In 45 Years, We’ve Lost Nearly Half The Ocean’s Animals… It’s a Problem!

Growing up we always here about how important it is to protect the world we live in but some times it isn’t stressed enough just how important it actually is. A new report from the World Wildlife Fund shows overexploitation and climate change pose a greater risk to the world’s oceans than ever before.

So just how big of a problem is all of this really? Well, World Wildlife Fund says that we have lost half of the ocean’s animals in just a little more than a generation. Since 1970 marine animal populations have declined by almost fifty percent. Some commercial fish families including Tuna and Mackerel have lost 75% of their stock.

World Wildlife Fund Richard Leck says, “Often that word ‘emergency’ gets bandied about, but in this situation it really is an emergency.” Over exploitation is the greatest threat to ocean species but the warming climate is also driving the fastest changes in the oceans in millions of years. Believe it or not temperatures are the highest they have ever been and acidification is a huge problem.

One WWF official even said, “We were taught in the 1980s that the solution to pollution is dilution, but that suggests the oceans have an infinite capacity to absorb our pollution. That is not true, and we have reached the capacity now.” So how do we really need to be solving these problems? For the answer and more details, be sure to check out the video above.