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the planet need water to survive. All of Earth's ecosystems are tightly knit into
a global continuum of energy and nutrients and organisms — the biosphere
in which we live.
As human influence affects all the world's ecosystems to some extent, and
even the most isolated, explore the risks to our life sustaining waters; oceans,
coral reefs, coral atolls, lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, and wetlands.
Related PBS Sites
Empty Oceans, Empty Nets ~ www.pbs.org/emptyoceans/
The race to save marine fisheries, Empty Oceans, Empty Nets is a documentary
exploring the immense changes threatening marine fisheries worldwide and
efforts being made to restore and sustain them. Our oceans are rapidly being
depleted of fish. An international debate concerns the nature of a complex
problem and what needs to be done about it. Understanding why some fisheries
are thriving, while most are in serious decline may be the key to averting a global
food crisis.
Never before has a wake-up call from nature been so clear, never again will
there be better opportunities to protect what remains of the ocean's living wealth.
- Dr. Sylvia Earle, former Chief Scientist,
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
People shape the world. People are responsible for a lot about what the world
is like. And we can choose. There is a lot of potential to bring things back,
and have abundance and have beauty. But there is also a lot of risk right now.
- Dr. Carl Safina, marine biologist, author of Song for the Blue Ocean
You may feel this sense that, why should you care, you know? But no man is an
island, no ecosystem is an island. Everything's interconnected, and there is a
meaning for all of this. Everything depends on everything. So you might feel the
effects much later when it's too late. That's why you should care to begin with.
- Beatrice Ferreira, marine biologist
You can do something. Go out, give money to support people, volunteer to
organizations, change the way that you buy things; change the way that you
fish or deal recreationally, all of those things. Each person is insignificant.
But if you add millions and millions of insignificant people, it adds up.
- Dr. David Suzuki, Geneticist, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia
www.pbs.org/emptyoceans/action/index.html
What you can do — Take Action.
Bill Moyers Reports: Earth On Edge ~ www.pbs.org/earthonedge/
In 1999, an international group of more than 70 scientists analyzed the condition
of the five ecosystems on which all life most heavily depends—freshwater,
agriculture, forests, grasslands, and coastal ecosystems.
www.pbs.org/earthonedge/ecosystems/coastal.html
All the ecosystems encompassed by coastal zones worldwide are mutually
dependent; what affects one affects the others-and the more than 2 billion people
who live in coastal regions.
www.pbs.org/earthonedge/getinvolved/index.html
What you can do to protect ecosystems.
Journey to Planet Earth ~ www.pbs.org/journeytoplanetearth/
A voyage of discovery about the planet we inhabit, Journey to Planet Earth
explores the fragile relationship between people and the world they inhabit, and
the necessity to achieve a balance between the needs of people and the needs
of the environment. Among the discoveries explored are the health of three
of the world's river systems, the fate of four of its major metropolitan cities,
and the future of its food supplies.
Here you will find Internet sites and addresses for organizations whose agendas
relate to the topics explored in Journey to Planet Earth. The majority of these sites
and organizations provide free educational resources.
The Voyage of the Odyssey ~ www.pbs.org/odyssey/
The Voyage of the Odyssey is a five-year program designed to gather the first ever
baseline data on levels of synthetic contaminants throughout the world's oceans.
It will use whales, albatrosses and pelagic fish as indicator species for measuring
the health of the seas.
Related Resources
Global Marine Biological Diversity: A Strategy for Building Conservation
into Decision Making by Elliot A. Norse, 1993, Island Press.
Global Marine Biological Diversity presents the most up-to-date information
and view on the challenge of conserving the living sea and how that challenge
can be met.
Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans by Sylvia Earle, 1995, Ballantine Books.
Sea change is at once the gripping adventure story of Earle's three decades of
undersea exploration, an insider's introduction to the dynamic field of marine
biology, and an urgent plea for the preservation of the world's fragile and rapidly
deteriorating ocean ecosystems. Earle takes us along on journeys to places of
unimaginable beauty and unutterable destruction.
Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts & Beneath
the Seas by Carl Safina, 1997, Henry Holt and Company.
Scientist and fisherman Carl Safina tells the stories of fish and fishing people
around the world. Safina tackles the difficult problems, but offers examples of
sustainable fisheries that could be models for a new approach to ocean resources.
World Resources Institute ~ www.wri.org
WRI is an environmental think tank that goes beyond research to find practical
ways to protect the earth and improve people's lives. Their millennial edition
publication, World Resources 2000-2001 — People and Ecosystems:
The Fraying Web of Life, is the definitive guide to the global environment and
presents a comprehensive assessment of five of the world's major ecosystems.
