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Oceans are vitally important to human communities around the world. We depend on oceans and coasts for food, medicines and protection from storms, among other resources — more than $20 trillion annually in ecological goods and services.
But as demand on oceans grows, how can we ensure that these important resources are being conserved and carefully managed worldwide? A new study from The Nature Conservancy and WWF — Marine Ecoregions of the World — takes an important step toward that goal by presenting the first-ever classification system of the world’s coastal waters.
Nature.org asked Mark Spalding, senior marine scientist at the Conservancy and lead author of the study, to discuss the new system's importance and to share his thoughts on the challenges of marine conservation in an era of climate change and other threats.
Nature.org: With coral reefs being bleached and many marine ecosystems being threatened by climate change, classification doesn't sound to a lay person like it should be a big priority for conservation. So why is it important?
Mark Spalding: The marine environment — just like the terrestrial environment — is a highly complex tapestry of habitats and species whose patterns and interactions are driven by equally complex influences of climate, oceanography and evolutionary history. By classifying and stratifying this tapestry, we can find a way in which to talk and think about what’s going on where.
In the report, we’ve devised a scheme that looks at the coastal waters of the world and divides them into 12 realms (such as the Tropical Atlantic Ocean); 62 provinces (places like the Mediterranean Sea); and 232 ecoregions (smaller and more homogenous units such as the Northern Gulf of Mexico or the Marshall Islands).
In fact, it’s critical to have such a scheme to set targets and priorities, to see gaps, to help us to talk and work with others, and also as a jumping off point for the business of doing conservation on the ground and in the water.
Nature.org: Classifying the entire planet’s coastal waters sounds like a huge challenge. How did you do it?
Mark Spalding: Nature doesn’t organize itself along political boundaries — so we needed to come up with a scheme that is sensitive to the patterns of life.
As we looked into this challenge we found there was already a wealth of material out there, mostly at the regional level, and the last thing we wanted to do was to reinvent the wheel. So we weaved together a global system out of many parts, reviewing more than 230 existing publications to come up with a consistent and reliable division of the world’s coastal waters.
One of the many exiting features of this work has been its truly collaborative nature. With WWF as a lead partner we’ve worked with conservation colleagues in 10 international organizations and gathered input from many expert biogeographers from across the globe.
Nature.org: This report is the first of its kind for marine conservation. How will it be used?
Mark Spalding: There’s a great need for this system — it’s an important tool that will allow a variety of audiences to see the full picture of the world’s marine environment. For example, it can help conservation organizations with planning, governments with protected areas decisions, policymakers with legislation, and scientists to organize and share information about the oceans in a consistent way.
Our system has already been circulated to all nations signed up to the Convention on Biological Diversity. And it’s already being used in analyses by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. It’s also being worked into other new studies on global fisheries, marine fish distributions and the global range of marine threats …and that’s all even before publication!
Nature.org: What is the most surprising thing you learned in working on this publication?
Mark Spalding: I think this work has really just reinforced for me just how incredible and special the diversity of our oceans is.
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For instance, in the remote Bijagos Archipelago in the Gulf of Guinea West, marine hippos live in mangrove forests.
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Millions of rare seabirds including albatrosses, shearwaters and penguins crowd together on the volcanic Gough Island in the Southern Atlantic Ocean.
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More than 3,000 different species of fish swim throughout the Coral Triangle.
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Penguins swim around mangrove forests and coral reefs in the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador.
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In Mauritania, traditional fisherman work alongside wild dolphins to make their catch.
I could go on and on. Even for me, as someone who specializes in global studies, the big surprise has been a growing awe for the immense diversity of marine ecosystems.
Nature.org: After completing this report, how would you characterize the state of the world’s marine ecoregions?
Mark Spalding: It’s a bit depressing.
You may be familiar with the threats facing many marine areas — coastal development, overfishing and destructive fishing practices, climate change and nutrient pollution from land-based activities that causes dead zones where nothing can live.
What you may not be aware of is that these threats are almost ubiquitous — it’s not just the waters around North America and Europe that are being mistreated in this way.
Growing populations, growing wealth and growing demands for seafood are driving change in so many places. Even in the most remote places, the persistent toxic pollutants from civilization are building up in the bloodstream and blubber of fish and marine mammals, while illegal and unregulated fishing is taking out the last of the wild stocks of sharks, lobsters, sea cucumbers and big fish. Global warming, meanwhile, hangs ominously — melting ice, driving coral bleaching and raising ocean acidity.
Of course it’s not too late. A few places are in great shape, and we have managed to reverse the fortunes of others: some fish stocks are beginning to recover, and some estuaries are running cleaner than before. But overall the picture is urgent.
Nature.org: With oceans and coasts in such bad shape, what is needed to restore and protect them?
Mark Spalding: Action across all scales.
A miniscule fraction of the ocean is protected — less than one percent. Protected areas are regularly shown to support not only nature, but also offer sustainability and hope for maintaining fish stocks and improving water quality.
So we should push for protected areas. But that will only cover part of the problem: highly mobile fish and the fluid movements of pollutants are not bound by protected areas and can’t be fenced in or out.
We need think more broadly, about our actions on land and our unrestricted fisheries. More collaboration is critical to ensure that land-use planners, developers, foresters, fishers and communities are working together — not against each other — to protect the resources on which we all depend.
As consumers we can play our part too — making informed decisions about the kind of seafood we buy and our own climate impact. We’re not going to stop global warming or high seas overfishing by these sorts of measures alone however. Conservation organizations also must engage more and more in policy and politics on issues like fisheries and climate change if we even have a hope of stemming these problems within a generation.
Nature.org: What’s the Conservancy doing to improve the health of oceans?
Mark Spalding: I think that among all of the big conservation organizations, the Conservancy is one of the most important players in marine conservation.
With more than 100 marine projects in 22 countries, we are leading marine conservation work in many ways — in supporting marine protected areas establishment; in the innovative trawler buy-out work in California; the experimental purchase of shellfish leases; and from habitat restoration of oyster reefs; invasive species removal on saltmarshes.
Scale up a bit and have a look at the great strides being made by the island challenges, which started in Micronesia, but are now spreading to places like the Caribbean, and the great work of our reef resilience teams in raising awareness, educating and supporting better planned conservation in coral reef countries worldwide.
This is all the right stuff. We just need more of it. More than 12 percent of terrestrial areas are protected compared to less than one percent of marine habitats. Seven-tenths of the planet needs more than 1/100th of the planet's conservation budget, which is what marine conservation is receiving right now.
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Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Mark Spalding/TNC (Big Sur coast, Northern California ecoregionPhoto © Mark Spalding/TNC (Mark Spalding); Mark Spalding/TNC (silky sharks, Cuba, Greater Antilles ecoregion).
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