“Nowhere is safe,” says a biologist, when it comes to human impacts on the planet’s ecosystems. And that includes even the depths of the oceans. Scary? Perhaps. But true, sadly.
According to James Watson, a biologist and climate scientist at the University of Queensland who is an author of a new study in the journal Current Biology on the world’s ever-shrinking wildernesses, truly wild places are far and few between on Earth.
Watson and his colleagues mapped marine areas worldwide to gauge the extent, degree and cumulative effect of human impacts on marine ecosystems. The scientists’ findings make for depressing reading: Only a mere 13% of the world’s oceans, accounting for 55 million square kilometers, can now be classified as marine wilderness (that is to say areas that are “mostly free of human disturbance”).
Our deleterious impacts have been especially prominent in coastal areas, which are also home to highly biodiverse coral reefs. Yet even as more attention is being paid to the less of wildernesses on land, unspoiled marine areas are still being largely neglected with only 4.9% of marine wilderness falling within protected areas. And even there protection measures are often wanting.
In order for the world’s oceans to continue harboring rich biodiversity, however, more of them will need to be protected from overfishing, pollution and other harmful human activities.
“As human activities increasingly threaten biodiversity, areas devoid of intense human impacts are vital refugia,” the scientists write in their study. “These wilderness areas contain high genetic diversity, unique functional traits, and endemic species; maintain high levels of ecological and evolutionary connectivity; and may be well placed to resist and recover from the impacts of climate change.”
Humans have truly colonized the planet, but whereas that has been quite a feat for a single species to accomplish within the space of a few short centuries, it’s been nothing but disaster for many other species. “To me it is depressing,” says Kendall Jones, the study’s lead author who works for the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
“Often you have a picture in your head of these wild places where people don’t really go, and actually that’s not the case, we go really everywhere now,” Jones adds. “There is not much of the ocean that remains as it once was.”
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