The ocean affects a greater part of our lives than we actually realize and give it credit for. The fresh water we drink, the clean air we breathe, are all available to us thanks to the ocean. The ocean produces almost half of the oxygen present on the planet.

It creates the rain that grows our crops and feeds millions of people every day, and provides us with fresh water to drink. Life has known to begin in the ocean; it still depends on it for survival and will continue to do so till the end of its days.

Hence, the health of the ocean is extremely vital for all of us to maintain. Another important characteristic that the ocean has is that it is able to absorb more than half of the carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere. This means that if it weren’t for the ocean, the worst impacts of climate change would already be affecting us.

Problem

The issue that has arisen now is that our industrial and economical human activities have started to release way too much carbon in the air which has started to warm the surface of the oceans. It has started to melt the glaciers and increase the acidification in the ocean, subsequently affecting the life inside the ocean, coastal communities, and wildlife in general.

However, it is not just these problems that prevail. The actual problem is the unpredictability of the impacts. For example, we are aware of how the acidity in the ocean due to carbon emission is destroying the coral life, we know that the climate change is melting the glaciers in Antartica, but what we don’t know is how these problems interact with the one another.

We don’t know what will happen if the problem of rising sea levels will interact with excess pollution, and then accumulate together to impact humanity. A lot of the impacts from the oceans are interactive and we, unfortunately, have no idea how they will affect the mankind.

So, all in all, we have no idea how the ocean stressors like pollution, overfishing, acidification, etc will impact the rest of the Earth in the coming years.

Is there a solution?

Many ocean preservation companies are working together with ocean researchers to better understand climate change and come up with better strategies to bring changes in policy. These collaborations work to understand how the different stressors tend to interact with each other. The understanding of these interactions will help them predict what might happen in the future and what kind of policies should be devised to help protect the planet.

The ocean will have to be constantly maintained, especially until we figure out a way to lessen the emission of carbon dioxide. Till then, these collaborating companies are working on how to protect the ocean from the continuous climate change.