WATCH: State of the Oceans: The Speed of Change
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Giua4EmwPgw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Professor Chris Reid Marine Institute, University of Plymouth and Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science highlights the speed of change which has been greater than most scientists predicted even in worst case scenarios.
Pollution and global warming are pushing the world’s oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned Monday.
Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water “dead zones,” toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks, all are accelerating, they said in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world’s top ocean experts.
Sponsored by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago…
State Of The Oceans: The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO)
Multiple Ocean Stresses Threaten “Globally Significant” Marine Extinction; Report
By The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO)
Photo source: Blue Voice / Gene Flipsy
A high-level international workshop convened by IPSO met at the University of Oxford earlier this year. It was the first inter-disciplinary international meeting of marine scientists of its kind and was designed to consider the cumulative impact of multiple stressors on the ocean, including warming, acidification, and overfishing.
The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) was established by scientists with the aim of saving the Earth and all life on it.
The 3 day workshop, co-sponsored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), looked at the latest science across different disciplines.
The 27 participants from 18 organisations in 6 countries produced a grave assessment of current threats, and a stark conclusion about future risks to marine and human life if the current trajectory of damage continues: that the world’s ocean is at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.
Delegates called for urgent and unequivocal action to halt further declines in ocean health.
The report summary (released 21 June 2011) outlines the main findings and recommendations. The full report will be released at a later date.
The report is also accompanied by four case studies, which look in more detail at some of the workshop’s main findings.
WATCH: State of the Oceans: The IPSO Four Case Studies; 4 Short Videos
In “The Story of Corals Video“, Professor Charles Sheppard, Warwick University gives further perspective to the extinction threat facing coral reefs and stresses that the knock-on effects are already being felt on land.
“Is it really Possible a Mass Extinction Could Happen?” In this latest video, Dr. Alex Rogers, Scientific Director of IPSO and Professor of Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, gives the overview of the main problems affecting the ocean — and some suggested solutions.
