Welcome to the Natural World Facts Awareness Project, a new series in which I’ll be explaining
the importance of wildlife conservation and what you can do to help. In this video, I’m
joined by Alex Collins, a fellow YouTube wildlife enthusiast and biologist at the University
of Bristol, who focuses on conservation. His channel is linked below, I recommend you check
it out for videos on some of the world’s rarest species and how you can help them.
What is Marine Conservation?
Marine Conservation is defined as the protection and preservation of ocean ecosystems, with
a focus on limiting the damage caused to them by humans and preserving threatened marine
species.
The main threats being seen in our oceans include species loss, habitat degradation,
and changes in ecosystem function. Human activities causing a rise in extinction rates has lead
to a huge decrease in biodiversity, particularly in coral reefs, 88% of which are threatened
by excessive CO2 emissions.
These reefs are among the most important stores of biodiversity on the planet; it takes around
10 thousand years for a reef to form from coral polyps, and up to 30 million years for
a reef to fully mature, hosting an estimated 25% of all marine life. And yet, around the
world, coral reefs are dying, as warming temperatures and stressful conditions bleach the corals
white as they are forced to expel the colourful algae on which the coral depends for its survival.
So, why does this matter? Why is marine conservation so important?
With the world’s oceans currently more under threat than ever before, and with half of
the world’s reefs having died in the last 30 years, Marine Conservation has never been
more important than today.
I’ve already made some videos which answer these questions on my own channel, so if you’d
like to know why conservation is crucial to both yourself and the environment, and why
we should save endangered species and ecosystems, then make sure to check those videos out after
you’ve finished watching this.
Put simply, different species rely on each other for survival. If one species is under
threat, the likelihood is that so is another species. This can have a chain reaction, until
eventually a whole ecosystem is under threat. We need healthy ecosystems just as much as
the marine life itself, because without them, we’d have less food, less money, and less
life on our planet. The bottom line is, life on Earth needs healthy oceans, and it is our
responsibility to protect them.
So how can we do this?
One of the most effective methods has been the setting up of marine protected areas.
This creates a much safer environment for marine life, undisturbed by the impacts of
overfishing, noise pollution from ships, and other human activities. Thankfully, biodiversity
has been found to increase by 21% within marine reserves like these.
We can also use artificial reefs. These are man-made structures, built to promote marine
life and the growth of new coral. Artificial reefs have proven successful in providing
a habitat for threatened wildlife, therefore allowing damaged ecosystems to recover, and
the regeneration of valuable biodiversity within reef ecosystems.
As well as these strategies, we also need to be careful in the way we interact with
the marine environment. For example, active demersal fishing techniques like trawling,
where a net is dragged along the bottom of the ocean, can destroy the seafloor, which
often contains ecologically important plant and coral species.
Active pelagic fishing techniques, where a net is dragged through the open ocean, can
also be just as bad. This is because it’s indiscriminate, meaning that the nets will
catch anything in their way, regardless of whether or not the fisherman are looking for
it. This often leads to protected animals like dolphins and turtles being injured or
even killed. For every 1 kilogram of prawns that are caught and sold in stores, 9 kilograms
of other sea animals are caught as bycatch, being injured or killed and then thrown away.
Marine conservation efforts have been made to reduce the destruction caused by these
fishing techniques, either by reducing how often they are allowed to be used, or by making
the technique itself less destructive. For example, by using specific fishing hooks that
are less likely to catch unwanted species.
So there’s a small insight into just some of the problems that marine conservationists
face today. Solving these problems does take a lot of hard work, but that doesn’t mean
there’s nothing you can do if you don’t work as a conservationist.
So here are some simple things that you can do to help marine conservation.
Firstly, use your water supply more economically. This will not only save you money but it will
reduce excess runoff, containing pollutants and waste, into the ocean.
Secondly, use less energy in your day to day life. Higher temperatures can cause the death
of corals, rising sea levels and flooding, and more extreme weather which can damage
marine ecosystems. Many marine species also rely on specific temperatures to determine
what sex they develop into (i.e. they have temperature-dependent sex determination),
and so by changing the temperature we can throw an entire population out of balance.
You can also fish responsibly, or just fish less, or not at all if this is an option to
you. The same goes for eating seafood.
Reducing your use of plastics is also essential. Ingestion of microplastics (bits of plastic
which are less than 5mm across) can lead to bioaccumulation. This is where harmful substances
build up in the food chain and eventually cause serious problems to the organisms at
the top.
There are just a few things that you should consider when trying to cause less impact
to marine life. There is of course plenty of other things that you can do to help, so
if you’d like to know more, then let us know down in the comments, and we can make
another video for you.
Thank you for watching, subscribe to see more videos from the Awareness Project. Hit the
like button and be sure to watch our video on the Pine Marten by following the link to
Alex’s channel.