Making marine life count: a new baseline for policy

Abstract

The Census of Marine Life aids practical work of the Convention on Biological Diversity, discovers and tracks ocean biodiversity, and supports marine environmental planning.

Figure 1. Schematic cross-section of the ocean indicating ocean realms and current (solid line) and proposed (broken line) depths of exploitation for fishing, oil and gas, deep-sea mining, and wind-farms.

Wind farms: to 220m, plus offshore floating turbines anchored at greater depths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_farm, accessed 25 May 2010). Fishing: current commercial fishing occurs between 1000 to 1400m; fishing deeper than 1500m is not constrained by technical limitations and vessels could modify equipment to suit. (F. Chopin, FAO, personal communication). Oil and gas: 3,000m (The Economist, March 4 2010). Deep-sea mining: 1,000–6,000m (Technical Study No. 2, International Seabed Authority 2002). Image: CoML and Meryl Williams.

Figure 2. Census of Marine Life project areas.

Image: CoML.

Figure 3. Participation by country and region.

Countries coded with the same color collaborate in a regional implementation committee and numbers within country borders indicate the number of collaborating Census scientists for that country. Image: CoML

Figure 4. Four maps used for Convention on Biological Diversity Ecologically and Biologically Significant Areas Criterion 6, Biological diversity (Annex of reference 11).

(a) total records in OBIS, corrected for differences in surface area between squares on different latitude; (b) the total number of species, corrected for differences in surface area between squares on different latitude; (c) Shannon Index; (d) Hurlbert's Index, es(50).