Oceans cover more than two thirds of Earth ’s surface . They are home to billion of metal money , put up a key source of protein to people on every continent , and playact an enormous role in baffle our planet ’s climate , pee wheel and more . They also are facing tremendous disruption from human action , from neutered temperature and circulation to overfishing to acidification to plastic pollution .
A yearlong series imagining tomorrow ’s human systems through the oculus of today ’s experts .
What variety of oceans will we make pass along to succeeding generation of humans and other live things ? The answer to that question starts with two others : What sort of oceans would we like to occur along ? And what would it take to do so ?
For this fourth installment of our Envision 2050 serial ( read the first threehere ) , Ensia asked seven soul with special connections to the ocean to apportion their hopes for the earthly concern ’s oceans — and what it would take to attain them . Here are their responses :
Margaret Leinen : Keep determine
Director , Scripps Institution of Oceanography , UC San Diego
Put simply , the oceans are primal to the future of our planet and its health .
My Bob Hope is that by 2050 we can all wait back and say that in 2015 we start to make the serious changes necessary to address — and even reverse — the challenges facing the oceans : defilement , rising sea , sea warming , atomic number 8 depletion , and acidification , to name a few . These progeny are not isolated in their range . The food and treasured imagination the oceans provide to globose beau monde have been bountiful , but we see them fall . We must act strategically going ahead . It serves all of us , as a global society , to maintain the stability of the ocean as a natural system of rules .
My colleagues at Scripps Institution of Oceanography , UC San Diego , and across the oceanographic and earth science community of interests have employed instruments and observation networks to research the oceans and track the perturbing trends afflicting the ocean ’s habitats , from coral reef in decline to low - atomic number 8 zone that choke out fertile ecosystem .
One urgent area of concern is the world ’s rise sea . No longer an issue isolated to far - off island commonwealth , sea - level rise will be a sobering backwash - up call for many in our crowded coastal cities by 2050 . We must actnowto develop adaptation solution for the global community . We at Scripps are working with the earth ’s leading thinker and researchers to share noesis and acquire ocean - level ascent solutions . From these feat we look to explicate a plan of action to aid cities and states conform to rising sea .
By 2050 our sea will be viewed as more than a platform for tourism and recreation and rather an ocean for solutions . Our sustainable push solutions will be aided by marine algae – derive biofuel , while new medicine to treat modern diseases will be derived from sea creatures with new chemical social system .
There is still so much we do n’t know . We need to keep determine about our weewee world , especially the deep sea and the immense part of the ocean in planetary climate variety .
All of us need to do our part . We are all stewards of the ocean and the major planet . We must cover to explore . We must go along to study the things we do n’t yet understand and protect the resources we have for future generations .
Shared ocean , protected by all , hold the solvent for the major planet ’s hereafter .
Michael Conathan : advance a Robust Blue Economy
Director of Ocean Policy , Center for American Progress
While human being rely on the ocean to support our creation , we must learn to use the nautical domain in ways that reverse the global fall in sea wellness and ensure that the ocean ’s bounteousness is available for future generations . One way the United States has already begun to do this is through ocean planning , an thought similar to traditional land use preparation . The National Ocean Policy found by President Barack Obama provides U.S. region with support to evolve “ regional sea plans ” that empower local sea stakeholder to act their interest in decision making . Other nations , including China , Australia , the Philippines and various European nations , have implemented similar practices .
Yet , to in truth achieve a sustainable vision for the futurity of the world ’s sea , we must go beyond unproblematic spacial provision . The ocean provides a great deal more than fish , fogey fuels and free trade . This generation ’s legacy must let in protecting and doctor racy , functioning leatherneck ecosystem .
The ocean make the planet ’s climate liveable , absorbing 90 percentage of the additional heattrapped by our ever - thickening atmospherical blanket of carbon contamination . They engender more than half of the oxygen we catch one’s breath . And they serve as the primary reservoir of protein for over a billion people .
