UK, June 20, 2011 (BBC):The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists. In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”. They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognized, the harmful effects of one catalyzing the problems from another.
The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.
“The findings are shocking,” said Alex Rogers, IPSO’s scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University. “As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realized. “The rate of change is vastly exceeding what we were expecting even a couple of years ago,” said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral specialist from the University of Queensland in Australia.
Life on Earth has gone through five “mass extinction events” caused by events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity’s combined impact is causing a sixth such event. The IPSO report concludes that the trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say – and far faster than any of the previous five. “What we’re seeing at the moment is unprecedented in the fossil record – the environmental changes are much more rapid,” Professor Rogers told BBC News. “We’ve still got most of the world’s biodiversity, but the actual rate of extinction is much higher [than in past events] – and what we face is certainly a globally significant extinction event.”
“We have to bring down CO2 emissions to zero within about 20 years,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg told BBC News. “If we don’t do that, we’re going to see a very different ocean.” Hypoxia, or lack of oxygen in the water, will be widespread, the report asserts. Most fish cannot live in a hypoxic environment.