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climate change Climate change is the changing of climate patterns caused by the increasing levels of carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels. It has a profound effect on the ocean and its ecosystem. It causes coral bleaching, coral bleaching is a response to stress from where the coral looses its color and eventually kill them. Bleaching happens from starvation of the coral having to expel it's zooxanthella algae which produces sunlight into food. One more well know case of coral bleaching is what recently happened to The Great Barrier Reef, 67% of the corals in it's north section. In one of the worst hit sections, around lizard island in Far North Queensland, 90% of the coral were killed. Another problem caused by climate change is acidic oceans. The oceans have been absorbing a hefty amount of the atmospheres carbon dioxide, around 93%. This makes the oceans acidic and makes it harder to breathe for marine life. The waters acidity level makes it more difficult to extract dissolved oxygen from.
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illegal/over fishingMany people, 2.6 billion, rely mainly on fish for their diet. Over fishing is a large problem it greatly threatens aquatic ecosystems. Many fish have been fished to endangerment, and are still eaten, for example the Orange Roughy who can live to be 100 years old and reach sexual maturity around ages 23-31. Local fishermen aren't to blame for this problem. Illegal fishing is one of the biggest factors that contribute to over fishing. "Illegal fishing puts food security and regional stability at risk, and is linked to major human rights violations and even organized crime."- WWF
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Shark finningShark fining is similar to poaching. The term refers to the hunting of sharks for their fins, which fetch a hefty price of $450 per pound. Because of this shark populations are being devastated. We are fishing faster than they can reproduce. As you can probably predict, by taking out the ocean's apex predators, we threaten the stability of oceanic food chains. The process is simple, find a shark, cut off it's fins, and discard of the corpse. This is the equivalent of cutting off your arms and limbs and then throwing you into the ocean to drown or bleed out.
"But that's different, how could a shark drown?" There are two main ways a shark can breathe. Buccal pumping which is when sharks use their mouth muscles to pump water over their gills. The other method of breathing, an example of shark that used this is the hammerhead, is ram ventilation. Ram ventilation is basically when sharks force water into their mouths while swimming to move water over their gills. there are some sharks that have weaker mouth muscles and cannot Breathe through buccal pumping. and without swimming they can drown. Long story short, it's not a fun way to die. |
Specialist indicate that 100 million sharks are killed annually for their fins
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