Human Impacts On The World's Ocean

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Since humans have populated the planet throughout the centuries, it is evident to see that they are the most significant consumers of the natural resources in the world. In many cases, human impacts are unsustainable leading to consequences like threatening to the point of extinction of many species, habitats, ecosystems and environments. This includes the loss of all the environmental services and goods they could have potentially provided. An attempt at analysing the distribution of the combined human impacts on the world’s oceans concluded that overall the highest levels of impacts were at the coastal regions due to the relatively high human populations there. It also concluded that there was no part of the oceans that have been left

The broader impacts in lesser known areas with low human activity were still affected by multiple drivers of anthropogenic change. In the overall scheme of things, this also highlights that the coastal regions with the high levels of human activity are also the areas with the greatest amount of research being done, whereas areas with lower levels of human activity are expected to be lower and as a result are often not as intensely well research. Despite this, an analysis of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System, which is the most comprehensive database of the distribution and identity of the marine taxa, demonstrated that the majority of biodiversity is in these coastal regions, as opposed to being in the pelagic realm. From this research it plausible to say that it is good that scientific research is being focused on the areas with the highest levels of human impact. However, it is also worrying that the areas with the least amount of research being done are slowly becoming