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Dead oceans, dead planet!
Seen from space the Earth is covered in a blue mantle. It is a planet on which the continents are dwarfed by the oceans surrounding them and the immensity of the marine realm.
A staggering 80 percent of all the life on Earth is to be found hidden beneath the waves and this vast global ocean pulses around our world driving the natural forces which maintain life on our planet.
The oceans provide vital sources of protein, energy, minerals and other products of use the world over and the rolling of the sea across the planet creates over half our oxygen, drives weather systems and natural flows of energy and nutrients around the world, transports water masses many times greater than all the rivers on land combined and keeps the Earth habitable.
Without the global ocean there would be no life on Earth.
It is gravely worrying, then, that we are damaging the oceans on a scale that is unimaginable to most people.
We now know that human activity can have serious impacts on the vital forces governing our planet. We have fundamentally changed our global climate and are just beginning to understand the consequences of that.
As yet largely unseen, but just as serious, are the impacts we are having on the oceans.
A healthy ocean has diverse ecosystems and robust habitats. The actual state of our oceans is a far cry from this natural norm.
A myriad of human pressures are being exerted both directly and indirectly on ocean ecosystems the world over. Consequently ecosystems are collapsing as marine species are driven towards extinction and ocean habitats are destroyed. Degraded and stripped of their diversity, ocean ecosystems are losing their inherent resilience.
We need to defend our oceans because without them, life on Earth cannot exist.
Dead oceans, dead planet
We need to defend them now more than ever, because the oceans need all the resilience they can muster in the face of climate change and the potentially disasterous impacts this is already beginning to produce in the marine world.
Source: Greenpeace