The challenges and threats the world's oceans face are severe. They are primarily driven by overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution (including plastics) and on top of it all, climate change.
Over just the past fifty years, the size of the monitored marine wildlife populations has been reduced by more than half. Some experts predict that plastic will outweigh fish in the sea by 2050.
Warm-water coral reefs, which support something like a quarter of all marine life, have experienced severe, widespread bleaching events covering upwards of 75% of global reef areas in recent years, pushing many to functional extinction.
The collapse of historical fisheries — like the North Atlantic cod fishery off Newfoundland which crashed in the early 1990s — clearly illustrate how populations can disappear faster than they can recover, leaving ecosystems permanently altered.
It's clear to anyone paying attention that our ocean is not an inexhaustible wilderness, but a fragmenting ecosystem operating at a fraction of its historical abundance.
All that's really dire, but our guest today is doing her part and encouraging others to pay attention and do whatever they can, even if it's just a tiny change in their own life, to help reverse the trendline of ocean health. Because human health really does rely on ocean health.
Guest:
Emily Cunningham is a marine biologist based in the UK whose new book is "Our Ocean to Save: How to Protect Our Greatest Climate Ally."
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