Climate change, overfishing are threats.

PositionOceans

The combination of overfishing and climate change may be putting the oceans' health--and our own wellbeing--at risk, claims contributing author Katie Auth in the Worldwatch Institute's "State of the World" report. She maintains that protecting lives and livelihoods will require urgent and concerted action to improve the oceans' condition.

"Our sense of the oceans' power and omnipotence--combined with scientific ignorance--contributed to an assumption that nothing we did could ever possibly impact it. Over the years, scientists and environmental leaders have worked tirelessly to demonstrate and communicate the fallacy of such arrogance."

Some 3,000,000,000 people worldwide depend on fish as their main source of animal protein, essential micronutrients, and fatty acids. The livelihoods of millions of people in both developing and high-income countries rely on the multibillion-dollar fisheries industry--a sector that accounts for 1,500,000 jobs and more than $45,000,000,000 of income in the U.S. alone.

"As our negative impact on the oceans has grown, so has our understanding of the myriad ways in which the health of the marine environment determines our own," writes Auth. 'The combined stresses of human activities like overfishing and climate change now pose distinct and intensified threats to marine systems."

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report that the global...

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