Human activities are a threat to marine and oceanic life. Human beings are the main consumers of the products from the fish. People use the fish bones and shark teeth as ornaments and meat as food. One of the main activities is killing of large numbers of sharks every year.
The second issue is overfishing. Human beings have depleted the fish reserves in the aquatic environment by constant fishing and pollution. Most of the restaurants serve fish at all times and this means that they have to have a constant supply of fish. The human activities disturb the fish, reduce their numbers and interfere with their ecosystem.
The main human threats to marine life are shark hunting, overfishing, inadequate protection, tourism, shipping, oil and gas, pollution, aquaculture and climate change.
Most people have regarded oceans as a place where they can get a constant supply of food but what they don’t know is that the marine life reduces in quantity.
Most people use the sea as a transport channel. Others dump a lot of wastes in the rivers, streams and other bodies and these activities have negative ramifications to marine life. Human beings in the world slaughter about 100 million sharks every year. Most people consider sharks to be killers and they don’t take them as part of the marine life. Sharks kill about 12 people every year.
This is a small number to justify such brutal killing of sharks. Lightning kills more people than sharks do and yet people unleash their full wrath on sharks. People kill them because of different reasons. These are for sport, for food and because of the fear that stems from the fact that they are carnivorous. Another motivation for human beings is that their fins are very expensive and people look for money when they catch the fish. The reasons why people should stop killing sharks is the fact that they are an endangered species and the shark soup has no nutritional value.
Other animals that people butcher apart from the sharks are the sea turtles and dugongs. The Save Australian Dugongs and Sea Turtles Foundation advocates for people to stop capturing marine animals. The trade of sea turtle meat is illegal in Australia because this is marine life. This trade has transformed to become a black market industry.
The oceans are very important to human life. When evaporation takes place, the clouds condense and then rain falls. The oceans also help to moisturize the air that human beings breathe. If the ocean life dies, even the human race will be in danger. Another main issue that affects oceanic life is overfishing.
Overfishing destroys the marine ecosystems of the world because it affects the food chains. The activity of fish hunting puts the fish in danger because it reduces the numbers of different species. Man is the main predators of fish because fish is a delicacy in many restaurants and homes. Most of the fish get extinct because of the human activities.
Scientists predicted that most seafood will exhaust by 2048. Another problem is that human being don’t protect the oceans and this is a very vital component of the environment. Oceans account for about 70% of the earth’s surface. The human race protects only about 0.6% of the oceans. They do this by constructing marine reserves and marine parks. Apart from these marine protected areas, the rest of the beaches are bare.This causes the future of the oceans to be bleak.
Human beings also turn the coastal beaches into tourist destinations and this affects the marine life negatively. People are always lying on the beaches especially during the holidays. The people who visit the beaches opt to eat marine cuisine and they also affect the animal habitats. Human beings have also turned the coastlines into hotels and residential areas and they continue to move closer as the years go by. The human interference takes a toll on oceanic life.
The human activities like shipping leave oil marks and spills and they harm the marine life. People have increased their reliance on shipping as a mode of transport. They make the oceans to become highways and this affects the marine organisms.
Sometimes, these ships leave spills and the anchors destroy coral and aquatic habitats. Oil and gas leaks cover water masses and they affect respiration in plants and animals. Oil leaks stem from mining and extraction. Under the sea, there are very rich reservoirs of oil and gas and human beings extract these minerals. In the process of extraction, they make oil spills. Oil spreads on the surface of the water and inhibits oxygen from getting in the water. For plants and animals to survive in the water, they have to have a supply of dissolved oxygen in the water.
Pollution is another threat to marine life. When people dump untreated sewage, fertilizers, and chemicals in the water the fish die out. Other people also dump industrial chemicals that affect the whole ecosystem in the water. These chemicals kill the bacteria and planktons in the water. The fish die out and the cycle continues to the bigger fish. Human beings also harm themselves because they eat fish which have a lot of chemicals. This is one of the reasons why people suffer from diseases like cancer.
Some people practice aquaculture. This is the activity of keeping fish in a manmade establishment. This is an activity that declines the fish in the water. The farming of fish is selfish and it affects the different species of fish. Climate change causes the sea levels to rise due to the melting of solar icecaps. Climate change also causes coral bleaching and other bad effects to the oceans. All these are results of human activities.
In conclusion, the main human threats to marine life are shark hunting, overfishing, inadequate protection, tourism, shipping, oil and gas, pollution, aquaculture and climate change. These are activities that cause fish and plants in the aquatic habitat to become extinct. Scientists predict that human beings will deplete the fish reserves by 2048. Human beings should stop hurting the marine and oceanic life because this will help to conserve the marine ecosystem.
Another activity that people can do is to try and save the endangered species like the blue whale and the shark. Man is the main contributor of the death and destruction of marine habitats. He destroys the habitats and this destruction also affects him in a negative way. One disturbance in the food chain can affect many plants and animals. Man should conserve his environment and he should reduce pollution, global warming, overfishing and transforming all beaches into tourist sites.
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