As ocean warm up and acetify as a result of runaway carbon defilement , we put all of these ecosystem benefits at risk of exposure . Yet none of them will persist in unless we incorporate their financial worth into the cost of doing business .
place a Mary Leontyne Price tag on the value of a sizable marine environment will help political and business concern leaders arrive at more effective and more sustainable decisions and evolve a new Blue Economy that connect economic growth with ocean health . Moving development away from the dirty diligence of the past that earnings from degrading our natural resource and toward a future tense that promotes efficiency and environmental stewardship can be a win for the planet and our pocketbooks .
Alexandra Cousteau : Abundance , Diversity , Purity
Explorer , Filmmaker and Water Advocate
My visual sensation for the sea in 2050 is one of copiousness , diversity , purity . While most prediction point to a darker future for the ocean , I do believe that it is possible to have more fish , ocean turtles , dolphins , whales and sharks in our lifespan . But we have to start actingnow . scientist cover that the amount of fish caught start reject for the first metre in record chronicle just a few decennium ago . That ’s manifestly bad news , but it is also late news . If we take action quick we can have a Brobdingnagian effect on helping the ocean rebound .
The Cousteau crime syndicate has been chronicling the story of the ocean for three generations . We ’ve see the changes , we ’ve told the stories . Yet in bitchiness of all the damage that humanity has done to the ocean , I stay optimistic . The ocean are a partake in resourcefulness covering 71 percentage of the major planet . They bet a fundamental part in the reality ’s natural systems , like baffle our climate and absorbing carbon dioxide . Over a billion mass , including some of the poorest in the world , depend on the oceans and wild seafood for selection . Restoring abundance to the world ’s piscary is important not only for the satellite but also for the people who hold up on it . To that remainder , I have taken military action with [ the international organization]Oceanato take on these issues by focusing on the importance of science in name problems and solutions .
We need to accomplish three goals : blockade overfishing , reduce bycatch and protect nautical habitat . Scientists work closely with economist , attorney and policy expert can achieve tangible results for the ocean . Examples in the Philippines and other nation have demonstrate how to rebuild Pisces population : avoid overfishing by setting creditworthy catch limits , minimize the gaining control of vulnerable animals like turtles or juvenile Pisces , and protect home ground . With science - based management in topographic point , the fish , the ecosystem they depend on , and the masses whose livelihoods depend on both will rally . By promoting responsible fishing practice , we can protect the oceans while assist to reduce poorness in coastal communities . If we can bring through the ocean , we can help feed the existence .
David Sheppard : beam of light of Hope
Director - General , Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme
It ’s light to be pessimistic about the future of the worldly concern ’s oceans . The twentieth hundred repose to rest myths that the ocean were so vast and their live on resources so vast that human activity could never make a important impact . or else , we saw end in the stock of the great whales , the crash of numerous fisheries as more fishing vessel poured onto the ocean with increasingly advanced technologies , and the foundation of dead zones as industrial wastewater smothered and poisoned antecedently rich , productive amniotic fluid .
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change written report offers niggling reassurance . one-half of all atomic number 6 dioxide emissions since 1750 come in the last 40 year with oceans take up 90 per centum of the resulting heat push , do in temperature rises and ocean acidification that will go forward for decades even if discharge stop tomorrow . At current rates , shallow water tropical coral reefs will have vaporize by 2050 along with a ten thousand of coinage and food for millions of people .
But there are rays of Leslie Townes Hope — especially in the Pacific island countries and territorial dominion with enormous Exclusive Economic Zones efficaciously making them Large Ocean States with stewardship responsibilities for over 10 percent of the global ocean . bombastic Marine protect Areas in the Phoenix Islands of Kiribati and the Coral Sea of New Caledonia protect over 1.5 million square kilometers ( 580,000 square mi ) , and a sophisticated planning exercise is afoot to protect most of the 1.1 million - square - kilometre ( 420,000 - hearty - stat mi ) Cook Islands Marine Park . Palau is banning extraneous fishing fleet from its 600,000 hearty - kilometre ( 230,000 - square - mile ) EEZ , and shark bema have been established in the waters of the Marshall Islands , Federated States of Micronesia , Palau , Cook Islands and Tokelau .
