Marine biodiversity - Good to know

Life on our planet originated in oceans. These gigantic bodies of water cover 95% of the habitable space on Earth and provides home for a vast diversity of life, from the smallest bacteria to gigantic blue whales.

The health of the oceans must improve if we are to save the rich biodiversity in our oceans. This means protecting our oceans and seas from environmental threats such as climate change, pollution overfishing, and ocean acidification.

The scientists estimate there are up to total number 2.2 million living marine species (excluding microscopic bacterias).

There needs to be better funding for marine research because only science can save the life in our oceans from this variety of different environmental issue. There needs to be the adequate long-term support for marine biodiversity research because science does not only have to discover the changes  brought by these issues but must also find the way on how can marine life adapt to these changes.

The scientists from all over the world need to work together because only global approach can save the biodiversity of life in our oceans. The global politics will also have to change its course and put more emphasis on environmental issues. If only science and politics could see eye to eye.

Fish are among the most threatened species on our planet.

Many environmentalists say that biodiversity loss is even bigger issue than climate change. The challenge of preserving the world's biodiversity is perhaps even greater than tackling and adapting to climate change.

Marine protected areas are one of the best solutions to protect biodiversity in our oceans and seas. These areas can give marine life a chance to thrive without the constant interference from humans.

Every marine species counts. From the smallest to biggest, each and every one of them plays important part in marine food web. The entire life on our planet is interconnected and oceans are no exception.

Fish and various marine species are among the most threatened species on our planet, with one of the main reasons for this situation being an over-exploitation by fishing fleets.

The decline of our planet's marine biodiversity reduces the productivity and sustainability of ecosystems, causing economic loss in billions of dollars. 

Ignorance is not the way to preserve biodiversity

Preserving biodiversity on our planet is certainly one of the major challenges our society will be put against, even despite the fact that world leaders still do not take this issue seriously. In order to solve this major crisis of biodiversity science and politics will have to work together because this is the only way to ensure safe life for our future generations. However, this symbiosis between science and politics still doesn’t function, because politics only promises and does nothing concrete.

How bad is current biodiversity loss? The recent studies say that our planet is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate. If we continue this path this could be one of the worst mass extinctions in the history of our planet, comparable with the one when dinosaurs vanished from the face of the earth.

The scientists say that earth has so far experienced five mass extinction events in its history, with the last one occurring some 65 million years ago when dinosaurs disappeared together with many other species.

This ongoing 6th mass extinction event is mainly driven by us, the humans. This time we can't blame asteroids, volcanoes, no, this time is only us left to blame. We are responsible for all major environmental issues: habitat loss, climate change, deforestation, pollution, poaching -all of which play their part in the ongoing biodiversity loss.

Many scientists argue that biodiversity loss is even bigger environmental issue than climate change, the one that could affect our future wellbeing the most, and even put our future survival on this planet in great jeopardy.

Many people are still unaware how bad current environmental condition of our planet is, while others choose to ignore environmental issues and pretend like everything is OK. This attitude is only making things worse because business as usual scenario and ignoring everything could soon irreversibly change our „modern way of life“.

It's time to face and accept reality, and do something meaningful for a change.   Ignoring problems won’t cause them to go away, on the contrary, they will become even worse.  What we are doing here is gambling with the future of humanity on this planet.  We are gambling with lives of our future generations as they will be the ones that will pay for our mistakes.

Ignorance is not the answer. It never was.

How do ecologists measure biodiversity?

Given the ongoing biodiversity loss that seems to be happening everywhere around the globe, it's really no wonder that ecologists try to measure biodiversity as they hope that this may lead to more success in conservation and help many species from going extinct.

Measuring biodiversity focuses on three main factors:

-          - the number of species in a given area (the richness of species).

-          - the relation between the species in an area (how close is relation between one species to another).

-          - different variations in biological and ecological characteristics across an area or the so called trait diversity (this mostly refers to ecosystem resilience against disturbance from non-native elements).

Why is important to measure biodiversity in as much areas as possible? The answer is quite simple – Measuring biodiversity gives researchers the knowledge so they can prioritize the areas that need the most protection, so these areas could be turned into national parks, reserves or some other forms of protected areas.

However, it is very difficult to quantify these three factors and decide which areas need protection the most. The current practice was all about protecting areas with the largest number of threatened species but the things aren’t that easy.

There are also several major environmental issues that need to be put into the biodiversity equation such as climate change, pollution, deforestation and ocean acidification. This makes measuring biodiversity extremely complex and often leads to inadequate conservation efforts.

From the current point of view, it is very difficult to recognize the methods that could lead to successful protection of threatened species. The interaction between so many different factors often leads to guesses and estimates, even despite the advanced scientific approach.

Science, however, still remains our only weapon against the biodiversity loss. New studies will hopefully help conservations to better protect threatened species across the globe.

What is causing this big decline in Earth’s biodiversity?

The ongoing loss of biodiversity is one of the biggest environmental issues of our time with latest reports claiming that there are more than 5.000 endangered animals in the world today.

The endangered animals list includes many famous names such as polar bears, tigers, sharks, rhinos and elephants.

Why are all these animals finding it hard to survive these days? The main reason for this situation is poor, almost tragic state of our environment characterized by several major environmental issues.

Climate change, pollution, deforestation, habitat loss – animals need to cope with all these environmental issues to survive, and things are becoming increasingly worse as these problems are becoming more and more serious.

