{"id":10233,"date":"2011-06-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2011\/06\/21\/world-s-oceans-in-shocking-decline-say-surprised-scientists\/"},"modified":"2011-06-21T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-21T12:00:00","slug":"world-s-oceans-in-shocking-decline-say-surprised-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2011\/06\/21\/world-s-oceans-in-shocking-decline-say-surprised-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;World&#8217;s oceans in shocking decline,&#8221; Say Surprised Scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/science-environment-13796479\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history&#8221;. 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.<br \/>The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The findings are shocking,&#8221; said Alex Rogers, IPSO&#8217;s scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University. &#8220;As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realized. &#8220;The rate of change is vastly exceeding what we were expecting even a couple of years ago,&#8221; said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral specialist from the University of Queensland in Australia. <\/p>\n<p>Life on Earth has gone through five &#8220;mass extinction events&#8221; caused by events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity&#8217;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 &#8211; and far faster than any of the previous five. &#8220;What we&#8217;re seeing at the moment is unprecedented in the fossil record &#8211; the environmental changes are much more rapid,&#8221; Professor Rogers told BBC News. &#8220;We&#8217;ve still got most of the world&#8217;s biodiversity, but the actual rate of extinction is much higher [than in past events] &#8211; and what we face is certainly a globally significant extinction event.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have to bring down CO2 emissions to zero within about 20 years,&#8221; Professor Hoegh-Guldberg told BBC News. &#8220;If we don&#8217;t do that, we&#8217;re going to see a very different ocean.&#8221; Hypoxia, or lack of oxygen in the water, will be widespread, the report asserts. Most fish cannot live in a hypoxic environment.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source UK, June 20, 2011 (BBC):The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}