atlas of oceans

[...]...Introduction Oceans in Peril Out beyond the coasts of the lands where we live, beneath the apparently inscrutable surface of the vast oceans, there is a crisis going on The vast oceans are still a place of mystery, and the life within them remains a source of wonder and often of beauty But as the world pays attention to environmental problems on land and laments the loss of rain forests, of wilderness, and of. .. the camera is red, out of the medusa's vision range 11 Introduction The Main Threats M any of the human threats to the oceans centre on what we take out and what we put in Over the last half century, hundreds of millions of tons of fish and other creatures have been taken from the oceans Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of tons of waste have been dumped into them The introduction of fishing quotas and... spotlight on the growing crisis in the oceans in the hope that awareness of the problems may help us take better care in future f Large brown globules of oil washing ashore on the Gulf Coast of the USA are an all-too-visible consequence of the disastrous blowout of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig on 20 April, 2010 Many of the dangers to the life of the oceans are much less visible, and therefore... plates’ Each of these slabs is a thick chunk of ‘lithosphere’, the cool, rigid outer layer of the Earth topped by the crust The scale of some of these plates is vast They are typically just 100 km (60 miles) thick but some of them encompass entire oceans or continents There are dozens of moderate-sized plates and seven gigantic ones The biggest of all, the Pacific plate, underlies most of the Pacific... authors of the map described it as a real ‘wake-up call’ for policy-makers Survey of life One of the ironies is that marine life is coming under threat just as we are beginning to learn how astonishingly rich it is In 2010, the results of the extraordinary ten-year Census of Marine Life (see pages 62–63) were announced The aim of the Census was to produce the first ever comprehensive survey of life... appetite, they will virtually clean out the ocean of edible wild fish in a shockingly short time There is still much to marvel at in the oceans – a wealth and variety of life and lifestyles that is almost impossible to imagine There may be even more that remains yet to be discovered It is the purpose of this book to remind us of the diversity of life in the oceans, and celebrate its richness But it is also... wild fish of any kind will be off the menu forever, and the biodiversity of the ocean will be restricted with unpredictable consequences Moreover, an incredibly wasteful quarter of the tonnage of marine creatures taken from the sea never reaches the dining table – or even the fish meal factory This is ‘useless’ by-catch caught up in the nets then discarded Every year, hundreds of millions of fish, marine... However, now they are protected they are threatened by a range of other environmental pressures, such as the effects of coastal development on their nesting beaches and the possibility of entanglement in fishing nets Six out of the seven species of sea turtles are now either threatened or endangered Oceans in Peril Big fish in danger The plight of all these larger creatures has been known for some time... growth of plankton Where trawlers drag heavy nets over the seabed, bottomdwelling communities of sponges, corals, bryozoans, and shellfish and invertebrates may be invisibly uprooted and destroyed Vast quantities of plastic are littering the oceans to create giant patches of rubbish, which choke and poison marine life And the rapacious maw of industrial-scale fishing fleets has swept some populations of. .. above it all That is of course what makes the oceans such an extraordinary place for life The Earth does move It seems hard to imagine how such vast slabs of rock could ever move, yet they are moving all the time What is more, they are not even permanent features of the Earth’s surface The cores of continents are stable and very ancient, often containing rocks that are billions of years old, and they . globules of oil washing ashore on the Gulf Coast of the USA are an all-too-visible consequence of the disastrous blowout of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig on 20 April, 2010. Many of. inscrutable surface of the vast oceans, there is a crisis going on. The vast oceans are still a place of mystery, and the life within them remains a source of wonder and often of beauty. But as the world. Impact on the Oceans Introduction 12 m any of the human threats to the oceans centre on what we take out and what we put in. Over the last half century, hundreds of millions of tons of fish and