How protecting the ocean can save species and fight climate change
clock This story was featured in The Optimist newsletter. Sign up here to receive stories of kindness, resilience and the best among us every Wednesday and Sunday. Humanity has no better friend on this planet than the ocean. It provides more than half the oxygen we need to breathe. It supplies food that helps sustain more than 3 billion people. It absorbs many of the pollutants we keep pumping into the atmosphere: carbon dioxide, ozone-depleting chemicals. The ocean is the kind of unwaveringly supportive friend who tolerates our toxicity and shields us from the worst consequences of our actions. Its the friend people have taken for granted for far too long. By overfishing and mining and drilling the seafloor, humans are risking not just the oceans health but our own. But new research suggests that a strategic, globally coordinated effort to protect more of the worlds waters could not only bolster marine biodiversity but significantly increase the number of fish available for harvest and boost the amount of carbon taken up by the ocean, aiding the fight against climate change. Plastic pollution threatens marine life, humans and ecosystems. Enter FRED, a future vacuum of the seas. The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature , comes weeks before a United Nations biodiversity conference at which nations will set new targets for conserving plants, animals and the ecosystems they inhabit. Many countries, including the United States , have said they aim to protect 30 percent of their land and water by 2030. Now there are scientific and economic studies showing that not valuing nature is a great existential risk to humanity, said conservationist Enric Sala, an explorer-in-residence at National Geographic and a lead author of the report. But if we protect the right places ... its a win-win-win situation. According to the United Nations , just 7.65 percent of the ocean is currently in a marine protected area, a designation that indicates some level of oversight of human activities. Yet many of those supposed protections are insufficient, Sala said: They still permit some commercial fishing or are weakly enforced. The portion of the ocean that is strongly protected is less than 3 percent. The new 30 percent goal embraced by the United States and other nations is the minimum amount of protection required, Sala said. If the world established 45 percent of the ocean as a marine protected area, the result would be much healthier fisheries, richer biodiversity and enhanced carbon uptake, he said. The finding is the result of three years of work by more than two dozen ocean experts. The researchers carved the ocean up into 50 kilometer-by-50 kilometer squares, then evaluated each plot for the threats it faced, the number of species it contained and the uniqueness of those creatures, as well as the abundance of any of the 1,300 most economically important fish. They also built the first global map of carbon stored in the sea floor, discovering that marine sediment stores twice as much carbon as terrestrial soil. Finally, the team developed a model that could calculate a conservation strategy that optimized for all three benefits biodiversity, fisheries and carbon sequestration where establishing a robust marine protected area could deliver a triple win. New U.N. climate report: Monumental change already here for worlds oceans and frozen regions The resulting maps indicate that many of the best areas to protect are within 200 miles of coastlines, in the exclusive economic zones where nations have jurisdiction over natural resources. They include parts of the China Sea and the Adriatic Ocean and encompass species-rich coral reefs, unique kelp forests and carbon-rich wetlands. Other triple win areas are centered around mid-oceanic ridges, where the seafloor is ripped open by plate tectonics, and seamounts where underwater volcanism gives rise to submarine peaks. The nutrient-rich waters around Antarctica are another target area for protection. The analysis also highlights the climate risks associated with bottom trawling, a fishing practice that involves dragging a net across the sea floor. Its such a destructive method of fishing, said Trisha Atwood, a Utah State University ecologist who performed much of the carbon analysis for the report. Much the way plowing a field unleashes carbon stored in the soil, trawling tosses buried carbon back into the water column, where it may be eaten by bacteria and turned into carbon dioxide. The study suggests that the carbon emissions generated by bottom trawling are equivalent to those of the global airline industry. Atwood and her colleagues are still analyzing how much of that carbon dioxide makes it into Earths atmosphere. But it can worsen climate change even if it remains in the water by hindering the oceans ability to absorb other emissions linked to human activities. The ocean is our greatest carbon sink right now, Atwood said. The more carbon dioxide we add to it, the less it is able to take up. People can curb the risk of carbon disturbance from bottom trawling by 90 percent simply by protecting 3.6 percent of the ocean, the analysis found. This would help the world meet the goal of almost halving emissions by 2030 to keep warming well under 2 degrees over preindustrial levels the United Nations-designated threshold for catastrophic warming. Allowing countries to count these carbon savings toward their commitments under the Paris climate accord would offer an incentive for them to pursue protections, Atwood said. China alone could prevent the release of 769 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year by stopping bottom trawling delivering a climate benefit equal to pausing 198 coal-fired power plants for a year. Activists hope the report will bolster the case for ocean conservation when world leaders meet for the U.N. conference in Kunming, China, in May. Sala said the meeting is comparable to the Paris accord, but for conservation. Marce Gutierrez-Graudins, founder and executive director of the grass-roots Latinx ocean conservation group Azul, said: Theres this false narrative of conservation versus the economy. She can empathize with fishing industry workers worried about their livelihoods Gutierrez-Graudins worked for a commercial seafood company before becoming an activist. But this shows you can have a win-win, she said. And if youre actually doing this as a long-term enterprise, its in your best interest that this resource stays out there.