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[EN VIDÉO] European marine biodiversity, endangered? Ocean biodiversity is in dangerous decline. According to UNESCO, more than half of the world’s marine species would be threatened with extinction by the end of the century if significant changes are not made. In the Eastern Mediterranean, marine biologists are seeing dramatic changes that could spread across the world and are sharing them with us on video.
Our planet is heating up. Its atmosphere, in which we live, we humans, is heating up dangerously. See them extreme temperatures than India knows at this very moment. Temperatures that are becoming more and more difficult to tolerate. Unfortunately, the problem is not limited to the atmosphere. Earth’s oceans are also warming. With the consequence of losing part of their oxygen. And some Princeton University researchers (United States) warn us today. At this pace, the biodiversity marine could fall over the next few centuries to a level it has not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers combined the physiological data they had on marine species with models of global warming. Their objective: to predict how changing conditions will affect the survival of its populations in the future. The bad news is that the pattern they have thus established seems to want to follow a pattern identical to that which unfolded on the occasion of the greatest mass extinction what our Earth has known. It was about 250 million years ago. Over 80% of marine species bowed out by then.
Researchers explain it this way. With anthropogenic global warming, the temperature of the ocean is increasing. A risk factor per se for species adapted to climates costs. But hot water also contains less oxygen. And it circulates less easily, which makes it difficult toforwarding remaining oxygen to the depths. To top it off, it turns out that marine species need even more oxygen when temperatures rise.
Stopping our greenhouse gas emissions to save marine life
Thus, the polar species seem the most threatened with total extinction. Because they will struggle to find suitable habitats in which to move. Tropical species will be able to move to cooler regions as temperatures rise. And these are species already adapted to low oxygen levels in the water. For her, the loss of marine biodiversity could remain confined to a more local level. Even if it looks like a major. On the side of theequator, on the other hand, global warming could spell the end of all life. The ocean there is already so warm that a further rise in temperature would likely make it uninhabitable.
It’s a bit like what happened around 250 million years ago. With as a trigger at that time, volcanic eruptions which have reduced the availability of oxygen in the ocean. But similar geographical differences observed in the archives fossils for the disappearance of marine species. According to the researchers, therefore, by the end of this century, global warming will have become as harmful to marine species as all the other factors of stress recognized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Among which especially even today the overfishingtransport, urban development and pollution.
The good news — because yes, there is good news — is that the work of the researchers shows that measures of “aggressive and rapid reductions in our emissions of greenhouse gas could very well avoid a major mass extinction of ocean species”. The risk could be reduced by more than 70%. And there is still ” ample time “ to achieve this.
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