En-en adult card 27 marine biodiversity
Card #27: Marine Biodiversity
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Pteropods and coccolithophores are at the base of the ocean food chain.
Therefore, if they disappear, all marine biodiversity is threatened. The warming of ocean waters also threatens marine biodiversity.
Explanation
Today, marine biodiversity is more endangered by overfishing than by climate change or acidification. But in the long term, the latter will considerably increase their pressure. The FAO estimates that between 660 and 820 million people worldwide are directly or indirectly dependent on fisheries and aquaculture. That is about 10% of the world's population.
Other possible links
Causes
Human activities Through this link, we express all the degradations that Man is capable of inflicting on marine life, such as plastic pollution and overfishing. This is irrelevant in relation to climate change, but it is interesting to make the link anyway. If we are talking to an older audience, we can for example talk about the size of sardine cans, which has decreased because they don't even have time to grow before they are fished.
Terrestrial biodiversity The two types of biodiversity can interact with each other.
To go further
Direct impact of human activities
Overfishing is the main cause of fish death. Here are some numbers:
- Every year, between 1000 and 2700 billion fish are caught[1]. If humans were killed at the same rate, it would take only 37 hours to exterminate the human population.
- Plastic pollution kills 1.5 million marine animals[2], or 0.0001% of all fishing-related deaths.