TED Talk - Jeremy Jackson

Jeremy Jackson is a Professor of Oceanography and the Director of the Centre for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His work focuses on the future of the oceans given human impact on them.

Bottom trawlers have scoured parts of the ocean floor and have left nothing but a mud desert. Coral reefs have trouble reforming after hurricanes because of overfishing. Without fish, and sea urchins and other marine life, seaweed ends up growing over a once flourishing coral reef, preventing the coral from growing again. Whole fisheries have collapsed (such as the Atlantic Cod fishery).

Without those fish and other marine life, other forms of life such as seaweed that would normally be eaten by the now missing marine life grow over any spot that coral could have grown on.

The introduction of invasive species and the loading of phosphorus and nitrogen from agricultural runoff into the world’s oceans, rivers, and lakes.

The increase in the ocean’s temperatures thanks to global warming makes it too warm for the algae in the coral to produce sugars for the coral, so the coral kick them out and become bleached. In one particularly bad case of el nino, 80% of coral in a given area became bleached, and of those, 25% died.