COP26 Presentation
https://goesfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/GOES2025.pptx
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Marine primary producers hold about 1 gigatonne of carbon, against 450 gigatonnes in land plants. However, marine algae replace their whole stock in about a day, so their yearly production roughly equals that of all land plants. Marine plankton produce roughly half of the planet’s primary production and a similar share of its oxygen. The life support system for the planet is therefore based on a small biomass of very delicate organisms that are easily killed by plastic and chemical pollution at the ocean surface.
Anything that adversely impacts the productivity of plankton, such as overfishing of key species of fish or pollution, will have a profound impact on the plankton and the stability of the marine ecosystem.
According to an international report on the fishing industry, “By the 1990s, biomass and cycling rates had been reduced by nearly half, suggesting that the biogeochemical impact of fisheries has been comparable to that of anthropogenic climate change (https://lnkd.in/gUts-VYJ).
This effectively means that if we had practised truly sustainable fishing as opposed to the destruction of the marine ecosystem, we would not now be suffering from climate change.
Krill are a hugely important zooplankton; their annual production is equivalent to the total biomass of humanity, but numbers have dropped by 50%, and they continue to rapidly decline
https://lnkd.in/ef22NiNa
The loss of coral reefs and plankton productivity goes way beyond the loss of fish from the commercial fishing sector. The fate of the planet and our survival therefore depend upon our actions over the next few years