Literature Review: Relationship Between Human Pressures and Ecosystems
For the first half of my class Frontiers, we studied the ocean and everything about it from the creatures to the floor of the ocean. One of my favorite parts of the class was learning about the ecosystems in the ocean. This was interesting because I related it to the different ecosystems in the movie Finding Nemo. I was super interested so one day I went to watch Finding Dory while finishing up a frontier’s assignment. Overall, I learned a lot from the first half of the class and hope to learn more in the second. For this Action Project, we picked a Grand Challenge in the ocean and wrote a literature review on it. I picked mine on ecosystems and how humans have an effect that can be positive or negative.
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Almost 70% of the earth is filled with water in different forms like a lake, river, or ocean. The Frontiers in Marine Science created a list of eight Grand Challenges in 2014. The one we will deal with in this literature review is Understanding Human Relationships Between Human Pressures and Ecosystems. Humans not only have an effect on ecosystems in the ocean but have an effect on the ocean as a whole. Our oceans have long been used as an intentional dumping ground for all sorts of waste including sewage, industrial run-off and chemicals. Dumping waste into the ocean has been the cheapest and easiest way of dealing with it, but its after effects come at a cost. The ocean reportedly brings in 250 million tons of trash each year. Ocean dumping, land runoffs, oil spills, ocean mining and littering have a major effect on the ocean and lead to many issues in the oceans that throw off our oceans ecosystems. These are harmful for the ecosystem flow in the ocean. (Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao 2009)
With two-thirds of the ocean experiencing an increase in stress, researchers found that five percent of the world’s oceans are heavily harmed by human activity and likely require immediate attention. This number doesn't sound like a lot but a majority of it is by the coastal areas where a lot of people live. This means that these areas where a lot of people live gets polluted because of the popularity of the coastal areas. This impacts the oceans up against the coastal areas. We can expect an increase in this number over time with the population of the areas growing. (Benjamin Halpern 2015).
Not only is waste an issue in our oceans, but we are dealing with other resource problems; one, for instance, is overfishing. An increasing demand for protein has led to an increase in large-scale fishing operations and throughout the 20th century, many countries failed to put safeguards into place to prevent overfishing. Many large fish species dropped to as much as 90% in population. This has negatively impacted ecosystems. Large scale fishing operations affect the animals that eat the fish and it affects the species that the fish eat. Unsustainable fishing, pollution and the effects of climate change are just a few of the issues that worry scientists and environmentalists. (Milton Kazmeyer 2018)
There are many positive impacts for the ocean as well. Projects happening all over the world are preventing the ocean from being trashed. For example, The Ocean Cleanup Project has a goal to clean up 50% of the trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the next five years. This is happening by having a net and instead of hunting down the trash, the trash would come to the net by using the current to catch it. It’s reported that this method will be 33 times cheaper and 7,900 times faster than conventional methods. (Julie Dugdale 2015).
The most successful project is Rigs to Reefs by helping restore the ocean . This project started in 1985 to convert oil rings to artificial corals. These are structures made by humans to help the growth of coral and host sea creatures. When these corals start to thrive in the oceans it hosts 12,000 to 14,000 fish and organisms. In 2015, 470 rigs were converted into the ocean and the number continues to grow. (Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement 2017).
Safety Net was made for fishers to reduce the amount of bycatch caught in nets. About 40% of a catch is bycatch. This means the fish are too small to be of any use. Even with fishers releasing the young fish back into the ocean, many still die because of the trauma the fish went through. Dan Watson, a British designer, created the Safety Net to help young fish escape the net and they wouldn’t be wasted. “There can be no villains, there can be no victims, there are just problems,” Dan Watson says. “I started this project because I wanted to go some way towards solving that problem.” (Emma Bryce 2014).
Watson is joining designers to create gear to reduce bycatch such as dolphins, whales and birds that are caught in the net and then discarded. Bycatch results in overfishing. It then reduces the population of sea creatures that can already be endangered, which affects the food chain in the ocean and hurts whole ecosystems.
Image by Dan Watson, SafetyNet, 2014
Advances in ways of fishing, technology, larger ships, and many fish stocks around the world have reduced significantly. Aside from reducing fish stocks, unsustainable fishing practices can have other negative impacts on the marine environment. Fishing techniques such as dredging and trawling can cause widespread damage to marine habitats and organisms living on the seafloor. These techniques also often capture non-target species (bycatch) that are then discarded. Fishers have catch limits for some species so they don’t over catch one type of fish. This helps to prevent the extinction of a species and helps to not target a kind of fish. (Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao 2009)
Ocean acidification, for instance, is common for interfering with the ability of certain organisms, such as coral, to build the shells they use to protect their bodies. Ocean acidification is the decrease in the pH of our oceans. This is caused by humans burning fossil fuels and the ocean absorbing the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The acidification in the ocean breaks down the shells of many creatures and organisms. Sea creatures are less protected from predators and other effects by humans just like ocean acidification. (Benjamin Halpern 2015)
Ocean Acidification is only one of the issues sea creatures face. There have been many disastrous chemical spills at sea and from industry on land, affecting animals immediately via ingestion, or long term, in changes to reproduction cycles and other biological processes. This also messes with the ecosystems by having unnatural chemicals coming in the ocean which disturbing the flow of the ecosystems.
Not all dangers in the ocean are chemical. Climate change has a huge effect . The effects of this climate change include temperature anomalies in the water, ocean acidification and an increase in the ultraviolet radiation. These factors can create conditions unfavorable to some marine organisms, changing the composition of ecosystems, driving animals to different parts of the ocean and even causing some species to begin dying off. (Benjamin Halpern 2015)
Virtually all ocean habitats have been affected in some way. Drilling or mining dredging for aggregates for concrete and other building materials, destructive anchoring, removal of Corals and land reclamation are examples. (TelanganaToday
2020).
Even though there are many factors that can lead to decline in oceanic population, there is reason to be hopeful that these factors might be changed before it is too late. “Although things are generally getting worse across the planet, there are places that are getting better,” Benjamin Halpern says. “And hopefully we can learn from those, see what we’re doing well, and apply those lessons to other parts of the planet.” (Benjamin Halpern 2015)
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