Behind all these problems are we, the humans. We just do not care enough for our environment because we do not want to think about what our environment really means to us. We seem to be constantly forgetting that clean, healthy environment rich with animal and plant species is one of the main prerequisites for our future wellbeing, and that we can't survive alone on this planet.

True, there have been some notable conservation efforts in recent years but given the magnitude of today's environmental issues these efforts mean very little on global scale of things. A lot more effort and a joint work off all countries in the world will be required to save many species from extinction.

For starters, world leaders should look for the ways on how to create more protected areas, where animals can live peacefully without human interference.

The current rate of extinction is horrifying with at least one animal going extinct each year.  

In order to change this trend we need to completely change our way of thinking. This means shifting our care from ourselves to our environment and our planet in general.

Can we rebuild our society’s main values before it’s too late?

The importance of marine microbes

The microbes are important for all life on our planet because they form the basis of all food webs on Earth. This especially refers to marine microbes because oceans account for more than 90% of Earth's biosphere.

Marine microbes are tiny microorganisms that can only be seen under a microscope. Our oceans contain countless number of microbes. The scientists say that just one litre of seawater contains up to a billion microbes.

Marine microbes recycle vital elements such as carbon and nitrogen, produce more than half of the entire global oxygen supply and, in doing so, sink a large proportion of man-made carbon dioxide (CO₂), the greenhouse gas that is believed to be the main driving force of ongoing global warming phenomenon.

The scientists are well aware of how important microbes are but their knowledge about microbes is still very limited. The modern science still doesn't know answers to very important questions on how many different types of microbes reside in our oceans and what is the role of each of them.

The science of microbiology is developing rapidly, driven not only by technological and scientific development but also because of different issues such as climate change and over-exploitation of marine resources so hopefully in years to come we'll learn lot more information about microorganisms that live in our oceans and seas.

The governments need to ensure larger funds for more research in this area because marine microbes play key role in sustaining entire life on our planet.

The scientists have just started understanding the important environmental roles that microbes play in our oceans and seas, and they hope that in future the new, more comprehensive studies will give them lot more answers about all the important functions reserved for these tiny organisms.

The connection between biodiversity and melting of glaciers

Biodiversity loss is one of the biggest environmental issues of modern world, and the widespread effect of climate change is making things even worse. The latest study published in the Nature Climate Change magazine has studied the effect of retreating glaciers on biodiversity. The conclusion was that the continuous melting of glaciers has negative effect on biodiversity in affected areas.

The scientists have studied temperate, arctic and tropical regions (Alps, Alaska and the equatorial Andes) in order to find the correlation between the glacial coverage and biodiversity loss. They have discovered that in situations where „glacial coverage is reduced to the point where it only covers 30 to 50% of the drainage basin, several species begin to disappear.“

They have also calculated that the entire melting of the glaciers in these areas would result in huge loss of biodiversity, where between 11 and 38% of the animal and plant species could go extinct, including many of endemic species that can be found only in these areas.

We are not just talking here about the loss of biodiversity in these areas but also about the huge water shortage issue for many places across the globe. The worldwide melting of glaciers threatens to eliminate the water supply for numerous towns in valleys, and water could very soon become a very scarce resource for many regions of the world.

This is just one of many scientific warnings about the growing impact of climate change. World leaders still don't look particularly worried about it, and the climate change issue is still far from being the top issue on global political agenda. As always, finance and economies are far more important to world leaders than environmental issues.

Biodiversity loss will only grow as climate change impact becomes stronger, and if we fail to do something quick we will pass the point of no return where the world will be helpless to do something effective against climate change (the global temperature increase of two degrees Celsius).

The glacier melting is just one of many climate change faces, all of which can result in one scary future. This future could soon become our reality…

How to preserve our planet's biodiversity?

The ongoing biodiversity loss is certainly one of the biggest environmental concerns of our time. The global loss of biodiversity is affecting productivity of many different ecosystems. The affected ecosystems lose their ability to create valuable resources, meaning that biodiversity loss does not only cause environmental but also a huge economic damage.

Biodiversity loss is happening in all corners of the world. The other environmental issues like climate change, habitat loss, pollution and deforestation also heavily contribute to global loss of species.

Many animals and plants are going extinct. The interconnection of environmental issues is making conservation efforts practically impossible. The only way to save animals and plants from extinction is to tackle climate change, pollution and other major environmental issues, all in the same time. Sadly, this is something world still isn't ready to do because environment still counts very little on global scale.

Politics and industry rule the world, and these two leave very little room for ecology and environment. The global politics seems to have taken some sort of ignorant approach towards environmental issues because this is what best suit powerful industrial lobbies.

In the meantime, the nature's ability to provide vital services like food, clean water and a stable climate is under a great jeopardy.

Preserving our planet's biodiversity means preserving productivity of our environment. It means preserving food and water for our future generations. Broadly speaking, preserving biodiversity means preserving humanity.

The biodiversity provides great benefits and policy makers should be aware of that. Biodiversity issue requires lot more attention on all three levels: local, national and international.  We must all do our part to protect biodiversity of our planet because our future wellbeing depends on it.

Our society needs to wake up and realize that we can’t survive on this planet all alone. Nature’s main rule is very simple: “Every species counts”. Embracing this rule sooner rather than later might just be the thing to save our society from future self-destruction.