hydrothermal vents andcold seeps—An update,” Cahiers de Biologie Marine, vol.43 (2002), pp. 359–62.

30. Glowka, op. cit. note 29.

31. K. Heilman, “Nautilus One Step Closer to UnderseaMining,” resourceinvestor.com, 4 October 2006, atwww.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=24459.

32. Glowka, op. cit. note 29.

33. Greenpeace International, Bioprospecting in the DeepSea (Amsterdam: November 2005).

34. D. Malakoff, “New tools reveal treasures at ocean hotspots,” Science, vol. 304, no. 5674 (2004), pp. 1104–05.

35. J. Paramo et al., “Relationship between abundance of small pelagic fishes and environmental factors in theColombian Carribbean Sea: An analysis based on hydro-acoustic information,” Aquatic Living Resources, vol. 16(2003), pp. 239–45; D. Pauly and V. Christensen, “Primaryproduction required to sustain global fisheries,” Nature,16 March 1995, pp. 255–57; T.M. Ward et al., “Pelagicecology of a northern boundary current system: effects ofupwelling on the production and distribution of sardine(Sardinops sagax), anchovy (Engraulis australis) andsouthern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) in the GreatAustrailian Bight,” Fisheries Oceanography, vol 15, no. 3(2006), pp. 191–207.

36. World Conservation Union (IUCN), “High SeasMarine Protected Areas,” Parks, vol. 15, no. 3 (2005), pp.48–55.

37. Ibid.

38. M.D. Spalding, C. Ravilious, and E.P. Green, WorldAtlas of Coral Reefs, prepared at the UNEP World Conser-vation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) (Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 2001).

39. C. Birkeland, “Introduction,” in C. Birkeland, ed., Lifeand Death of Coral Reefs (Toronto: Chapman and Hall,1997), pp. 1–12.


41. K.P. Sebens, “Biodiversity of coral reefs: what are welosing and why?” American Zoologist, vol. 34 (1994), pp.115–33.

42. Estimate of 100,000 from Spalding, Ravilious, andGreen, op. cit. note 38; 1 to 3 million from W.H. Adey etal., “Coral reefs: endangered, biodiverse, genetic resources,”in C. Sheppard, ed., Seas at the Millennium: An Environ-mental Evaluation. Volume III, Global Issues and Processes(Oxford, UK: Pergamon, Elsevier Science Ltd., 2000).

43. J.C. Briggs, “Coral reefs: conserving the evolutionarysources,” Biological Conservation, vol. 126 (2005), pp.297–305; 600 species from Spalding, Ravilious, andGreen, op. cit. note 38.

44. Spalding, Ravilious, and Green, op. cit. note 38.

45. R.F.G. Ormond and C.M. Roberts, “The biodiversityof coral reefs fishes,” in R.F.G Ormond, J.D. Gage, andM.V. Angel, eds., Marine Biodiversity: Patterns andProcesses (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,1997), pp. 216–57.

46. Spalding, Ravilious, and Green, op. cit. note 38.

47. Conservation International, “Scientists Believe Bird’sHead Seascape Is Richest on Earth,” news feature(Washington, DC: 18 September 2006).

48. J.W. McManus et al., “Coral reef fishing and coral-algal phase shifts: implications for global reef status,” ICESJournal of Marine Science, vol. 57 (2000), pp. 572–78.

49. UNEP-WCMC, “In the front line: shoreline protec-tion and other ecosystem services from mangroves andcoral reefs” (Cambridge, UK: 2006); F. Moberg and C.Folke, “Ecological goods and services of coral reef ecosys-tems,” Ecological Economics, vol. 29 (1999), pp. 215–33.

50. Birkeland, op. cit. note 39.

51. UNEP-WCMC, op. cit. note 49.

52. Y. Sadovy, “Trouble on the reef: the imperative formanaging vulnerable and valuable fisheries,” Fish andFisheries, vol. 6 (2005), pp. 167–85.

53. UNEP, After the Tsunami: Rapid EnvironmentalAssessment (Nairobi: 2006).

54. UNEP-WCMC, op. cit. note 49; Birkeland, op. cit.note 39; Moberg and Folke, op. cit. note 49.

55. C. Wilkinson, ed., Status of Coral Reefs of the World2004. Volume 1 (Townsville MC, Australia: Global CoralReef Monitoring Network and Australian Govern-ment/Australian Institute of Marine Science, 2004).

56. J.M. Pandolfi et al., “Are U.S. coral reefs on the slip-pery slope to slime?” Science, 18 March 2005, pp. 1725–26;D.R. Bellwood et al., “Confronting the coral reef crisis,”Nature, 24 June 2004, pp. 827–33; A.M. Szmant, “Nutrientenrichment on coral reefs: Is it a major cause of coral reefdecline? Esturaries, vol. 25, no. 4b (2002), pp. 743–66.

57. G. Hodgson, “A global assessment of human effectson coral reefs,” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 38, no. 5(1999), pp. 345–55.

58. Estimate of 50 fishes by IUCN, per Sadovy, op. cit.note 52; 10 centimeters from Wilkinson, op. cit. note 55.

59. C.M. Roberts, “Effects of fishing on the ecosystemstructure of coral reefs,” Conservation Biology, vol. 9, no. 5(1995), pp. 988–95; B.E. Brown, “Disturbances to reefs inrecent times, in Birkeland, op. cit. note 39; J.B.C. Jacksonet al., “Historical overfishing and the recent collapse ofcoastal ecosystems,” Science, 27 July 2001, pp. 629–38.

60. Wilkinson, op. cit. note 55; UNEP-WCMC, op. cit.note 49.

61. E. Edinger et al., “Reef degradation and coral biodi-versity in Indonesia: Effects of land-based pollution,destructive fishing practices and changes over time,”Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 36, no. 8 (1998), pp. 617–30.

62. Wilkinson, op. cit. note 55; J.M. Pandolfi et al.,“Global trajectories of the long-term decline of coral reef


Endnotes

ecosystems,” Science, 15 August 2003, pp. 955–60.

63. Brown, op. cit. note 59.

64. C. Wabnitz et al., From Ocean to Aquarium(Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC, 2003).

65. Wilkinson, op. cit. note 55.

66. Ibid.

67. M.M. Nugues et al., “Algal contact as a trigger forcoral disease,” Ecology Letters, vol. 7 (2004), pp. 919–23;J.F. Bruno et al., “Nutrient enrichment can increase theseverity of coral diseases,” Ecology Letters, vol. 6 (2003),pp. 1056–61; Szmant, op. cit. note 56.

68. I. Valiela, J.L. Bowen, and J.K. York, “Mangrove for-ests: One of the world’s threatened major tropical envi-ronments,” Bioscience, vol. 51, no. 10 (2001), pp. 807–15.

69. P. Rönnbäck, “The ecological basis for economic valueof seafood production supported by mangrove ecosys-tems,” Ecological Economics, vol. 29 (1999), pp. 235–52.

70. Valiela, Bowen, and York, op. cit. note 68.

71. C.D. Field, “Mangroves,” in Sheppard, op. cit. note 42,pp. 17–30.

72. Ibid.

73. M.S. Islam and M. Haque, “The mangrove-basedcoastal and nearshore fisheries of Bangladesh: ecology,exploitation and management,” Reviews in Fish Biologyand Fisheries, vol. 14 (2004), pp. 153–80; Rönnbäck, op.cit. note 69.

74. Valiela, Bowen, and York, op. cit. note 68; Field, op.cit. note 71.


76. Rönnbäck, op. cit. note 69.

77. Ibid.


79. Field, op. cit. note 71; Rönnbäck, op. cit. note 69.


81. Field, op. cit. note 71; Rönnbäck, op. cit. note 69;Islam and Haque, op. cit. note 73.

82. P.J. Mumby, “Mangroves enhance the biomass ofcoral reef fish communities in the Caribbean,” Nature, 5February 2004, pp. 533–36.

83. Rönnbäck, op. cit. note 69; UNEP-WCMC, op. cit.note 49.

84. Rönnbäck, op. cit. note 69.

85. K. Kathiresan and N. Rajendran, “Fishery resourcesand economic gain in three mangrove areas on the south-east coast of India,” Fisheries Management and Ecology,vol. 9 (2002), pp. 277–83; E. Baran and J. Hambrey,“Mangrove conservation and coastal management inSoutheast Asia: What impact on fishery resources? MarinePollution Bulletin, vol. 37, no. 8–12 (1998), pp. 431–40.


87. Field, op. cit. note 71.



90. Some 60 species from E.P. Green and F.T. Short,World Atlas of Seagrasses, prepared by UNEP-WCMC(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003); R.C.Phillips and M.J. Durako, “Global status of seagrasses,” inSheppard, op. cit. note 42, pp. 1–16.

91. Green and Short, op. cit. note 90.

92. Phillips and Durako, op. cit. note 90.


94. E.L. Jackson et al., “The importance of seagrass bedsas a habitat for fishery species,” in Oceanography andMarine Biology: An Annual Review, vol. 39 (2001), pp.269–303.

95. M.W. Beck et al., “The identification, conservation,and management of estuarine and marine nurseries forfish and invertebrates,” Bioscience, vol. 51, no. 8 (2001),pp. 633–41.



98. Jackson et al., op. cit. note 94.

99. M. Dorenbosch et al., “Seagrass beds and mangrovesas potential nurseries for the threatened Indo-Pacifichumpback wrasse, Cheilinus undulatus and Caribbeanrainbow parrotfish, Scarus guacamai,” Biological Conser-vation, vol. 129 (2006), pp. 277–82.


101. Jackson et al., op. cit. note 94; Phillips and Durako,op. cit. note 90.


103. F.T. Short and H.A. Neckles, “The effects of globalclimate change on seagrasses,” Aquatic Botany, vol. 63(1999), pp. 169–96.



1. D. Pauly et al., “Towards sustainability in world fish-eries,” Nature, vol. 418 (2002), pp. 689–95.

2. Near-shore stocks from C.M. Roberts, K. Mason, andJ.P. Hawkins, Roadmap to Recovery: A Global Network ofMarine Reserves (Amsterdam: Greenpeace International,2006); deep water from J.A. Koslow et al., “Continentalslope and deep-sea fisheries: implications for a fragileecosystem,” ICES Journal of Marine Science, vol. 57(2000), pp. 548–57.

3. Figure 1 from U.N. Food and Agriculture Organiza-tion (FAO), FISHSTAT database, viewed 26 July 2007.

4. FAO, The State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture2006 (Rome: 2007), pp. 3–4.

5. Estimate of 76 percent and Figure 2 from Ibid., p. 29.

6. Ibid., pp. 32–33.

7. FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture


Endnotes

2004 (Rome: 2004).

8. C. Mullon, P. Fréon, and P. Cury, “The dynamics ofcollapse in world fisheries,” Fish and Fisheries, vol. 6(2005), pp. 111–20.

9. W.H. Lear, “History of fisheries in the NorthwestAtlantic: The 500 year perspective,” Journal of NorthwestAtlantic Fisheries Science, vol. 23 (1998), pp. 41–73.

