Losing Nemo: The Mass Extinction Now Threatening the World's Ocean Hotspots

摘要

Life in the Earth's oceans can no longer be entrusted to a yawningly porous safety net. This tattered safety net-the illusion of protection conjured up by the patchwork combination of international and national laws-is no match for the real commercial fishing nets that are all too often inescapable and indiscriminate. In this Article I have shown that the oceans are home to a stunning array of life forms, including species, phyla, and even an entire kingdom adapted to some of the most extreme conditions on the planet. Marine biodiversity extends from sunlit, nearby coral reefs to the deepest, most impenetrably dark abyss, and from hyper-heated hydrothermal vents to the most frigid waters. The amazing spectrum of evolutionary adaptations represented by life in these conditions is without parallel on land. But the vastness of the oceans is both their greatest strength and their most acute weakness. It has for many centuries caused people to think of the oceans as inexhaustible resources and bottomless garbage dumps, immune to anything we do to them. This is exacerbated by the fact that so large a share of the oceans' expanse is legally international territory, not within the jurisdiction of any nation. As a global common, the oceans at once seem to belong to everyone and no one. We have treated them accordingly for too long.