What is Marine Conservation? | How to Protect Our Oceans

Hello and welcome to the Natural World Facts Awareness Project, a new series in which I'll be explaining the importance of wildlife conservation and what you can do to help. In this video I'm joined by Alex Collins, a fellow YouTube wildlife enthusiast and biologist at the University of Bristol. His channel is linked below. I recommend you check it out for videos on some of the world's rarest species and what you can do to help them. So what is marine conservation? Marine conservation is defined as the protection of marine ecosystems with a focus of limiting the damage caused to them by humans and protecting threatened species. The main threats being seen in our oceans include species loss, habitat degradation and changes in ecosystem function. Human activity is causing a rise in extinction rates has led to a huge decrease in biodiversity, particularly in coral reefs, 88% of which are threatened by excessive CO2 emissions. These reefs are among the most important stores of biodiversity on the planet. It takes around 10,000 years for a reef to form from coral polyps and up to 30 million years for a reef to fully mature, hosting an estimated 25% of all marine life. And yet around the world coral reefs are dying as warming temperatures and stressful conditions bleach the corals white as they are forced to expel the colourful algae on which the corals depend for their survival. So why does this matter? Why is marine conservation so important? With the world's oceans currently under more threat than ever before and with half the world's coral reefs having died in the last 30 years, marine conservation has never been more important than it is today. I've already made some videos explaining why conservation is so important to you and why we should save endangered species, so make sure to check out those videos after watching this. Put simply, different species rely on each other for survival. If one species is under threat the likelihood is that so is another species. This can have a chain reaction until eventually a whole ecosystem is under threat. We need healthy ecosystems just as much as the marine life itself because without them we'd have less food, less money and altogether less life on our planet. The bottom line is Earth needs healthy oceans and it's our responsibility to protect them. So how can we do this? One of the most effective methods has been the setting up of marine protected areas. This creates a much safer environment for marine life, undisturbed by the impacts of overfishing, noise pollution from ships and other human activities. Thankfully biodiversity has been found to increase by 21% within marine reserves like these. We can also use artificial reefs. These are man-made structures built to promote marine life and the growth of new coral. Artificial reefs have proven successful in providing a habitat for threatened wildlife. This allows damaged ecosystems to recover and valuable biodiversity to regenerate. As well as these strategies we also need to be careful in the way that we interact with our marine environment. Active demersal fishing techniques like trawling where a net is dragged along the bottom of the seafloor can be really destructive as this destroys ecologically important species like certain corals. Active pelagic fishing techniques where a net is dragged through the open ocean can also be just as bad. This is because they're indiscriminate meaning they'll catch anything in the way of the net regardless of whether the fishermen want it or not. This often leads to protected animals like dolphins and turtles being injured or killed. For every one kilogram of prawns that are caught and sold in stores nine kilograms of other sea animals are caught as bycatch being injured or killed and then thrown away. Marine conservation efforts have been made to reduce the destruction caused by these fishing techniques either by reducing the amount of times that these techniques are allowed to be used or making the techniques themselves less destructive. One example of this is the use of specific fishing hooks which are less likely to catch unwanted species. Solving these problems does take a lot of hard work but that doesn't mean that there's nothing that you can do if you don't work as a conservationist. So here are some of the things that you can do to help marine conservation. Firstly use your water supply more economically. This will not only save you money but it will also reduce excess runoff containing pollutants and waste into the ocean. Secondly use less energy in your daily life. Higher temperatures can cause the death of corals, rising sea levels and flooding and more extreme weather which can damage marine ecosystems. Many marine species also rely on specific temperatures to determine what sex they develop into. This is called temperature-dependent sex determination and so by changing the temperature we can throw an entire population out of balance. You can also fish more responsibly or just fish less or not at all if that's an option to you. The same goes for eating seafood. Reducing your use of plastics is also essential. Ingestion of microplastics, bits of plastic which are less than five millimetres across, can lead to bioaccumulation. This is where harmful substances build up in the food chain and can eventually cause serious damage to the species at the top. There are just a few things that you should consider when trying to cause less impact to marine life. There are of course plenty of other things that you can do to help so if you'd like to know more then let us know down in the comments so that we can make another video for you. Thank you for watching. Subscribe to see more videos from the Awareness Project. Hit the like button and be sure to watch our video on the Pine Martin by following the link to Alex's channel. I hope you enjoyed.