10. R.L. Haedrich and S.M. Barnes, “Changes over timeof the size structure in an exploited shelf fish communi-ty,” Fisheries Research, vol. 31 (1997), pp. 22–39; R.A.Myers et al., “The collapse of cod in Eastern Canada: theevidence from tagging data,” ICES Journal of MarineScience, vol. 53 (1996), pp. 629–40; R.A. Myers, J.A.Hutchings, and N.J. Barrowman, “Hypothesis for thedecline of cod in the North Atlantic,” Marine EcologyProgress Series, vol. 138 (1996), pp. 293–308.

11. W.E. Schrank, “The Newfoundland fishery: Ten yearsafter the moratorium,” Marine Policy, vol. 29 (2005), pp.407–20; R. Hilborn et al., “State of the World’s Fisheries,”Annual Review of Environment and Resources, vol. 28(2003), pp. 359–99.

12. Schrank, op. cit. note 11.

13. V. Christensen et al., “Hundred-year decline of NorthAtlantic predatory fishes,” Fish and Fisheries, vol. 4 (2003),pp. 1–24.

14. R.A. Myers and B. Worm, “Rapid worldwide deple-tion of predatory fish communities,” Nature, vol. 423(2003), pp. 280–83.

15. B. Worm et al., “Global patterns of predator diversityin the open oceans,” Science, vol. 309 (2005), pp. 1365–69.

16. J.K. Baum et al., “Collapse and conservation of sharkpopulations in the Northwest Atlantic,” Science, vol. 299(2003), pp. 389–92; K. Brander, “Disappearance of com-mon skate Raia batis from Irish Sea,” Nature, vol. 290(1981), pp. 48–49; J.M. Casey and R.A. Myers, “Nearextinction of a large widely distributed fish,” Science, vol.281 (1998), pp. 690–92; M.H. Hasan, “Destruction of aHolothuria scabra population by overfishing at AbuRhamada Island in the Red Sea,” Marine EnvironmentalResearch, vol. 60 (2005), pp. 489–511; A.J. Hobday, M.J.Tegner, and P.L. Haaker, “Over-exploitation of a broadcastspawning marine invertebrate: decline of the whiteabalone,” Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, vol. 10(2001), pp. 493–514; J.A. Devine, K.D. Baker, and R.L.Haedrich, “Deep-sea fishes qualify as endangered,”Nature, vol. 439 (2006), p. 29.

17. D. Pauly and R. Watson, “Counting the last fish,”Scientific American, vol. 289, no. 1 (2003), pp. 34–39; D.Pauly and R. Watson, “Background and interpretation ofthe ‘Marine Trophic Index’ as a measure of biodiversity,”Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: BiologicalSciences, vol. 360 (2005), pp. 415–23; Myers and Worm,op. cit. note 14.

18. D. Pauly and M-L. Palomares, “Fishing down marinefood web: It is far more pervasive than we thought,” Bul-letin of Marine Science, vol. 76, no. 2 (2005), pp. 197–211.

19. Pauly and Watson, “Counting the last fish,” op. cit.note 17.

20. Myers and Worm, op. cit. note 14.

21. Ibid; Pauly et al., op. cit. note 1.

22. A. Hutchings, “Collapse and recovery of marine fish-es,” Nature, vol. 406 (2000), pp. 882–85.

23. L. Watling and E.A. Norse, “Disturbance of theseabed by mobile fishing gear: A comparison to forestclearcutting,” Conservation Biology, vol. 12, no. 6 (1998),pp. 1180–97.

24. Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, High-Seas BottomTrawl Red Herrings: Debunking Claims of Sustainability,prepared by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute(Bellevue, WA: April 2005).

25. S. Roberts and M. Hirshfiel, “Deep-sea corals: out ofsight, but no longer out of mind,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, vol. 2, no. 3 (2004), pp. 123–30.

26. Ibid.

27. W.J. Wolff, “The south-eastern North Sea: Losses ofvertebrate fauna during the past 2000 years,” BiologicalConservation, vol. 95 (2000), pp. 209–17.

28. A. Machias et al., “Bottom trawl discards in thenortheastern Mediterranean,” Fisheries Research, vol. 53(2001), pp. 181–95.

29. P. Sánchez, M. Demestre, and P. Martín,“Characterisation of the discards generated by bottomtrawling in the northwestern Mediterranean,” FisheriesResearch, vol. 67 (2004), pp. 71–80.

30. M. McGarvin, Deep-water Fishing: Time to Stop theDestruction (Amsterdam: Greenpeace International,2005).

31. Ibid.

32. Greenpeace, “From Fish to Fodder,” athttp://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/cbio/fodder.html,1997, viewed 26 July 2007.

33. T. Anker-Nilssen, R.T. Barrett, and J.K. Krasnov,“Long- and short-term responses of seabirds in theNorwegian and Barents Seas to changes in stocks of preyfish, in Forage Fishes in Marine Ecosystems, (Fairbanks:University of Alaska, 1997), pp. 683–98.

34. One third from R.L. Naylor et al., “Effect of aquacul-ture on world fish supplies,” Nature, 29 June 2000, pp.1017–23.

35. G.K. Iwama, “Interactions between aquaculture andthe environment,” Critical Reviews in EnvironmentalControl, vol. 21, no. 2 (1991), pp. 177–216.

36. W.K. Hershberger, “Genetic changes in marine aqua-culture species and the potential impacts on natural pop-ulations,” in R.R. Stickney and J.P. McVey, eds., Respon-sible Marine Aquaculture (Wallingford, UK: CABIPublishing, 2002), pp. 221–31.

37. FAO, op. cit. note 4.

38. Naylor et al., op. cit. note 34; R.L. Naylor et al.,“Nature’s subsidies to shrimp and salmon farming,”Science, 30 October 1998, pp. 883–84.

39. Ibid.


Endnotes

40. Naylor et al., op. cit. note 38.

41. J.P. Volpe, “Dollars without sense: The bait for big-money tuna ranching around the world,” Bioscience, vol.55, no. 4 (2005), pp. 301–02.



44. Scottish Wildlife Trust, WWF Scotland, and RoyalSociety for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Scotland,Feeding the Fish: Sustainable Fish Feed and Scottish Aqua-culture, prepared by Poseidon Aquatic Resource Manage-ment Ltd. (Lymington, Hampshire, UK: August 2004).

45. M.S. Islam, W.A. Wahad, and M. Tanaka, “Seed supplyfor coastal brackish water shrimp farming: Environmen-tal impacts and sustainability,” Marine Pollution Bulletin,vol. 48 (2004), pp. 7–11; M.S. Islam and M. Haque, “Themangrove-based coastal and nearshore fisheries ofBangladesh: ecology, exploitation and management,”Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, vol.14 (2004), pp.153–80.

46. Islam, Wahad, and Tanaka, op. cit. note 45.

47. M.C.M Beveridge, L.G. Ross, and J.A. Stewart, “Thedevelopment of mariculture and its implications for bio-diversity,” in R.F.G. Ormond, J.D. Gage and M.V. Angel,eds., Marine Biodiversity: Patterns and Processes (Cam-bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 372–93.

48. Ibid.


50. Iwama, op. cit. note 35.

51. N. Singkran and S. Sudara, “Effects of changing envi-ronments of mangrove creeks on fish communitites atTrat Bay, Thailand,” Environmental Management, vol. 35,no. 1 (2005), pp. 45–55; S. Gräslund and B-E. Bengtsson,“Chemicals and biological products used in south-eastAsian shrimp farming, and their potential impact on theenvironment—A review,” The Science of the TotalEnvironment, vol. 280 (2001), pp. 93–131.

52. X. Biao, D. Zhuhong, and W. Xiaorong, “Impact ofthe intensive shrimp farming on the water quality of theadjacent coastal creeks from Eastern China,” MarinePollution Bulletin, vol. 48, pp. 543–53.

53. See, for example: A. Ervik et al., “Impact of adminis-tering antibacterial agents on wild fish and blue musselsMytilus edulis in the vicinity of fish farms,” Diseases ofAquatic Organisms, vol. 18 (1994), pp. 45–51; D.G. Caponeet al., “Antibacterial residues in marine sediments andinvertebrates following chemotherapy in aquaculture,”Aquaculture, vol. 145, nos. 1-4 (1996), pp. 55–75; Gräslundand Bengtsson, op. cit. note 51; C.D. Miranda and R.Zemelman, “Bacterial resistance to oxytetracycline inChilean salmon farming,” Aquaculture, vol. 212 (2002),pp. 31–47.

54. K. Holmström et al., “Antibiotic use in shrimp farm-ing and implications for environmental impacts andhuman health,” International Journal of Food Science andTechnology, vol. 38 (2003), pp. 255-266.

55. Beveridge, Ross, and Stewart, op. cit. note 47.

56. Hershberger, op. cit. note 36.

57. R.L. Naylor, S.L. Williams, and D.R. Strong, “Aqua-culture—A gateway for exotic species,” Science, 23November 2001, pp. 1655–56.

58. D. Soto, F. Jara, and C. Moreno, “Escaped salmon inthe inner seas, southern Chile: facing ecological and socialconflicts,” Ecological Applications, vol. 11, no. 6 (2001),pp. 1750–62.

59. Naylor, Williams, and Strong, op. cit. note 57.


61. Naylor, Williams, and Strong, op. cit. note 57.


63. S.J. Hall, The Effects of Fishing on Marine Ecosystemsand Communities (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science Ltd.,1999), pp. 16–47; M.A. Hall, D.L. Alverson, and K.I.Metuzals, “By-catch: problems and solutions,” MarinePollution Bulletin, vol. 41, no. 1-6 (2000), pp. 204–19.

64. United Nations General Assembly, “Resolution46/215: Large-scale pelagic drift-net fishing and itsimpact on the living marine resources of the world’soceans and seas” (New York: 20 December 1991).

65. E. Gilman, N. Brothers, and D.R. Kobayashi, “Princi-ples and approaches to abate seabird by-catch in longlinefisheries,” Fish and Fisheries, vol. 6 (2005), pp. 35–49.

66. G.B. Baker and B.S. Wise, “The impact of pelagiclongline fishing on the flesh-footed shearwater Puffinuscarneipes in Eastern Australia,” Biological Conservation,vol. 126 (2005), pp. 306–16.

67. Ibid.; N.P. Brothers, J. Cooper, and S. Løkkeborg, TheIncidental Catch of Seabirds by Longline Fisheries:Worldwide Review and Technical Guidelines for Mitigation,FAO Fisheries Circular No. 937 (Rome, FAO), 1999);BirdLife International, “Fisheries Organisations Failing toSafeguard the World’s Albatrosses,” press release (Cam-bridge, UK: 7 March 2005); E.J. Belda and A. Sánchez,“Seabird mortality on longline fisheries in the westernMediterranean: Factors affecting bycatch and proposedmitigating measures,” Biological Conservation, vol. 98(2001), pp. 357–63.