Oceans and Coasts Global Marine Strategy ~ www.wri.org/wri/marine/index.html
The goal of WRI's Global Marine Strategy is to improve management and conservation
of coastal and marine resources while enhancing and strengthening the security
of people who depend upon them.
WRI’s work on coastal and marine ecosystems seeks to provide valid and useful
information on the status of and threats to coastal and marine ecosystems,
and offer tools and solutions to improve the management of these resources.
Threats to nearshore marine biodiversity have intensified in number, size
and scale as human population and dependence has grown over the second
half of the 20th century. Overexploitation, use of destructive fishing practices,
human development and pollution within coastal areas have degraded and
destroyed coastal habitat and caused losses in nearshore biodiversity and fish
stock biomass, resulting in a decreased human quality of life. Forty percent of
the world's population lives within 100 kilometers of a coastline, an area that
accounts for only about 20 percent of the land mass. Population increase and
conversion for development, agriculture, and aquaculture are reducing mangroves,
coastal wetlands, seagrass areas, and coral reefs at an alarming rate.
Fish and shellfish provide about a sixth of the animal protein consumed by people
worldwide. A billion people, mostly in developing countries, depend on fish for
their prime source of protein. Coastal ecosystems have already lost much of their
capacity to produce fish because of overfishing, destructive trawling techniques,
and destruction of nursery habitats. Rising pollution levels are associated with
increasing use of synthetic chemicals and fertilizers.
Coral Reef Ecosystems—Amazon of the Oceans
Coral reefs and their associated communities cover an estimated 600,000
square kilometers, mostly between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of
Cancer. Coral reefs represent less than 0.2 percent of the total area of oceans,
(and cover an area equivalent to 4 percent of the world's cropland area).
They are found in shallow waters, extending to depths of 30 meters and cover
15 percent of the world's coastline.
Fish production on these reefs and on the adjacent continental shelf could
amount to nearly 10 percent of global fisheries production if fully exploited.
Locally, coral reefs are even more important as a food source. Throughout
southeast Asia, coral reef fisheries provide 10 to 25 percent of the protein
available to people living along the coastlines. Coral reefs also protect coastal
areas from erosion. In the case of coral atolls, coral provides the foundation of
the island itself. In the Indian Ocean, 77 percent of isolated islands and island
archipelagoes are built exclusively of reef depositions.
Coral reefs resemble tropical rainforests in two ways: Both thrive under nutrient-
poor conditions (where nutrients are largely tied up in living matter), yet support
rich communities through incredibly efficient recycling processes. Both exhibit
very high levels of species diversity. Coral reefs and other marine ecosystems,
however, contain more varied life forms than do land habitats. All but one of the
world's 33 phyla (major kinds of organisms) are found in marine environments --
15 exclusively so.
Coral reefs are noted for some of the highest levels of total (gross) productivity
on earth. The net primary productivity of coral reefs is approximately 2,500 grams
of carbon per square meter per year, compared to 2,200 grams of carbon per square
meter per year for tropical forests and only 125 grams of carbon per square meter
per year in the open ocean.
Coral polyps -- the thin living layer covering reef structures -- provide much of
the energy that fuels these communities. These tiny animals contain algae, which
convert sunlight to fuel, deriving nutrients from polyp wastes in the process.
Reef-building corals and certain calcareous algae (which may constitute more than
half of a reef's stony substance) lay down a foundation of calcium carbonate. Over
generations this accumulation results in often massive structures, providing homes
and hiding places for countless other creatures. Coral reefs, then, are the net result
of thousands of years of growth. As such, many are among the planet's oldest living
communities.
Affiliated Ecosystems
Coral reefs stand out from other marine environments because of their species
diversity, but many coral reef species also depend on other affiliated ecosystems.
Often, coral reefs, mangroves, and sea grass beds are linked physically and
biologically: reefs serve as breakwaters that allow coastal mangroves to develop;
the calcium of the reef provides the sand and sediment in which mangroves and
sea grasses grow; and the mangroves and sea grass communities provide energy
input into the coastal ecosystem and serve as spawning, rearing, and foraging
habitat for many of the species associated with the reefs.
www.wri.org/wri/action.html
WRI's work is intended to catalyze action. Action is urgent in a world that must
reverse the accelerating trends of biotic impoverishment, climate destabilization,
and ecosystem destruction, even while it finds means to provide new opportunity
to more people. Find out what WRI is doing, help them do more, and what you can do to make a difference.