A multinational team of researchers have come out with a map tracing the effects of 17 kinds of human activity on the marine environment. A shocking 4% is all that's left of pristine ocean waters.
From sea to sea to sea, human activity's turning the world's ocean's into a soupy mess. Using data tracking 17 different types of human impact, the team of researchers from the United States, Canada and Britain produced a global map of human impact.
Among the offending 17, the usual culprits like shipping, large scale fishing, wanton pollution are being joined by increases in industrial waste and the use of sonar. These have left no ocean region completely untouched and have had a strong impact on about 40 per cent of the world's marine ecosystems.
The research, which appears in Friday's issue of the journal Science, found the most affected regions are those susceptible to multiple activities. Coastal regions in heavily populated areas, for example, would feel the impact of fishing, shipping, pollution, and agricultural and industrial runoff from land use, among other activities.
The most heavily impacted environments or ecosystems are the continental shelves, rocky reefs, coral reefs, seagrass beds and seamounts (a mountain rising from the sea floor), the researchers found.
"Large areas of high-predicted impact occur in the North and Norwegian seas, South and East China seas, eastern Caribbean, North American Eastern Seaboard, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, Bering Sea, and the waters around Sri Lanka," the researchers wrote.
Although no region was completely untouched, about four per cent of the ocean areas were relatively pristine. No surprise that they're most;y near the Arctic and Antarctic poles, where the hostile environment keeps us humans from messing with them.
The researchers hope the map will help inform both regional and global efforts at conservation, letting governments and researchers know all of the potential causes of issues before designing a policy.
"Our approach provides a structured framework for quantifying the ecological trade-offs associated with different human uses of marine ecosystems and for identifying locations and strategies to minimize ecological impact and maintain sustainable use," the report indicated.
"In some places, such strategies can benefit both humans and ecosystems, for example, using shellfish aquaculture both to provide food and improve water quality."