68. Brothers, Cooper, and Løkkeborg, op. cit. note 67.

69. Gilman, Brothers, and Kobayashi, op. cit. note 65.

70. R.L. Lewison, S.A. Freeman, and L.B. Crowder,“Quantifying the effects of fisheries on threatened species:The impact of pelagic longlines on loggerhead andleatherback sea turtles,” Ecology Letters, vol. 7 (2004), pp.22–31; FAO, A Global Assessment of Fisheries Bycatch andDiscards, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 339 (Rome: 1996).

71. M.C. Pinedo and T. Polacheck, “Sea turtle by-catch inpelagic longline sets off southern Brazil,” Biological Con-servation, vol. 119 (2004), pp. 335–39.


73. R.L. Lewison, L.B. Crowder, and D.J. Shaver, “Theimpact of turtle excluder devices and fisheries closures onloggerhead and Kemp’s ridley strandings in the westernGulf of Mexico,” Conservation Biology, vol. 17, no. 4


Endnotes

(2003), pp. 1089–97.


75. Caribbean Conservation Corporation and Sea TurtleSurvival League, “Sea turtles threats and conservation,”2003, at www.cccturtle.org/sea-turtle-information.php?page=threats.

76. A.J. Read, P. Drinker, and S. Northridge, “Bycatch ofmarine mammals in U.S. and global fisheries,” Conserva-tion Biology, vol. 20, no. 1 (2006), pp. 163–69.

77. C. D’Agrosa, C.E. Lennert-Cody, and O. Vidal,“Vaquita bycatch in Mexico’s artisanal gillnet fisheries:Driving a small population to extinction,” ConservationBiology, vol. 14, no. 4 (2000), pp. 1110—19; E. Slooten etal., “A new abundance estimate for Maui’s dolphin: Whatdoes it mean for managing this critically endangeredspecies,” Biological Conservation, vol. 128 (2006), pp.576–81; R.R. Reeves et al. and the Cetacean SpecialistGroup, “Dolphins, whales, and porpoises: 2003–2010 con-servation action plan for the world’s cetaceans” (Gland,Switzerland: IUCN Species Survival Commission, 2003).

78. S.D. Kraus et al., “North Atlantic right whales in cri-sis,” Science, 22 July 2005, pp. 561–62.

79. Because entangled whales usually sink after death,these figures are likely an underestimate. H. Caswell, M.Fujiwara, and S. Brault, “Declining survival probabilitythreatens the North Atlantic right whale,” Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences, vol. 96 (1999), pp.3308–13.

80. A.J. Read and A.A. Rosenberg, “Draft internationalstrategy for reducing incidental mortality of cetaceans infisheries,” Cetacean Bycatch Resource Center, April 2002,at www.cetaceanbycatch.org/intlstrategy.cfm.

81. BirdLife International, op. cit. note 67.

82. Greenpeace International, Black Holes in Deep OceanSpace: Closing the Legal Voids in High Seas BiodiversityProtection (Amsterdam: November 2005); GreenpeaceInternational, Witnessing the Plunder: A Report of the MVGreenpeace Expedition to Investigate Pirate Fishing in WestAfrica (Amsterdam: November 2001).

83. High Seas Task Force, Closing the Net: Stopping IllegalFishing on the High Seas, March 2006, at www.high-seas.org/docs/HSTFfinal/HSTFFINAL_web.pdf.

84. Greenpeace International, Witnessing the Plunder:How Illegal Fish from West African Waters Finds Its Way toThe EU Ports and Markets (Amsterdam: 2006); Green-peace International, Plundering the Pacific (Amsterdam:2006); Greenpeace International, Where Have All the Tuna Gone? (Amsterdam: 2006).

85. Greenpeace International, Witnessing the Plunder: AReport…, op. cit. note 82.

86. See www.flagsofconvenience.com.

87. Environmental Justice Foundation, Pirates andProfiteers: How Pirate Fishing Fleets Are Robbing Peopleand Oceans (London: 2005).

88. Greenpeace International, Witnessing the Plunder:How Illegal Fish…, op. cit. note 84.

89. Brothers, Cooper, and Løkkeborg op. cit. note 67.

90. Greenpeace International, Witnessing the Plunder:How Illegal Fish…, op. cit. note 84.


1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),Working Group I: The Physical Basis of Climate Change,Technical Summary (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 2007), at http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html.

2. IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation andVulnerability (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2001), at www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/index.htm.

3. Ibid.; IPCC, op. cit. note 1.

4. C.D.G. Harley et al., “The impacts of climate changein coastal marine systems,” Ecology Letters, vol. 9 (2006),pp. 228–41.

5. J.M. Roessig et al., “Effects of global climate changeon marine and estuarine fishes and fisheries,” Reviews inFish Biology and Fisheries, vol. 14 (2004), pp. 251–75.

6. Harley et al., op. cit. note 4.

7. A.D. Barton and K.S. Casey, “Climatological contextfor large-scale coral bleaching,” Coral Reefs, vol. 24 (2005),pp. 536–54.

8. A.E. Douglas, “Coral bleaching—How and why?”Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 46, no. 4 (2003), pp. 385–92.

9. O. Hoegh-Guldberg, “Climate change, coral bleachingand the future of the world’s coral reefs,” Marine andFreshwater Ecology, vol. 50 (1999), pp. 839–66; J.K. Reaser,R. Pomerance, and P.O. Thomas, “Coral bleaching andglobal climate change: scientific findings and policy rec-ommendations,” Conservation Biology, vol. 14, no. 5(2000), pp. 1500–11.

10. O. Hoegh-Guldberg, “Low coral cover in a high-CO2

world,” Journal of Geophysical Research, 24 August 2005.

11. Douglas, op. cit. note 8.

12. Hoegh-Guldberg, op. cit. note 10; Hoegh-Guldberg,op. cit. note 9.

13. Hoegh-Guldberg, op. cit. note 9.

14. L. Hughes, “Climate change and Australia: Trends,projections and impacts,” Austral Ecology, vol. 28 (2003),pp. 423–43.

15. Roessig et al., op. cit. note 5.


17. S.D. Donner et al., “Global assessment of coralbleaching and required rates of adaptation under climatechange,” Global Change Biology, vol. 11 (2005), pp.2251–65.


19. Donner et al., op. cit. note 17; P. Jokiel and E.K.Brown, “Global warming, regional trends and inshoreenvironmental conditions influence coral bleaching inHawaii,” Global Change Biology, vol. 10 (2004), pp. 1627–41.


Endnotes


21. Ibid.

22. J.W. McManus et al., “Coral reef fishing and coral-algal phase shifts: Implications for global reef status, ICESJournal of Marine Science, vol. 57 (2000), pp. 572–78.

23. Donner et al., op. cit. note 17.

24. Roessig et al., op. cit. note 5.


26. A.L. Perry et al., “Climate change and distributionshifts in marine fishes,” Science, vol. 308, no. 5730 (2005),pp. 1912–15.


28. G.C. Hays, A.J. Richardson, and C. Robinson,“Climate change and marine plankton,” Trends in Ecologyand Evolution, vol. 20, no. 6 (2005), pp. 337–44.

29. G. Beaugrand et al., “Plankton effect on cod recruit-ment in the North Sea,” Nature, 11 December 2003, pp.661–64.

30. B. Worm and R.A. Myers, “Managing fisheries in achanging climate,” Nature, 6 May 2004, p. 15.

31. Ibid.


33. IPCC, op. cit. note 1.

34. Ibid; IPCC, op. cit. note 2.

35. R.B. Alley et al., “Ice sheet and sea-level changes,”Science, 21 October 2005, pp. 456–61; J.A. Dowdeswell,“The Greenland Ice Sheet and Global Sea-level Rise,”Science, 17 February 2006, pp. 963–64.


37. Ibid.; P.P. Wong, “Where have all the beaches gone?Coastal erosion in the tropics,” Singapore Journal ofTropical Geography, vol. 24, no. 1 (2003), pp. 111–32.


39. M.R. Fish et al., “Predicting the impact of sea-levelrise on Caribbean sea turtle nesting habitat,” ConservationBiology, vol. 19, no. 2 (2005), pp. 482–91.

40. J.D. Baker, C.L. Littnan, and D.W. Johnston, “Poten-tial effects of sea level rise on the terrestrial habitats ofendangered and endemic megafauna in the NorthwesternHawaiian Islands,” Endangered Species Research, vol. 4(2006), pp. 1–10.

41. N. Knowlton, “The future of coral reefs,” Proceedingsof the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 98, no. 10 (2001),pp. 5419–25.

42. S. Rahmstorf, “Ocean circulation and climate duringthe past 120,000 years,” Nature, 12 September 2002, pp.207–14.

43. W.S. Broecker, “Thermohaline circulation, theAchilles heel of our climate system: Will man-made CO2

upset the current balance?” Science, vol. 278, no. 5343(1997), pp. 1582–88.

44. S. Rahmstorf, “The thermohaline ocean circulation:

A system with dangerous thresholds,” Climate Change,vol. 46 (2000), pp. 247–56; IPCC, op. cit. note 1.

45. G. Weller, “Summary and Synthesis of the ACIA,” inArctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), ACIA Scien-tific Report (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Universiry Press,November 2005).

46. Ibid.


48. Weller, op. cit. note 45.

49. V. Smetacek and S. Nicol, “Polar ocean ecosystems ina changing world,” Nature, vol. 437 (2005), pp. 362–68.

50. Sidebar 1 from the following sources: fish and sealsfrom H. Loeng, “Marine Systems,” in Weller, op. cit. note45; birds from H.G. Gilcreast and M.L. Mallory, “Declinesin abundance and distribution of the ivory gull (Pago-phila eburnean) in Arctic Canada,” Biological Conserva-tion, vol. 121 (2005), pp. 303–09 and from A.J. Gaston,J.M. Hipfner, and D. Campbell, “Heat and mosquitoescause breeding failures and adult mortality in an Arctic-nesting seabird,” Ibis (British Ornithologists’ Union), vol.144 (2002), pp. 185–91; polar bears from Weller, op. cit.note 45, from A.E. Derocher, N.J. Lunn, and I. Stirling,“Polar bears in a warming climate,” Integrative and Com-parative Biology, vol. 44 (2004), pp. 163–76, and fromLoeng, op. cit. this note.

51. Weller, op. cit. note 45.

52. M.P. Meredith and J.C. King, “Rapid climate changein the ocean west of the Antarctic Peninsula during thesecond half of the 20th century,” Geophysical ResearchLetters, vol. 32 (2005); Smetacek and Nicol, op. cit. note49.


54. Meredith and King, op. cit. note 52.

55. J. Forcada et al., “Contrasting population changes insympatric penguin species in association with climatewarming,” Global Change Biology, vol. 12 (2006), pp.411–23.

56. Sidebar 2 from the following sources: smaller popula-tions from V. Loeb et al., “Effects of sea-ice extent andkrill or salp dominance on the Antarctic food web,”Nature, 26 June 1997, pp. 897–900; 80 percent from A.Atkinson et al., “Long-term decline in krill stock andincrease in salps within the Southern Ocean,” Nature, 4November 2004, pp. 100–03; glacial runoff from M.A.Moline et al., “Alteration of the food web along theAntarctic Peninsula in response to a regional warmingtrend,” Global Change Biology, vol. 10 (2004), pp.1973–80; rising temperatures from Meredith and King,op. cit. note 52; links to penguin declines from W.R.Fraser and E.E. Hofmann, “A predator’s perspective oncausal links between climate change, physical forcing and ecosystem response,” Marine Ecology Progress Series,vol. 265 (2003), pp. 1–15; effects on other animals fromSmetacek and Nicol, op. cit. note 49.