Alone , these bold actions wo n’t prevent the overwhelming impact of climate variety , but by boil down key stressors such as overfishing , habitat loss and unfitting development , they give marine biodiversity a effective chance . They dissemble as a sign of Bob Hope : If developing commonwealth can determine aside vast tract of sea for conservation , then developed countries can also take a similar overture for the benefit of future contemporaries .
Susan Avery : A Key Cog
President and Director , Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
I bring an atmospherical scientist ’s view to the study of the ocean . In many ways the sea community is positioned to do what atmospherical scientist did in the fifties when they established a connection of conditions Stations of the Cross . This internet dramatically expanded our predictive capableness to the welfare of any weather - sensible concern or human endeavor .
Our planet is a complex active system of fundamental interaction among the ambience , ocean , land aerofoil , Charles Percy Snow and ice , and all lifetime on Earth . In that planetary clockwork , the sea is a primal sprocket . It drives heat , water and nutrient around the ball . It maintains substantive ecosystems . In short , it makes our planet habitable .
We know the ocean is change chop-chop . It is warm up , becoming more acidulent and losing ocean ice . Sea stratum are rising . It is overfished and more contaminated by chemicals and noise . These changes will have impacts on farming , piscary , water , nutrient , vigor supplies , coastal infrastructure , transportation , and natural disasters such as tsunami and extreme weather — all of which deeply impress our thriftiness , wellness , welfare and security .
At the same fourth dimension , many nations are develop “ blue economies ” — spread out into the sea not only to elicit resources such as Pisces , minerals , and petroleum and gas , but also for aquaculture , bioprospecting , offshore renewable Energy Department and other economical opportunities .
In my imaginativeness of the ocean in 2050 , authorities are investing in research and development to establish long - terminal figure observatories with sensors to supervise ocean conditions and take in the data necessary to help us interpret our changing sea .
Right now the future of the sea is uncertain , which stand for our hereafter is unsure . With outstanding global investment funds in research , exploration and innovation , we can cut uncertainties , better projection about succeeding condition for our sea and planet , and provide entropy that political science , resource director , businesses and others can use to save living , belongings and money , and to substantiate the sea as a resource . We can improve governance of the ocean and of the full planetary common land — and help assure our survival .
Douglas McCauley : Managing Change
Ecologist and Conservation Biologist , UC Santa Barbara
The decisions we make in the next several decades will more deeply mold the future of the sea than any other period in human history . In arecent report card , my confrere and I show that the oceans are in vastly better shape than terrestrial ecosystems . This makes sense : humanity are a terrestrial species and historically it has been harder for us hunt , farm and build in the ocean . But thing are change .
We must address three major challenges in the next 30 years if we bid to preserve the health and wildness of our global ocean .
By squarely facing the urging of the place in the oceans and prudently negociate these fresh forces of alteration , we can graph a bright future for life in the sea and can head off making many of the environmental mistake we made on land .
David Agnew : Sustainable Fishing
Standards Director , Marine Stewardship Council
ocean are like the beat of our planet . They connect us across continents , regulate our climate , add us with oxygen and serve as the foundation of ecosystems for an incredible array of wildlife . More than 200 million people look on the oceans for their livelihood and another 3 billion swear on it for nutrition , making oceans all important to our very world . But our oceans are under enormous pressure . Fishing in a sustainable fashion is critical to the wellness of this huge lifelike resource . It is our vision at the Marine Stewardship Council to see our oceans healthy and teeming with life , safeguard for succeeding generations .
We need to appreciate this important globose resource , ferment together to provide solutions to overfishing and care for the oceans as they are fundamental to the wellness and well - being of our humankind and universe . We can all start by recognizing and rewarding sustainable sportfishing practices and prefer to grease one’s palms and eat seafood source from sustainable and well - managed piscary , such as seafood products with the MSC ecolabel .
The more we instruct about the issues facing our sea , the more we ’ll want to help ensure the wellness and vitality of this resource and then share that knowledge to instigate others to do the same . We are all connected , and we can each make a remainder and contribute to the health of the world ’s sea for this and next generation .
Mary Hoffis the editor program - in - chief ofEnsia .
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