One World One Ocean Campaign Highlights Need For Conservation

A new multi-year, multi-platform campaign hopes to raise awareness about the state of the world's oceans and focus on how they can be protected. The One World One Ocean campaign is an extended film, television and online campaign led by filmmaker Greg MacGillivray.

The campaign's principal science advisor, Dr. Sylvia Earle, said in a press release, "The world’s oceans are in trouble, but the good news is there is still time to save them. Our actions toward the ocean in the next 10 years will define the next 10,000."

Earle, who was nominated as one of 2011's Green Game Changers by HuffPost, has stressed the importance of healthy oceans in the past.

She wrote last year, "few people seem aware of the vital role the ocean has in maintaining a planet that works in our favor."

A report this summer from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean found that a mass extinction "unlike anything human history has ever seen" is imminent if "current actions contributing to a multifaceted degradation of the world's oceans aren't curbed."

In July, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration released its annual overfishing report. 16 percent of U.S. fish populations are overfished, and the number has been growing in recent years.

Fish in other countries may also be facing an uncertain future. A study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature earlier this year found that "more than 40 fish species in the Mediterranean could vanish in the next few years."

Governments could be contributing to the precarious place of the world's sea life populations. An Oceana report found that multi-billion dollar subsidies from the European Union "promote a European fishing fleet that is up to three times bigger than sustainable limits."

Although the number of deaths has been reduced by 90 percent since 1990, a recent study found that 4,600 sea turtles are killed annually in U.S. fisheries.

For more information about the One World One Ocean campaign, visit their website, Twitter or Facebook page.

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Comments

[Marc Ostrick]

03:25 PM on 10/12/2011

I am so thrilled to be a part of this movement!

[darth geekboy]

03:23 PM on 10/12/2011

human overpopulation of this world is the disease that is infesting this earth. and it will only lead to our own demise. it is stretching our food stocks to beyond their capacity. and wanton use natural resources by the current population will just exacerbate the problem.

it used to be that every creature on this planet used resources to survive. ironically, the one creature that has been granted intelligence, is also the one using those same resources beyond the need for survival.

it is said that if everyone on the planet wanted to live like americans, the world has only enough resources to support 1 billion. we are now at 7 billion and climbing. even if nations around the world instituted a birth control plan to halt population growth, overuse and depletion of resources will still continue for decades. the same can be said about pollution and greenhouse gases: if we stop pollution and emitting greenhouse gases, the damage will still be in effect for decades before things improve.

we are already past the tipping point. and yet humans, especially americans, are still debating the issues of climate change, regulations, and their "birthright" to its natural resources. we are doomed.

[Linus521]

01:01 AM on 10/13/2011

You are so correct. No issue and nothing is as vital to Earth as humans practicing, Zero Population Growth. Man must begin to control his mushrooming populations as man is devouring the surface of Earth, her ecosystems in the eco-nomics of all life. Ecosystems supply mankind with his life giving and supporting cycles, functions and systems, and modern man is in the business of killing ecosystems for all the whatevers.

Many scientists believe, man has reached the point of no return and is doomed. Thus, curbing our human populations must begin -- now!

[Linus521]

12:55 PM on 10/12/2011

The marine ecosystems are only as alive and healthy as the health and vitality of its biological diversity, from whales to fish to marine plant biological diversity. All ecosystems are integrated. When damage and death begins in a grassland, chaparral, prairie or forested ecosystem, this deleteriously impacts the marine ecosystems. All ecosystems are inteconnected, and all have feedbacks and loops to the atmosphere and the climate.

Deforestation releases the sequestered heat trapping gases. The oceans are drowning in it. Toxins from the land are seeping toward the seas. More and more of the ocean has oxygenless areas. Fish are smaller and more diseased.

All things are interconnected. Man kills the whales, the fish and the seas, he kills the Earth. Man concretes and scours the land, he kills the seas and the Earth. It is all one. A life creating and sustaining Earth.

[Malcolm Hensley]

11:25 AM on 10/12/2011

In this age of multitasking we need to look at combining solutions.

We all have heard of wind power.

Most have not heard of BioRock.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071204-AP-bali-electrified.html

It seems in unfavorable conditions with a little electricity you can grow coral at a rate of 2 inches per year. That may not sound like a lot but you spread this out over a few hundred miles and all of a sudden you are talking of sequestering CO2 on a massive scale!

Sequestering this much CO2 raises the pH of the oceans reversing current trends. We can literally grow barrier reefs. I was surprised at how wide spread reefs are!

http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/coldwater-coral-reefs-distribution

Look it seems rather obvious to me - to save the oceans we combine off shore wind turbines with the Bio Rock process we get energy and improve the conditions of our oceans!

Can you imagine diving & fishing off the Great Barrier Reef of Nantucket!

Or diving & fishing off the Great Barrier Reef of Hatteras!

Or diving & fishing off the Great Barrier Reef of the Florida Keys!

Hey I can keep going around the globe!

We engineered ourselves into this mess surly we can engineer ourselves out!

[Cayce58]

01:50 PM on 10/12/2011

Our politicians don't think, much less engineer. Still, that's great info and an amazing idea.

[karen lyons kalmenson]

10:49 AM on 10/12/2011

for ages, man labored, and labored under the assumption that earth, and her bounty, are forever.

now, we wake up to hard times, and we see that the foreverness of yore is the finite end of tomorrow.

and our own end, as well

save what you can, bring back that which you can...while there is time

[alteredstory]

10:48 AM on 10/12/2011

All the fishing regulations in the world will be meaningless if we don't address our CO2 emissions.

During the Permian-Triassic extinction event, 95% of ALL LIFE in the ocean died. Evidence currently points to a sudden warming event (and everything that went along with it) as the culprit.

[Linus521]

01:06 PM on 10/12/2011

Man cannot concrete, bulldoze and chain saw terrestrial ecosystems as well. All ecosystems are integrated and interconnected, and they all have loops and feedbacks to both the climate and the atmosphere. And, all ecosystems altogether create the very life zone of the Earth or the biosphere.

The extinctions of all biological diversity, both animal and plant is about as safe for civilization and mankind as thermonuclear war; however, always the financial economy is the big issue and never the economy of a life creating Earth.