57. L.S. Peck, K.E. Webb, and D.M. Bailey, “Extreme sensitivity of biological function to temperature inAntarctic marine species,” Functional Ecology, vol. 18


Endnotes

(2004), pp. 625–30.

58. The Royal Society, Ocean Acidification Due toIncreasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (London: 30 June2005).

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.; S.C. Doney, “The dangers of ocean acidifica-tion,” Scientific American, vol. 294, no. 3 (2006), pp.58–65.

61. The Royal Society, op. cit. note 58.

62. Ibid.


1. P. Johnston et al., Report on the World’s Oceans (Exe-ter, UK: Greenpeace Research Laboratories, May 1998).

2. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services andU.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Mercury Levelsin Commercial Fish and Shellfish,” www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/sea-mehg.html, updated February 2006; Environ-mental Defense/Oceans Alive, “PCBs in Fish and Shell-fish,” www.oceansalive.org/eat.cfm?subnav=pcbs, viewed1 August 2007.

3. Stockholm Convention on Persistent OrganicPollutants (POPS) Web site, at www.pops.int.

4. D. Ueno et al., “Global pollution monitoring of poly-brominated diphenyl ethers using skipjack tuna as abioindicator,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol.38 (2004), pp. 2312–16.

5. M. Alaee et al., “An overview of commercially usedbrominated flame retardants, their applications, their use patterns in different countries/regions and possiblemodes of release,” Environment International, vol. 29(2003), pp. 683–89.

6. L.S. Birnbaum and D.F. Staskal, “Brominated flameretardants: Cause for concern?” Environmental HealthPerspectives, vol. 112, no. 1 (2004), pp. 9–17.

7. See, for example, C.A. de Wit, “An overview of bromi-nated flame retardants in the environment,” Chemosphere,vol. 46 (2002), pp. 583–624; R.J. Law et al., “Levels andtrends of polybrominated diphenylethers and other bro-minated flame retardants in wildlife,” Environment Inter-national, vol. 29 (2003), pp. 757–70; C.A. de Wit, M.Alaee, and D.C.G. Muir, “Levels and trends of brominatedflame retardants in the Arctic,” Chemosphere, vol. 64, no. 2(2006), pp. 209–33; R.J. Law et al., “Levels and trends ofbrominated flame retardants in the European environ-ment,” Chemosphere, vol. 64, no. 2 (2006), pp. 187–208; A.Covaci et al., “Hexabromocyclodecanes (HBCDs) in theenvironment and humans: A review,” Environmental Sci-ence and Technology, vol. 40, no. 12 (2006), pp. 3679–88.

8. Covaci et al., op. cit. note 7; de Wit, op. cit. note 7.

9. Seals from J. She et al., “PBDEs in the San FranciscoBay area: Measurements in harbour seal blubber andhuman breast adipose tissue,” Chemosphere, vol. 46(2002), pp. 697–707; whales from K. Vorkamp et al.,Screening of “New” Contaminants in the Marine Environ-ment of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, NERI TechnicalReport No. 525 (Roskilde, Denmark: National Environ-

mental Research Institute, 2004).

10. See, for example, S. Burreau et al., “Comparison ofbiomagnification of PBDEs in food chains from the BalticSea and the Northern Atlantic Sea,” Organohalogen Com-pounds, vol. 47 (2000), pp. 253–55; Vorkamp et al., op.cit. note 9; B. Johnson-Restrepo et al., “Polybrominateddiphenyl ethers and polychlorinated biphenyls in amarine foodweb of coastal Florida,” EnvironmentalScience and Technology, vol. 39 (2005), pp. 8243–50;Covaci et al., op. cit. note 7; S. Morris et al., “Distributionand fate of HBCD and TBBPA brominated flame retar-dants in North Sea estuaries and aquatic food webs,”Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 38 (2004), pp.5497–504.

11. P.O. Darnerud, “Toxic effects of brominated flameretardants in man and wildlife,” Environment Interna-tional, vol. 29 (2003), pp. 841–53; J. Legler and A.Brouwer, “Are brominated flame retardants endocrinedisruptors?” Environment International, vol. 29 (2003),pp. 879–85.

12. A.J. Hall, O.I. Kalantzi, and G.O. Thomas, “Polybrom-inated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in grey seals during theirfirst year of life—Are they thyroid hormone endocrinedisrupters?” Environmental Pollution, vol. 126 (2003), pp.29–37.

13. Darnerud, op. cit. note 11; de Wit, op. cit. note 7; H.Viberg et al., “Neonatal exposure to higher brominateddiphenyl ethers, hepta, octa-, or nonabromodiphenylether, impairs spontaneous behaviour and learning andmemory functions of adult mice,” Toxicological Sciences,vol. 92, no. 1 (2006), pp. 211–18; Y. Tada et al., “Flameretardant tetrabromobisphenol A induced hepaticchanges in ICR male mice,” Environmental Toxicology andPharmacology, vol. 23, no. 2 (2007), pp. 174–78.

14. Ueno et al., op. cit. note 4.

15. Vorkamp et al., op. cit. note 9; de Wit, Alaee, andMuir, op. cit. note 7; Law et al., “Levels and trends ofbrominated…,” op. cit. note 7.

16. D.C.G. Muir et al., “Brominated flame retardants inpolar bears (Ursus maritimus) from Alaska, the CanadianArctic, East Greenland, and Svalbard,” EnvironmentalScience and Technology, vol. 40 (2006), pp. 449–55.

17. de Wit, Alaee, and Muir, op. cit. note 7.

18. Increasing trend from the following: J. Bytingsvik etal., “Spatial and temporal trends of BFRs in Atlantic codand Polar cod in the North-East Atlantic,” OrganohalogenCompounds, vol. 66 (2004), pp. 3918–22; She et al., op.cit. note 9; Law et al., “Levels and trends of polybrominat-ed…,” op. cit. note 7. Stabilized or decreased from U.Sellström et al., “Temporal trend studies on tetra- andpentabrominated diphenyl ethers and hexabromocy-clododecane in guillemot egg from the Baltic Sea,”Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 37, no. 24(2003), pp. 5496–501, and from N. Kajiwara et al., “Poly-brominated diphenyl ethers and organochlorines inarchived Northern Fur Seal samples from the Pacific coastof Japan,” Environmental Science and Technology, vol. 38,no. 14 (2004), pp. 3804–09.

19. P. Johnston et al., “Sustainability of human activities


Endnotes

on marine ecosystems,” in C. Sheppard, ed. Seas at theMillennium: An Environmental Evaluation. Volume III,Global Issues and Processes (London: Pergamon, ElsevierScience Ltd., 2000); L.G. Cockerham and M.B. Cocker-ham, “Environmental Ionising Radiation,” in L.G. Cock-erham and B.S. Shane, eds., Basic Environmental Toxicol-ogy (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1995), pp. 1–261.

20. Johnston et al., op. cit. note 19.

21. Greenpeace UK, “Nuclear re-action,” 10 August 1999,available at www.greenpeace.org.uk.

22. I. Osvath et al., “Mapping of the distribution of 137Csin Irish Sea sediments,” Journal of Radioanalytical andNuclear Chemistry, vol. 248, no. 3 (2001), pp. 735–39; A.Aarkrog, H. Dahlgard, and S.P. Nielsen, “Environmentalradioactive contamination in Greenland: A 35 years retro-spect,” The Science of the Total Environment, vol. 245(2000), pp. 233–48; P.J. Kershaw, D. McCubbin, and K.S.Leonard, “Continuing contamination of north Atlanticand Arctic waters by Sellafield radionuclides,” The Scienceof the Total Environment, vol. 237/238 (1999), pp. 119–32.

23. D. McCubbin et al., “Distribution of Technetium-99in subtidal sediments of the Irish Sea,” Continental ShelfResearch, vol. 26 (2006), pp. 458–73.

24. W.S. Watson et al., “Radionuclides in seals and por-poises in coastal waters around the UK,” The Science ofthe Total Environment, vol. 234 (1999), pp. 1–13.

25. Kershaw, McCubbin, and Leonard, op. cit. note 22.

26. T.P. Ryan et al., “Plutonium and americium in fish,shellfish and seaweed in the Irish environment and theircontribution to dose,” Journal of EnvironmentalRadioactivity, vol. 44 (1999), pp. 349–69.

27. N. Rabalais, R.E. Turner, and W.J. Wiseman, “Gulf ofMexico hypoxia, a.k.a. ‘the dead zone,’” Annual Review ofEcology and Systematics, vol. 33 (2002), pp. 235–63.

28. W.K. Dodds, “Nutrients and the ‘dead zone’: The link between nutrient ratios and dissolved oxygen in thenorthern Gulf of Mexico,” Frontiers in Ecology and theEnvironment, vol. 4, no. 4 (2006), pp. 211–17; D. Ferber,“Dead zone fix not a dead issue,” Science, 10 September2004, p. 1557; J. Raloff, “Dead waters: Massive oxygen-starved zones are developing along the world’s coasts,”Science News, vol. 165, no. 23 (2004), p. 360.

29. Raloff, op. cit. note 28; E. Bonsdorff, C. Rönnberg,and K. Aarnio, “Some ecological properties in relation to eutrophication in the Baltic Sea,” Hydrobiologia, vol.475/476 (2002), pp. 371–77.

30. R.J. Diaz, “Overview of hypoxia around the world,”Journal of Environmental Quality, vol. 30, no. 2 (2001),pp. 275–81.

31. U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), “FurtherRise in Number of Marine ‘Dead Zones,’” press release(Nairobi: 19 October 2006).

32. Rabalias, Turner, and Wiseman, op. cit. note 27.

33. UNEP, op. cit. note 31; Rabalias, Turner, andWiseman, op. cit. note 27.

34. Diaz, op. cit. note 30.

35. K. Karlson, R. Rosenberg, and E. Bonsdorff,“Temporal and spatial large-scale effects of eutrophica-tion and oxygen deficiency on benthic fauna in Scandin-avian and Baltic waters—A review,” Oceanography andMarine Biology: An Annual Review, vol. 40 (2002), pp.427–89; Rabalias, Turner, and Wiseman, op. cit. note 27.


37. Karlson, Rosenberg, and Bonsdorff, op. cit. note 35.


39. Greenpeace, “Oil Spills – Philippines, Indian Oceanand Lebanon,” 2006, at www.greenpeace.org/international/news/recent-oil-spills.

40. National Research Council, “Understanding inputs,fates, and effects in detail,” in Oil in the Sea III: Inputs,Fates and Effects (Washington, DC: The NationalAademies Press, 2003).

