A 2020 survey of Irish citizens found 92% “strongly agreed” that more action needs to be taken to improve the health of the ocean. Now is their chance to push for such change. This Friday 30th July 2021 is the deadline for citizens to support the protection of marine life around Ireland through the “Public
Species in areas with exceptionally high biodiversity (richspots), especially of endemic species (unique to that place), are consistent losers under climate change because they cannot disperse to more suitable climates. In contrast, introduced invasive species tend to be unaffected by climate change or benefit from it, and their expansion will further threaten the survival of
A new paper from Chhaya Chaudhary’s PhD shows that the latitudinal gradient of species richness has been changing in concert with climate change since at least the 1950s (Chaudhary et al. 2021). Thousands of species have left the equator for higher latitudes as the oceans warm. While previous studies predicted such changes in the distribution
The first world map of the laminarian kelp biome has been published (Jayathilake and Costello (2020). It estimates the kelp biome to occupy 1,469,900 km2 and be present on 22 % of the world’s coastline. It is thus the second most widely distributed marine biome, following seagrass with 1,646,788 km2 (Jayathilake and Costello 2018). The
What is the problem with climate change? It is causing more frequent and worse heat-waves, wildfires, floods, and storms. These impact human health, farming, fisheries, forestry, food security, infrastructure, drinking water supplies, and biodiversity. They cause social stress and have economic costs (including disaster relief, firefighting, lost crops, lost tourism, increased or no insurance cover).
Artificial Intelligence (AI, using machine learning and neural networks) has made amazing strides, notably in recognising human faces. It is also being used to identify patterns on photographs of individual patterns on whale fins and flukes, and whale shark markings. It is revolutionary in helping citizens learn how to identify species (such as in iNaturalist)
Numbers of species in the equator started declining since the last age and before industrialisation, but more species will be lost due to climate warming The graph shows the number of species at different latitudes during the ice-age (blue), pre-industrial centuries (green) and predicted for 2090s (red). Previously we found that instead of marine biodiversity
The oceans top 30% for biodiversity The marine biodiversity research group at the University of Auckland has published a world map of where most biodiversity is in the ocean. This is the most representative map of biodiversity to date because it considers marine life from genes to ecosystems. Prioritizing the protection of this 30% of
Researchers from the UK, Japan, Australia, USA, Germany, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand analyzed three million records of thousands of species from 200 ecological communities across the globe. They showed how fish, demersal and planktonic communities changed as warm-water species increase and cold-water marine species become less successful due to climate warming. Using species
Hundreds of papers talk about the importance of connectivity in marine conservation planning. Almost all of these papers treat MPA as islands in a sea of nothingness. Some express disappointment that it is not more explicitly considered in planning Marine Protected Area (MPA) networks. The lack of explicit consideration of connectivity in MPA planning maybe
