Conservationists do not need to exaggerate the crisis facing the world’s biodiversity (Costello 2019). Almost 30,000, out of 100,000 species assessed, are threatened with extinction (IUCN Red List 2019). This is far too many and a crisis. Helpfully, we know what threatens each species and there are many examples of conservation success in preventing extinctions.
How to enrich Ireland’s marine life and resources A version of this article was published in The Irish Times on 20th June 2019 Minister Creed’s exclusion of large fishing trawlers from Ireland’s coastal seas is great news for the conservation of marine life, coastal communities, and is an important step towards a flourishing and sustainable
The purpose of marine reserves is to have some places where nature can flourish without human impacts. The recovery of life with release from fishing pressure is not surprising and has been repeatedly demonstrated. The benefits to people vary with the local situation but include: educational (people can see what nature is like without being
I have often read and heard it stated that the seabed is less well mapped than the surface of other planets. However, I had not noticed papers that provided evidence for this or cited primary sources. I thank Peter Harris and David Sandwell for providing links to the evidence that shows indeed maps of other
This paper provides a global context for how much environmental variables vary geographically, including with depth in the ocean. Depth profiles of temperature, oxygen, nutrients, current velocity, and seabed slope, are provided. Geographic patterns for these variables plus salinity are contrasted between the sea surface and seabed. The variables are used to classify the three-dimensional
Dinusha Jayathilake has published a new world map of the seagrass biome. It fills significant gaps in previous maps, and thus doubles the estimated area of seagrass globally to be 1,650,000 km². However, whether seagrass still occurs at all the map locations, or has been lost, for example due to dredging or high turbidity. requires field observations.
Congratulations to Tri Arfianti who has just published her second paper as part of her PhD. This analysis of rates of description of amphipod crustaceans predicts one third of species remain to be described. In addition, the data indicated that pelagic amphipods are far better known and have far fewer species than benthic species. This
Congratulations to Maria Charry for her paper showing how native New Zealand benthic and planktonic copepods can be used to monitor toxicity in estuaries. The benthic harpacticoid and planktonic calanoid species were sensitive to metals in sediments and water respectively. For both toxicity could be detected at different life-stages, with reduced survival of larvae in
Why protect nature? There are many good reasons for people to conserve biodiversity. Biodiversity is what our lives and ecosystems depend upon, and it includes natural resources that must be used wisely so that they can continue being harvested in the future. Over thousands of years, people have developed a range of extensive and intensive
The Coral Triangle, encompassing Indonesia, the Philippines and neighbouring countries, contains the highest density of marine species in the world, and exceptionally high numbers of endemic species (Asaad et al. 2018). Thus conserving its marine life is a priority for conserving all ocean biodiversity. As part of his PhD, Irawan Asaad reviewed criteria used to