41. OSPAR Commission for the Protection of the MarineEnvironment of the North-East Atlantic, “Meeting of theOSPAR Commission, Reykjavik, 28 June–2 July 2004,”Cooperation with the Bonn Agreement, presented by theSecretariat.

42. Greenpeace, op. cit. note 39.

43. Sidebar 3 from the following sources. Exxon Valdezfrom: C.H. Petersen, “The ‘Exxon Valdez’ oil spill inAlaska: acute, indirect and chronic effects on the ecosys-tem,” Advances in Marine Biology, vol. 39 (2001), pp.3–103; C.H. Petersen et al., “Long-term ecosystemresponse to the Exxon Valdez oil spill,” Science, 19December 2003, pp. 2082–86; National Research Council,op. cit. note 40; J.W. Short et al., “Estimate of oil persist-ing on the beaches of Prince William Sound 12 years afterthe Exxon Valdez oil spill,” Environmental Science andTechnology, vol. 38 (2004), pp. 19–25; G.V. Irvine, D.H.Mann, and J.W. Short, “Persistence of 10-year old ExxonValdez oil on Gulf of Alaska beaches. The importance ofboulder-armouring,” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 52,no. 9 (2006), pp. 1011–22; J.W. Short et al., “Vertical dis-tribution and probability of encountering intertidalExxon Valdez oil on shorelines of three embaymentswithin Prince William Sound Alaska,” Environmental Sci-ence and Technology, vol. 40, no. 12 (2006), pp. 3723–29;and J.L. Bodkin et al., “Sea otter population status and the process of recovery from the 1989 ‘Exxon Valdez’ oilspill,” Marine Ecology Progress Series. vol. 241 (2002), pp.237–53. Prestige from: C. Morales-Caselles et al., “Ecotox-icity of sediments contaminated by the oil spill associatedwith the tanker ‘Prestige’ using juveniles of fish (Sparusaurata),” Archives of Enviromental Contamination andToxicology, vol. 51 (2006), pp. 652–60; M.D. Garza-Gil, A.Prada-Blanco, and X.V. Rodríguez, “Estimating the short-term economic damages from the Prestige oil spill in theGalician fisheries and tourism,” Ecological Economics, vol.58 (2006), pp. 842–49; J.D. García Pérez, “Early socio-political and environmental consequences of the Prestigeoil spill in Galicia,” Disasters, vol. 27, no. 3 (2003), pp.207–23; I. Zuberogoita et al., “Short-term effects of theprestige oil spill on the peregrine falcon (Falco peregri-nus),” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 52, no. 10 (2006), pp.1176–81; A. Martínez-Abraín et al., “Sex-specific mortal-ity of European shags after the Prestige oil spill: Demo-


Endnotes

graphic implications for the recovery of colonies,” MarineEcology Progress Series, vol. 318 (2006), pp. 271–76; R. Dela Huz et al., “Biological impacts of oil pollution andcleaning in the intertidal zone of exposed sandy beaches:preliminary study of ‘Prestige’ oil spill,” Estuarine,Coastal and Shelf Science, vol. 65 (2005), pp. 19–29; and I.Marigómez et al., “Cell and tissue biomarkers in mussel,and histopathology in hake and anchovy from Bay ofBiscay after the Prestige oil spill (Monitoring Campaign2003),” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 53, no. 5-7 (2006),pp. 287–304. Lebanon from: Regional Marine PollutionEmergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea(REMPEC), “Sitrep 5. Spill in Lebanon, 07/08/2006,”“Sitrep 8. Spill in Lebanon, 14/08/2006,” “Sitrep 12. Spillin Lebanon, 25/08/2006,” and “Sitrep 15. Spill in Lebanon,28/09/2006,” all at www.rempec.org/news.asp; GreenpeaceInternational, Witnessing War: A Preliminary Post ConflictEnvironmental Assessment by Greenpeace (Amsterdam:October 2006); Greenpeace International, “GreenpeaceExposes Suffocating Oil Slick on the Seabed Off the Leb-anese Coast,” press release (Amsterdam: 22 August 2006);World Conservation Union (IUCN), “Mediterraneanenvironment affected by armed conflict,” 2006, atwww.iucn.org/places/medoffice/noticias/armed_conflict.html; and R. Steiner, Lebanon Oil Spill Rapid Assessmentand Response Mission. Final Report (Beirut: IUCN, IUCNCommission on Environmental, Economic and SocialPolicy, and Green Line Association, 11 September 2006).Philippines from: Greenpeace, op. cit. note 39; Green-peace Southeast Asia, “Greenpeace Returns Barrel ofBunker Oil from Guimaras Back to Petron,” press release(Manila: 11 October 2006).

44. National Research Council, op. cit. note 40.

45. For a detailed review, see M. Allsopp et al., PlasticDebris in the World’s Oceans (Amsterdam: GreenpeaceInternational, November 2006).

46. D.W. Laist, “Impacts of marine debris: Entanglementof marine life in marine debris including a comprehen-sive list of species with entanglement and ingestionrecords,” in J.M. Coe and D.B. Rogers, eds., MarineDebris. Sources, Impacts, Solutions (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1997), pp. 99–140.

47. English Channel from D.K.A. Barnes and P. Milner,“Drifting plastic and its consequences for sessile organismdispersal in the Atlantic Ocean,” Marine Biology, vol. 146(2006), pp. 815–25; Indonesia from P. Uneputty and S.M.Evans, “The impact of plastic debris on the biota of tidalflats in Ambon Bay (Eastern Indonesia),” Marine Environ-mental Research, vol. 44, no. 3 (1997), pp. 233–42.

48. Europe from F. Galgani et al., “Litter on the sea flooralong European coasts,” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 40,no. 6 (2000), pp. 516–27; Indonesia from Uneputty andEvans, op. cit. note 47.

49. Indonesia from N.G. Willoughby, H. Sangkoyo, andB.O. Lakaseru, “Beach litter: An increasing and changingproblem for Indonesia,” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 34,no. 6 (1997), pp. 469–78; Sicily from Barnes and Milner,op. cit. note 47.

50. S.B. Sheavly, “Marine debris—An overview of a criti-cal issue for our oceans,” presented at the Sixth Meeting

of the UN Open-ended Informal Consultative Processeson Oceans & the Law of the Sea, 6–10 June 2005, atwww.un.org/Depts/los/consultative_process/documents/6_sheavly.pdf.

51. R.C. Thompson et al., “Lost at sea: Where is all theplastic?” Science, 7 May 2004, p. 838.

52. F. Galgani et al., “Distribution and abundance ofdebris on the continental shelf of the North-WesternMediterranean,” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 30, no.11 (1996), pp. 713–17; M. Thiel et al., “Floating marinedebris in coastal waters of the SE-Pacific (Chile),” MarinePollution Bulletin, vol. 46 (2003), pp. 224–31; Willoughby,Sangkoyo, and Lakaseru, op. cit. note 49.

53. R.C. Boland and M.J. Donohue, “Marine debris accu-mulation in the nearshore marine habitat of the endan-gered Hawaiian monk seal, Monachus schauinslandi1999–2001,” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 46 (2003), pp.1385–94; B. Page et al., “Entanglement of Australian sealions and New Zealand furseals in lost fishing gear andother marine debris before and after government andindustry attempts toreduce the problem,” Marine Pollu-tion Bulletin, vol. 49 (2004), pp. 33–42; Laist, op. cit. note46. J. Tomás et al., “Marine debris ingestion in loggerheadsea turtles, Caretta caretta, from the Western Mediter-ranean,” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 44 (2002), pp.211–16; L. Bugoni, L. Krause, and V. Petry, “Marine debrisand human impacts on sea turtles in Southern Brazil,”Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 42, no. 12 (2001), pp.1330–34; K.A. Bjorndal, A.B. Bolten, and C.J. Lagueux,“Ingestion of marine debris by juvenile sea turtles incoastal Florida habitats,” Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol.28, no. 3 (1994), pp. 154–58; L.B. Spear, D.G. Ainley, andC.A. Ribic, “Incidence of plastic in seabirds from theTropical Pacific, 1984-91: Relation with distribution ofspecies, sex, age, season, year and body weight,” MarineEnvironmental Research, vol. 40, no. 2 (1995), pp. 123-146.

54. T. Matsuoka, T. Nakashima, and N. Nagasawa, “Areview of ghost fishing: Scientific approaches to evalua-tion and solutions,” Fisheries Science, vol. 71 (2005), pp.691–702; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Turningthe Tide on Trash. A Learning Guide on Marine Debris(Washington, DC: 1992).


1. Bunny McDiarmid, Martini Gotje, and Karen Sack,NAFO Case Study (Amsterdam: Greenpeace Interna-tional, June 2005; Greenpeace International, Freedom forthe Seas for Now and for the Future (Amsterdam: May2005).

2. Greenpeace International, Black Holes in Deep OceanSpace: Closing the Legal Voids in High Seas BiodiversityProtection (Amsterdam: November 2005); P. Johnston etal., “Elements of an holistic approach to marine protec-tion and environmental management: What is an ecosys-tem approach? (in prep 2007).

3. Greenpeace International, op. cit. note 1.

4. Greenpeace International, Marine Reserves for theMediterranean Sea (Amsterdam: 2006); C.M. Roberts, K.Mason, and J.P. Hawkins, Roadmap to Recovery: A GlobalNetwork of Marine Reserves (Amsterdam: Greenpeace


Endnotes

International, 2006).

5. Johnston et al., op. cit. note 2.

6. World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC),cited in S. Belfiore, B. Cicin-Sain, and C. Ehler, Incorpor-ating Marine Protected Areas into Integrated Coastal andOcean Management: Principles and Guidelines (Gland,Switzerland: World Commission on Protected Areas,World Conservation Union (IUCN), 2004), p. vii.

7. IUCN, Establishing Marine Protected Area Networks:Making It Happen (Gland, Switzerland: April 2007).

8. Roberts, Mason, and Hawkins, op. cit. note 4.

9. World Parks Congress 2003, “Recommendation 22.Building a Global System of Marine and CoastalProtected Area Networks,” at www.iucn.org/themes/wcpa/wpc2003/pdfs/outputs/recommendations/approved/english/html/r22.htm.

10. F.R. Gell and C.M. Roberts, “Benefits beyond bound-aries: The fisheries effects of marine reserves,” Trends inEcology and Evolution, vol.18, no. 9 (2003); Roberts,Mason, and Hawkins, op. cit. note 4.

11. IUCN, “Marine Summit Calls for Dramatic Increasein Ocean Protection,” press release (Gland, Switzerland:13 April 2007).

