A new study to be published tomorrow in Current Biology suggests what may be apparently very obvious: the loss of deep-sea species poses a severe threat to the future of the oceans.
But what is equally obvious is that despite this critical study, regulatory actions to actually protect life in the deep sea will not come until the loss of biodiversity occurs.
According to the press release:
In a global-scale study, the researchers found some of the first evidence that the health of the deep sea, as measured by the rate of critical ecosystem processes, increases exponentially with the diversity of species living there.
“For the first time, we have demonstrated that deep-sea ecosystem functioning is closely dependent upon the number of species inhabiting the ocean floor,” said Roberto Danovaro of the Polytechnic University of Marche, in Italy. “This shows that we need to preserve biodiversity, and especially deep-sea biodiversity, because otherwise the negative consequences could be unprecedented. We must care about species that are far from us and [essentially] invisible.”
Ecosystem functioning involves several processes, which can be summarized as the production, consumption, and transfer of organic matter to higher levels of the food chain, the decomposition of organic matter, and the regeneration of nutrients, he explained.
Common sense would suggest that with this new information that politicians and regulators will increase protections for the deep seas to protect biodiversity and the functioning of the ecosystems.
Unfortunately, history has shown little increased environmental protection to emerge in response to scientific information.
And this underlines the critical role that environmental advocacy organizations play in securing increased environmental protections. Environmental organizations, through public education and mobilization, community organizing, lobbying and legal action, close the gap between good science and good policy.
