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Climate Change：Five basic facts about Antarctica
Union for environmental conservation: protecting the marine resource of Antarctica, do not wait until it’s too late
Source: ChinaLuxus.com Article: Michael Date: 2012-05-23
Key words: Antarctica marine ecology penguins whales endangered
Antarctic Ocean Alliance urged the British government to preserve the last undeveloped area in Antarctica. Because of human intervention, the damage might never be repaired.
The Union for environmental conservation has 9 environmental organizations, it stated on 21st that the waters around Antarctica must be protected, fishing and other industries must be banned.
Antarctic Ocean Alliance (AOA) stated that over 40% of this last undeveloped area, which has never been damaged by human activities, needed to be protected.
The member of the union includes Greenpeace and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). They have confirmed 19 Antarctic ocean habitats. AOA said that these habitats must be protected because they are part of the huge marine networks. AOA urged British government to reduce the development plan in this area.
Steve Campbell, the coordinator of AOA said that Britain could play a role as pioneer in protecting the southern waters of Antarctica, such as protecting the Orkney Islands southern shelf marine protected area.
The environmental union stated that the Antarctic marine ecosystem was under great pressure. The fishery industry has a growing demand on resource, which posed a threat on many marine animals, including penguins, whales, seals and krill.
A report named “Antarctic Ocean Legacy: A Vision for Circumpolar Protection” showed that the southern ocean in Antarctica occupied about 10% of the global total area. But only 1% of which was under “strict protection”. This ocean has a large number of different marine animals, but many of them were facing survival crisis due to human intervention.
“Although often described as a frozen land and covered with amazing beautiful and barren icebergs, Antarctica is rich in biological resources,and most of them are marine organisms. Under the cold ocean, there are various kinds of starfish, sponge and other benthos with different colors, shapes and sizes. They covered the whole seabed like carpets.” The report also said, “there are many strange fish concealing in the deep and dark seabed. White blood and anti-freezing agent can be seen clearly in their body. Penguins, flying seabirds, seals and whales are above the ocean. Many waters are also rich in krill. Antarctica is worthy of the name of the last undeveloped area in the world.”
If we want to protect the large area of Antarctic waters, we have to stop the excessive fishing started from 1960s, which has endangered many species including Epinephelus. By 1990s, the number of Epinephelus has been decreased by 95%. In addition, by the mid of 1990s, dissostichus eleginoides has suffered crazy fishing, over 100 thousand tons every year.