12. Estimate of 0.1 percent from “Global targets for MPA designations will not be met; experts respond,”MPA News, November 2005. Table 1 from the followingsources: global review from C. Mora et al., “Coral reefsand the global network of marine protected areas,”Science, 23 June 2006, pp. 1750–51; 30 percent from T.P.Hughes et al., “Climate change, human impacts, and theresilience of coral reefs,” Science, 15 August 2003, pp.929–33; 9 percent from United Nations EnvironmentProgramme (UNEP), Ecosystems and Biodiversity in DeepWaters and High Seas, UNEP Regional Seas Report andStudies No. 178 (Nairobi: 2006); UNEP-WCMC, In theFront Line: Shoreline Protection and Other EcosystemServices from Mangroves and Coral Reefs (Cambridge,UK: 2006); seagrasses from E.P. Green and F.T. Short,World Atlas of Seagrasses, prepared by the UNEP-WCMC(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003);seamounts from P.A. Johnston and D. Santillo, “Conser-vation of seamount ecosystems: application of a marineprotected areas concept,” Archive of Fishery and MarineResearch, vol. 51, nos. 1–3 (2004), pp. 305–19; vents fromL. Glowka, “Putting marine scientific research on a sus-tainable footing at hydrothermal vents,” Marine Policy,vol. 27: (2003), pp. 303–12, from Fisheries and OceansCanada, “Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents MarineProtected Area”, at www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/oceans/mpa/Endeavour_e.htm, and from WWF, “Oases on the OceanFloor,” news feature (Gland, Switzerland: 19 June 2002).

13. P.J. Mumby, “Mangroves enhance the biomass ofcoral reef fish communities in the Caribbean,” Nature, 5February 2004, pp. 533–36.

14. B.S. Halpern, “The impact of marine reserves: doreserves work and does reserve size matter?” EcologicalApplications, vol. 13, no. 1 (2003), pp. 117–37; NationalCenter for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, “ScientificConsensus Statement on Marine Reserves and Marine

Protected Areas,” 17 February 2001, at www.jiwlp.com/contents/Marine_Reserves_Report.htm.

15. D.H. Williamson, G.R. Russ, and A.M. Ayling, “No-take marine reserves increase abundance and biomass ofreef fish on inshore fringing reefs of the Great BarrierReef,” Environmental Conservation, vol. 31, no. 2 (2004),pp. 149–59.

16. T.R. McClanahan and R. Arthur, “The effect ofmarine reserves and habitat on populations of EastAfrican coral reefs,” Ecological Applications, vol. 11, no. 2(2001), pp. 559–69.

17. G.R. Russ, A.C. Alcala, and A.P. Maypa, “Spilloverfrom marine reserves: The case of Naso vlamingii at ApoIsland, the Philippines,” Marine Ecology Progress Series,vol. 264 (2003), pp. 15–20; B. Kaunda-Arara and G.A.Rose, “Effects of marine reef National Parks on fisheryCPUE in coastal Kenya,” Biological Conservation, vol. 118(2004), pp. 1–13.

18. Y. Renard, Case of the Soufriere Marine ManagementArea (SMMA), St. Lucia, CANARI Technical Report No. 1285 (Laventille, Trinidad, West Indies: CarribbeanNatural Resources Institute, 2001); C.M. Roberts and J.P. Hawkins, Fully Protected Marine Reserves: A Guide(Washington, DC: WWF Endangered Seas Campaign and Environment Department, University of York, 2000);C.M. Roberts et al., “Effects of marine reserves on adja-cent fisheries,” Science, 30 November 2001, pp. 1920–23.

19. N. Galal, R. Ormond, and O. Hassan, “Effect of a network of no-take reserves in increasing catch per uniteffort and stocks of exploited reef fish at Nabq, SouthSinai, Egypt,” Marine and Freshwater Research, vol. 53,no. 2 (2002).

20. Marine Conservation Unit, Department of Conser-vation, Protecting Our Seas—Tiakina a Tangaroa (Wel-lington, New Zealand: June 2005).

21. Greenpeace International, The Heat is On: The Role of Marine Reserves in Boosting Ecosystem Resilience toClimate Change (Amsterdam: 2007); C.D.G. Harley et al.,“The impacts of climate change in coastal marine sys-tems,” Ecology Letters, vol. 9 (2006), pp. 228–41.

22. “Climate Change and Ocean Warming: PreparingMPAs for It,” MPA News, March 2005, available atwww.mccn.org.au/article.php/id/451.


24. Roberts and Hawkins, op. cit. note 18.

25. Renard, op. cit. note 18.

26. M. Beger, G.P. Jones, and P.L. Munday, “Conservationof coral reef biodiversity: A comparison of reserve selec-tion procedures for corals and fishes,” Biological Conser-vation, vol. 111 (2003), pp. 53–62; Roberts, Mason, andHawkins, op. cit. note 4.

27. E.A. Norse et al., “Place-based ecosystem manage-ment in the open ocean,” in E. Norse and L. Crowder,eds., Marine Conservation Biology: The Science ofMaintaining the Sea’s Biodiversity (Washington, DC:Island Press, 2005), pp. 302–27.



Endnotes

29. “Fiji Designates Five MPAs as Part of Network,” MPANews, November 2005, at http://depts.washington.edu/mpanews/MPA69.htm.

30. U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-tion (NOAA), “President Sets Aside Largest MarineConservation Area on Earth,” press release (Washington,DC: 15 June 2006).

31. Greenpeace International, Marine Reserves for theMediterranean Sea (Amsterdam: June 2006); GreenpeaceInternational, Rescuing the North and Baltic Seas: MarineReserves a Key Tool (Amsterdam: July 2004).

32. Water Information System for Europe, “A MarineStrategy to Save Europe’s Seas and Oceans,” at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/marine/index_en.htm,viewed 1 August 2007.

33. World Summit on Sustainable Development, Plan ofImplementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Dev-elopment (Johannesberg: 2002).

34. Convention on Biological Diversity, “The KualaLumpur Declaration,” agreed to at the Conference ofParties 7, Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, 23 February 2004.


36. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea(UNCLOS) Web site, at www.un.org/Depts/los/index.htm.

37. Greenpeace International, op. cit. note 1; GreenpeaceInternational, Bioprospecting in the Deep Sea (Amsterdam:November 2005).

38. M. McGarvin, Deep-water Fishing: Time to Stop theDestruction (Amsterdam: Greenpeace International, 2005).

39. See D. Melnick et al., Environment and Human Well-Bring: A Practical Strategy, A Report of the UN MilleniumProject Task Force on Environmental Sustainability(London: Earthscan, 2005), p. 87.

40. United Nations General Assembly, “Sustainable fish-eries, including through the 1995 Agreement for theImplementation of the Provisions United NationsConvention on the Law of the Sea December 1982 relat-ing to the Conservation and Management of StraddlingFish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, and relatedinstruments,” A/RES/61/105 (New York: 6 March 2007),para. 80–90.

41. Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic MarineLiving Resources, “Interim restrictions on the use of bot-tom trawling gear in high-seas areas of the ConventionArea for the fishing seasons 2006/07 and 2007/08” (NorthHobart, Tasmania, Australia: 2006).

42. Greenpeace International, Trading Away Our Oceans:Why Trade Liberalization of Fisheries Must Be Abandoned(Amsterdam: January 2007).

43. World Trade Organization (WTO), “Liberalization oftrade in fish and fish products. Communication fromCanada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Singa-pore and Thailand” (Geneva: 2005); WTO, “Trade liberal-ization of fish and fish products. Communication fromCanada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore andThailand” (Geneva: 2006).

44. Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Dev-elopment, Liberalizing Fisheries Markets, Scope and Effects(Paris: 2003).


46. U.R. Sumaila and D. Pauly, Catching More Bait: ABottom-Up Re-Estimation of Global Fisheries Subsidies,Second Version, Fisheries Centre Research Reports, vol. 14,no. 6 (Vancouver, BC: Fisheries Centre, University ofBritish Columbia, 2006).

47. Oceana, “The Role of the World Trade Organization,”at www.oceana.org/north-america/what-we-do/stop-overfishing-subsidies/international-subsidies-action, viewed 1 August 2007.

48. WTO, Negotiating Group on Rules, “FisheriesSubsidies: Proposed New Disciplines: Proposal from theUnited States” (Geneva: 22 March 2007); Oceana, “TopU.S. Trade Official Calls for WTO Ban on HarmfulFisheries Subsidies,” press release (Washington, DC: 1May 2007).

49. Greenpeace International, Deadly Subsidies: HowGovernment Subsidies Are Destroying the Oceans and For-ests and Why the CBD Rather than the WTO Should StopThis Peverse Use of Public Money (Amsterdam: 2006), p. 55.

50. Greenpeace, “Fair Fisheries,” at http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/our-oceans/fair-fisheries, viewed 26 July2007.

51. Oxfam New Zealand, Fishing for a Future (Auckland:October 2006).

52. Greenpeace International, Caught Red-handed:Daylight Robbery on the High Seas (Amsterdam: May2006).

53. BirdLife International, “Fisheries OrganisationsFailing to Safeguard the World’s Albatrosses,” press release(Cambridge, UK: 7 March 2005); R. Cuthbert et al., “At-sea distribution of breeding Tristan albatrosses Diomedeadabbenena and potential interactions with pelagic long-line fishing in the South Atlantic Ocean,” BiologicalConservation, vol. 121 (2005), pp. 345–55.

54. S.J. Hall and B.M. Mainprize, “Managing by-catchand discards: how much progress are we making and howcan we do better?” Fish and Fisheries, vol. 6 (2005), pp.134–55; G.N. Tuck, T. Polacheck, and C. Bulman, “Spatio-temporal trends of longline fishing effort in the SouthernOcean and implications for seabird bycatch,” BiologicalConservation, vol. 114 (2003), pp. 1–27.

55. E. Gilman, N. Brothers, and D.R. Kobayashi,“Principles and approaches to abate seabird by-catch inlongline fisheries,” Fish and Fisheries, vol. 6 (2005), pp.35–49; Southern Ocean from Tuck, Polacheck, andBulman, op. cit. note 54.

56. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),“International Plan of Action for Reducing IncidentalCatch of Seabirds in Longline Fisheries” (Rome: 1999).

57. See www.savethealbatross.net.

58. C.J. Small, Regional Fisheries Management Organisa-tions: Their Duties and Performance in Reducing Bycatch ofAlbatrosses and Other Species (Cambridge, UK: BirdLife


Endnotes

International, 2005).

59. A.J. Read, P. Drinker, and S. Northridge, “Bycatch ofmarine mammals in U.S. and global fisheries,” Conserva-tion Biology, vol. 20, no. 1 (2006), pp. 163–69; A.J. Readand A.A. Rosenberg, “Draft international strategy forreducing incidental mortality of cetaceans in fisheries,”Cetacean Bycatch Resource Center, April 2002, atwww.cetaceanbycatch.org/intlstrategy.cfm.

60. Read and Rosenberg, op. cit. note 59; CetaceanBycatch Resource Center, “Cetacean Bycatch Facts,”www.cetaceanbycatch.org/status.cfm, viewed 26 July 2007.

61. Read and Rosenberg, op. cit. note 59.

62. Ibid.

63. Katrina Arias, WWF, personal commnication withMichelle Allsopp, 12 May 2006; WWF, “Vaquita,” 2005, athttp://69.25.138.63/about_wwf/what_we_do/species/our_solutions/endangered_species/cetaceans/vaquita/index.cfm.

64. U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, avail-able at www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/laws/mmpa.

65. NOAA, “Commerce Department ImplementsRegulations to Reduce Dolphin Mortality in the EasternTropical Pacific Ocean,” press release (Washington, DC: 4January 2000).

