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Oceans Assignment

Oceans play a crucial role in the Earth's ecosystem and water cycle, but are facing many threats from human activity. Overfishing is depleting fish species despite some protections, and plastic pollution is harming marine life. Climate change is also negatively impacting oceans by changing temperatures and glacial patterns. Conservation efforts have not been fully implemented, so destruction is currently outpacing protection of oceans. More public education and legislation controlling pollution sources are needed to properly address these threats to oceans and aquatic life.

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207 views2 pages

Oceans Assignment

Oceans play a crucial role in the Earth's ecosystem and water cycle, but are facing many threats from human activity. Overfishing is depleting fish species despite some protections, and plastic pollution is harming marine life. Climate change is also negatively impacting oceans by changing temperatures and glacial patterns. Conservation efforts have not been fully implemented, so destruction is currently outpacing protection of oceans. More public education and legislation controlling pollution sources are needed to properly address these threats to oceans and aquatic life.

Uploaded by

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Oceans and Coastal Environments

Ocean Threats

To a larger extent, oceans play an imperative role as far as the ecosystem is concerned.

Oceans have been acknowledged as a crucial part of the Earth’s water cycle due to the fact that

they cover a huge part of the planet and represent areas where most evaporation takes place, and

precipitation falls. Apart from the highlighted factors, oceans also function as habitat for aquatic

animals and plants. As such, oceans have tremendous biodiversity with the marine life consisting

of the majority of biomass on earth. Even though oceans are big to the extent that they cover

approximately two-thirds of the earth, they are currently facing myriad threats mostly from

human activities. These threats consist of marine plastic pollution, overfishing, climate change

and conservation.

Overfishing has always been declared as a threat to existing fish communities. As such, it

poses a threat of depleting various fish species. Even with the development of different control

mechanisms such as the creation of marine protected areas and fish regeneration zones,

continuous human activities are still a threat in areas where such measures are non-existent. As

for plastic pollution, most of the oceans tend to suffer from not only plastic pollutants but also

other types of pollutants such as oil and chemicals. Furthermore, human activities such as

industrial agriculture still pour reactive nitrogen as well as phosphorus into the oceans through

rivers. These foreign materials and chemicals pose a threat to aquatic animals and plants. With

the increased and uncontrolled human activities, the ecosystem has been adversely affected

leading to issues such as climate change. Climate change has transformed most of the naturally

occurring phenomena such as glaciers and even leading to change in most of the environmental

factors such as temperature. As a result, aquatic life in respective areas has been adversely
affected. Despite the presence of the above-mentioned risk factors, efforts to conserve the

environment most specifically oceans have not yet been fully implemented. This implies that the

rate of destruction on oceans is higher than the efforts or call for conservation.

Personally, I can attest to the fact that the highlighted threats are interrupting normal

activities in the oceans. These threats have long term effects and if they are not resolved with

immediate effect there will be uncontrollable damage to not only oceans and the entire aquatic

life but also human beings who depend on it for economic activities such as transportation,

tourism, and fishing. Even though their measures have been put in place by several agencies to

control some of the threats, I still feel that more to be done in terms of public education and

awareness. Furthermore, there is a need for legislation that will control the possible origins of

pollution such as fertilizers and the production of plastic products. This means that fertilizers

with artificial nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus should be investigated and processed in

a way that will meet required and safe standards. Despite all the aforementioned information, I

feel that communities that conduct their activities on the oceans and respective agencies have a

huge role to play as far as conservation efforts are concerned.

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