66. M.A. Hall, D.L. Alverson, and K.I. Metuzals, “By-catch: problems and solutions,” Marine Pollution Bulletin,vol. 41, no. 1-6 (2000), pp. 204–19.

67. NOAA Fisheries, “Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDS),”2006, at www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/turtles/teds.htm.

68. Ibid.; Inter-American Convention for the Protectionand Conservation of Sea Turtles (ICCAT) Web site, atwww.iacseaturtle.org.

69. R.L. Lewison, L.B. Crowder, and D.J. Shaver, “Theimpact of turtle excluder devices and fisheries closures onloggerhead and Kemp’s ridley strandings in the westernGulf of Mexico,” Conservation Biology, vol. 17, no. 4(2003), pp. 1089–97.

70. International Technical Expert Workshop on MarineTurtle Bycatch in Longline Fisheries, Seattle, Washington,11–13 February 2003; R.L. Lewison, S.A. Freeman, andL.B. Crowder, “Quantifying the effects of fisheries onthreatened species: The impact of pelagic longlines onloggerhead and leatherback sea turtles,” Ecology Letters,vol. 7 (2004), pp. 22–31.

71. B. Halweil, Catch of the Day: Choosing Seafood forHealthier Oceans, Worldwatch Paper 172 (Washington,DC: Worldwatch Institute, November 2006).

72. John Lewis Partnership, “Waitrose Nets First Place,”The Gazette, 23 March 2007.

73. Ibid.; Greenpeace UK, A Recipe for Change: Super-markets Repond to the Challenge of Sourcing SustainableSeafood (London: October 2006).

74. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., “Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Intro-duces New Label to Distinguish Sustainable Seafood,”press release (Bentonville, AR: 31 August 2006).

75. Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), “2006–2007. A

Snapshot of the MSC’s Recent Progress,” at www.msc.org/assets/docs/fishery_certification/MSC_fisheries_06-07.pdf.

76. Ibid.

77. Greenpeace UK, op. cit. note 73.

78. R.L. Naylor et al., “Effect of aquaculture on world fishsupplies,” Nature, 29 June 2000, pp. 1017–23; Pure SalmonCampaign Web site, www.puresalmon.org.


80. Stockholm Convention on Persistent OrganicPollutants (POPs) Web site, www.pops.int.

81. M. Alaee et al., “An overview of commercially usedbrominated flame retardants, their applications, their use patterns in different countries/regions and possiblemodes of release,” Environment International, vol. 29(2003), pp. 683–89; “Summary of the second meeting ofthe review committee of the Stockholm Convention onpersistent organic pollutants,” Earth Negotiations Bulletin,13 November 2006.

82. Europe from “Directive 2003/11/EC of the EuropeanParliament and of the Council of 6 February 2003.Amending for the 24th time Council Directive76/769/EEC relating to restrictions on the marketing anduse of certain dangerous substances and preparations(pentabromodiphenyl ether, octabromodiphenyl ether,”Official Journal of the European Union, 15 February 2003,from “Directive 2002/95/EC of the European Parliamentand of the Council of 27 January 2003 on the restrictionof the use of certain hazardous substances in electricaland electronic equipment,” Official Journal of the Euro-pean Union, 13 February 2003, and from Bromine Scienceand Environmental Forum, “Legislation—RegulatoryOverview in Europe,” www.bsef.com/regulation/national/index.php?/regulation/national/national.php, viewed 26July 2007; China from “Administration on the Control ofPollution Caused by Electronic Information Products,” atwww.chinarohs.com/docs.html; Japan from K. Vorkampet al., Screening of “New” Contaminants in the MarineEnvironment of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, NERITechnical Report No. 525 (Roskilde, Denmark: NationalEnvironmental Research Institute, 2004); United Statesfrom C.A. de Wit, M. Alaee, and D.C.G. Muir, “Levels andtrends of brominated flame retardants in the Arctic,”Chemosphere, vol. 64, no. 2 (2006), pp. 209–33.

83. OSPAR Commission for the Protection of the MarineEnvironment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR),“OSPAR Strategy with Regard to Hazardous Substances”(London: 1998); OSPAR, “Sintra Statement (Sintra,Portugal: 23 July 1998), at www.ospar.org/eng/html/md/sintra.htm.

84. OSPAR, “The OSPAR List of Chemicals for PriorityAction (Update 2006)” (London: 2006).

85. “Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 of the EuropeanParliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 con-cerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation andRestriction of Chemicals (REACH), establishing a Euro-pean Chemicals Agency, amending Directive 1999/45/ECand repealing Council Regulation (EEC) No 793/93 andCommission Regulation (EC) No 1488/94 as well asCouncil Directive 76/769/EEC and Commission Direc-


Endnotes

tives 91/155/EEC, 93/67/EEC, 93/105/EC and2000/21/EC,” Official Journal of the European Union, 30December 2006.

86. OSPAR, “OSPAR Radioactive Substances Strategy”(London: 1998).

87. OSPAR, “2003 Progress Report on the More DetailedImplementation of the Radioactive Substances Strategy”(London: 2003).

88. International Maritime Organization (IMO), “Tankersafety—Preventing Accidental Pollution,” at www.imo.org/Safety/mainframe.asp?topic_id=155, viewed 26 July2007.

89. W.K. Dodds, “Nutrients and the ‘dead zone’: The link

between nutrient ratios and dissolved oxygen in thenorthern Gulf of Mexico,” Frontiers in Ecology and theEnvironment, vol. 4, no. 4 (2006), pp. 211–17.

90. IMO, “International Convention for the prevention of pollution from ships, 1973, as modified by the protocolof 1978 relating thereto (MARPOL 73/78),” 2002, atwww.imo.org/Conventions/contents.asp?doc_id=678&topic_id=258].

91. S.B. Sheavly, “Marine debris—An overview of a criti-cal issue for our oceans,” preented at the Sixth Meeting of the UN Open-ended Informal Consultative Processeson Oceans & the Law of the Sea, 6–10 June 2005, atwww.un.org/Depts/los/consultative_process/consultative_process.htm.



Index

Aacidification of oceans, 6, 22–23, 30Adriatic Sea, 26Africa, 18, 30, 33Albatross Task Force, 34Antarctica, 21–23, 32aquaculture industry, see also com-

mercial fishingecosystem approach, 35–36feed considerations, 5, 33, 36fishery depletion and, 13, 15–16mangrove forests and, 11threats to marine life, 6

Arctic Ocean, 21Atlantic Ocean

climate changes and, 21ecological approach and, 36fishery depletions, 13, 18mangrove forests, 11

Australiafishery depletions, 17Great Barrier Reef, 9–10, 20, 30mangrove forests, 11pollution and, 26seamounts, 8, 14–15

BBaltic Sea, 26, 35Bangladesh, 11Barents Sea, 15, 18BFRs (brominated flame retar-

dants), 24–25bioaccumulative pollutants, 24bioprospecting, 9bird species, diversity of, see also

seabirdsclimate changes and, 22in mangrove forests, 11pollution and, 24–25in seagrass beds, 12

BirdLife International, 34Black Sea, 26bottom trawling

destructive nature of, 5, 8, 12,14–15

ecological approach and, 35IUU fishing, 18

Brazil, 11–12Bush, George W., 31bycatch, 17–18, 34–35

CCalifornia, 20Canada, 14, 22, 34carbon dioxide emissions, 12, 19, 22Caribbean Sea

biodiversity in, 9–12climate changes and, 20–21ecological approach in, 33pollution in, 27

CBD (Convention on BiologicalDiversity), 31–32

CCAMLR, 32, 34Cetacean Bycatch Resource Center,

35chemical contamination, 16, 24, 36Chile, 8, 16China

ecological approach and, 34, 36fishery depletions, 16–17mangrove forests, 11pollution and, 26

climate changechanging seas and, 19–23ecological approach to, 32impact of, 6mangrove forests and, 12marine reserves and, 30

coastal zonebiodiversity of, 9–12ecological approach to, 36pollution and, 25

commercial fishing, see also aqua-culture industry

destructive methods, 6ecological approach, 33–36in Indonesia, 9–10marine reserves and, 30pollution from, 28Southeast Asia, 10

threat to drift algae, 9coral bleaching, 10, 19–20coral reefs

biodiversity in, 7, 9, 11–12bottom trawling and, 5, 8climate changes and, 10, 19–21level of protection, 31

crustaceansin coral reefs, 10in deep sea, 7farming, 15in mangrove forests, 11ocean acidification and, 22in open ocean, 9in seagrass beds, 12

cyanide, 10

Ddead zones, 26deep sea

biodiversity in, 7–9bottom trawling, 14–15IUU fishing, 18marine reserves and, 31sustainable management of, 32,

35–36Denmark, 15disease

seaweed and, 10, 16spread of, 16–18

distant-water access agreements,33–34

Doha Round (WTO), 33dolphins, 17–18, 35drift algae, 9dugong, 12

EEast China Sea, 24ecosystem approach

with aquaculture industry, 35–36benefits, 6for bycatch, 34–35for commercial fishing, 33–34for marine pollution, 36–37

Index

for marine reserves, 5–6, 29–32mitigating bycatch, 34–35of sustainable management, 32

EEZs (exclusive economic zones), 18effluent discharge, 16, 36Egypt, 11endangered species, 11–12endemism, 8English Channel, 27entanglement, 17, 27, 34–35erosion, 11, 21Estonia, 15Europe

climate changes and, 20–21ecological approach and, 31, 36fishery depletions and, 14, 16pollution and, 24, 27

Exxon Valdez tanker, 27

FFAO (U.N. Food and Agriculture

Organization) agreement,13, 33–34

fish farming, see aquaculturefish species, diversity of

climate changes and, 19–20, 22in coral reefs, 9–10fishery depletions and, 13–18in mangrove forests, 11in seagrass beds, 12

fish stocksecological approach, 31–34IUU fishing, 18pollution and, 28status, 6, 13–15U.N. Fish Stocks Agreement,

32–34fishery depletions, 13–18Florida, 10–11, 15France, 25fungi in mangrove forests, 11

GGalicia, 26ghost fishing, 28Great Barrier Reef (Australia),

9–10, 20, 30Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, 21Greece, 14Greenland Ice Sheet, 21Greenpeace, 5, 18, 33Guam, 10Gulf of California, 17Gulf of Maine, 35Gulf of Mexico, 11, 17, 26Gulf Stream, 21

HHawaii, 8, 15–16, 21, 31

Honduras, 19hurricanes, 12hydrothermal vents, 8–9, 31hypothermia, 26

IIceland, 15India, 11, 17Indian Ocean, 10, 13, 20Indonesia, 9–11, 19, 27Indo-Pacific Ocean, 9–10, 12industrial fishing, 15Inter-American Convention for the

Protection and Conservationof Sea Turtles, 35

International MaritimeOrganization, 36

International WhalingCommission, 35

invertebratescoral reefs and, 10in deep sea, 7–8in mangrove forests, 11in open ocean, 9

IPOA-SEABIRDS, 34Ireland, 25IUCN (World Conservation

Union), 17IUU fishing, 18, 34

JJapan

ecological approach and, 34, 36fishery depletion and, 15–16pollution and, 26

jellyfish, 7, 9

KKorea, 34

Llactational transfer, 24Latvia, 15Lebanon, 27–28Lithuania, 15longline fishing, 14, 17–18, 34

Mmackerel, 14–16Malaysia, 11manatees, 11–12mangrove forests, 9–12, 16, 31marine debris, 27–28marine ecosystems

in coastal zone, 9–12in deep sea, 7–9IUU fishing, 18in open ocean, 9pollution and, 6, 24–28

marine mammalsalong coral reefs, 9along seamounts, 8bycatch, 17, 34–35industrially fished species, 15marine reserves and, 31pollution and, 26

marine reserves, 5–6, 29–32, 37Marine Stewardship Council

(MSC), 35MARPOL, 37medicine, commercial harvesting

for, 9–10Mediterranean Sea, 12, 14–15, 18,

20, 27, 31Mexico, 34microbes

in mangrove forests, 11pollution and, 25–26

Mid-Oceanic Ridge system, 8mining, seabed, 8, 10mollusks

in coastal zone, 9in deep sea, 7ocean acidification and, 22rising sea temperatures, 20in seagrass beds, 12

MPAs (marine protected areas),29, 31

NNew Caledonia, 8New Zealand

biodiversity in, 8ecological approach in, 30, 35fishery depletions, 15, 17pollution and, 26

Newfoundland (Canada), 14Nigeria, 11North Pacific Gyre, 27North Sea

climate changes and, 20–21ecological approach, 35fishery depletions, 15–16pollution and, 26

Norway, 15

OOECD (Organisation for Economic

Co-operation andDevelopment), 33

oil spills, 26–27, 36–37open ocean

biodiversity in, 9industrial fishing, 15

OSPAR Commission, 36overfishing

coral reefs and, 10–11ecological approach to, 32


Index

fishery depletions, 14–16rising sea temperatures and, 21as threat to marine life, 6

PPacific Ocean

coral reefs, 10, 19deep-sea species, 7–8ecological approach in, 33, 35as EEZ, 18fishery depletions, 13, 17open ocean species, 9

Papua New Guinea, 10PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl

ethers), 24–25PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), 36Peru, 15pH values of oceans, 22Philippines

biodiversity in, 10fishery depletion, 16marine reserves, 29, 37pollution and, 27

photosynthesis, coral reefs, 9, 19, 21plankton, 20, 22poisons, 10, 26–27polar bears, 22pollution

coral reefs and, 10–11drift algae and, 9ecosystem approach, 36–37effluent discharge, 16, 36marine life and, 6, 24–28marine reserves and, 30seagrass beds and, 12

POPs (persistent organic pollu-tants), 24, 36

porpoises, 17–18, 25, 35Portugal, 15Prestige tanker, 27

Rradioactive substances, 24–25rainforests of the sea, see coral reefsrays, 14–15REACH legislation, 36Red Sea, 11, 30Royal Society for the Protection

of Birds, 34Russia, 15, 34

Ssalmon, 14, 16–17scientific research, 8–9sea levels, rise in, 21Sea of Japan, 12sea temperatures, rising, 10, 19–21seabed mining, 8, 10

seabirdsalong coral reefs, 9bycatch, 17, 34–35drift algae, 9industrially fished species, 15marine reserves and, 31pollution and, 24–26on seamounts, 8

seagrass bedsbottom trawling and, 5in coastal zone, 9depicted, 12level of protection, 31in Thailand, 11threat to, 12

seals, 22, 24–25seamounts, 7–8, 14–15, 31seaweed, 10, 15–16sediments, 7, 10–12, 15sharks, 9, 14shellfish, 11, 15shrimp farming, 12, 15–17Singapore, 11skates, 14–15South America, 16, 26South Orkney Islands, 22Southeast Asia, 10–11Southern Ocean

climate changes and, 22ecological approach in, 32, 34fishery depletions and, 18

Spain, 15sponges

in coastal zone, 9in deep sea, 7in seagrass beds, 12

Sri Lanka, 10, 33St. Lucia, 30–31Stockholm Convention, 24, 36sustainable management of high

seas, 32, 35–36swordfish, 9, 14

TTaiwan, 34Tasmania, 8TED (turtle excluder device), 17, 35temperatures, see sea temperaturesTexas, 12Thailand, 11, 16tourism, 8, 10, 27tsunamis, 10tuna

ecological approach, 34overfishing of, 13–16pollution and, 24seamounts and, 8

Turkey, 12


turtlesbycatch of, 17, 34–35climate changes and, 21coral reefs and, 9marine reserves and, 30–31in open ocean, 9pollution and, 27–28seagrass beds and, 12

UUnited Kingdom, 15, 25, 34–35United Nations

on bycatch, 17Convention on Biological

Diversity (CBD), 33ecological approach of, 32–33Fish Stocks Agreement, 32–34Food and Agriculture

Organization (FAO), 13,33–34

Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 32United States, see also specific

states, 10, 16–17, 27, 35–36upwelling systems, 9U.S. Marine Mammal Protection

Act, 35U.S. National Marine Fisheries

Service, 17

VVietnam, 11

WWaitrose supermarket chain, 35Wal-Mart, 35water quality, 11wave action, 10, 12West Antarctic Ice Sheet, 21whales

climate changes and, 21, 23ecological approach, 35fishery depletion and, 17–18in open ocean, 9pollution and, 24–25

World Conservation Union(IUCN), 17

World Parks Congress, 30World Summit on Sustainable

Development, 31–33worms, 7, 9, 12WTO (World Trade Organization),

33WWF, 31, 35

Zzero-for-zero tariffs, 33

Other Worldwatch Reports

Worldwatch Reports provide in-depth, quantitative, and qualitative analysis of the major issuesaffecting prospects for a sustainable society. The Reports are written by members of theWorldwatch Institute research staff or outside specialists and are reviewed by experts unaffiliatedwith Worldwatch. They are used as concise and authoritative references by governments,nongovernmental organizations, businesses, and educational institutions worldwide.

On Climate Change, Energy, and Materials169: Mainstreaming Renewable Energy in the 21st Century, 2004160: Reading the Weathervane: Climate Policy From Rio to Johannesburg, 2002157: Hydrogen Futures: Toward a Sustainable Energy System, 2001151: Micropower: The Next Electrical Era, 2000149: Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape, 1999144: Mind Over Matter: Recasting the Role of Materials in Our Lives, 1998138: Rising Sun, Gathering Winds: Policies To Stabilize the Climate and Strengthen Economies, 1997

On Ecological and Human Health165: Winged Messengers: The Decline of Birds, 2003153: Why Poison Ourselves: A Precautionary Approach to Synthetic Chemicals, 2000148: Nature’s Cornucopia: Our Stakes in Plant Diversity, 1999145: Safeguarding the Health of Oceans, 1999142: Rocking the Boat: Conserving Fisheries and Protecting Jobs, 1998141: Losing Strands in the Web of Life: Vertebrate Declines and the Conservation of Biological Diversity, 1998140: Taking a Stand: Cultivating a New Relationship With the World’s Forests, 1998

On Economics, Institutions, and Security173: Beyond Disasters: Creating Opportunities for Peace, 2007168: Venture Capitalism for a Tropical Forest: Cocoa in the Mata Atlântica, 2003167: Sustainable Development for the Second World: Ukraine and the Nations in Transition, 2003166: Purchasing Power: Harnessing Institutional Procurement for People and the Planet, 2003164: Invoking the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable World, 2002162: The Anatomy of Resource Wars, 2002159: Traveling Light: New Paths for International Tourism, 2001158: Unnatural Disasters, 2001

On Food, Water, Population, and Urbanization172: Catch of the Day: Choosing Seafood for Healthier Oceans, 2006171: Happer Meals: Rethinking the Global Meat Industry, 2005170: Liquid Assets: The Critical Need to Safeguard Freshwater Ecosytems, 2005163: Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market, 2002161: Correcting Gender Myopia: Gender Equity, Women’s Welfare, and the Environment, 2002156: City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl, 2001154: Deep Trouble: The Hidden Threat of Groundwater Pollution, 2000150: Underfed and Overfed: The Global Epidemic of Malnutrition, 2000147: Reinventing Cities for People and the Planet, 1999

To order any of the above titles or to see a complete list of Reports, visit www.worldwatch.org/taxonomy/term/40


About Worldwatch

The Worldwatch Institute is an independent research organization that works for an environmen-tally sustainable and socially just society, in which the needs of all people are met without threat-ening the health of the natural environment or the well-being of future generations. By providingcompelling, accessible, and fact-based analysis of critical global issues, Worldwatch informs peoplearound the world about the complex interactions among people, nature, and economies.Worldwatch focuses on the underlying causes of and practical solutions to the world’s problems,in order to inspire people to demand new policies, investment patterns, and lifestyle choices.

Support for the Institute is provided by the Blue Moon Fund, the German Government, theRichard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, The Goldman Environmental Prize, the W. K. Kellogg Founda-tion, the Steven C. Leuthold Family Foundation, the Marianists of the USA, the Norwegian RoyalMinistry of Foreign Affairs, the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, TheShared Earth Foundation, The Shenandoah Foundation, the Sierra Club, the Food and AgricultureOrganization of the United Nations, the United Nations Population Fund, the United NationsEnvironment Programme, the Wallace Genetic Foundation, Inc., the Wallace Global Fund, theJohanette Wallerstein Institute, and the Winslow Foundation. The Institute also receives financialsupport from many individual donors who share our commitment to a more sustainable society.


Oceans in Peril Protecting Marine Biodiversity

WO R L DWATC H R E P O RT 174

The oceans cover 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and are home to a myriad

of amazing and beautiful creatures. Yet the biological diversity of marine

habitats is threatened by the activities of one largely land-based species: us.

The activities through which humans threaten marine life include overfishing,

use of destructive fishing methods, pollution, and commercial aquaculture.

In addition, climate change and the related acidification of the oceans is

already having an impact on some marine ecosystems.

Essential to solving these problems will be more equitable and sustainable

management of the oceans as well as stronger protection of marine ecosystems

through a well-enforced network of marine reserves. Presently, 76 percent of

the world’s fish stocks are fully exploited or overexploited, and many species

have been severely depleted. Current fisheries management regimes contribute

to the widespread market-driven degradation of the oceans by failing to

implement and enforce adequate protective measures.

Many policymakers and scientists now agree that we must adopt a radical

new approach to managing the seas—one that is precautionary in nature and

has the protection of the whole marine ecosystem as its primary objective.

This “ecosystem approach” is vital if we are to ensure the health of our

oceans for future generations. Protecting the diversity of marine life—from

the largest whales to the smallest planktonic creature—is necessary not only

for its own sake, but for ours too.

WWW.WORLDWATCH.ORG

Protecting Marine Biodiversity - Worldwatch Institute Oceans in Peril.pdf · ·...

Documents

Transcript of Protecting Marine Biodiversity - Worldwatch Institute Oceans in Peril.pdf · ·...