Safeguarding marine life: conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems

Developing achievable alternate futures for key challenges during the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development

“…Living with a changing ocean: climate change adaptation and mitigation Trebilco et al ( 2020 ) 2. Safeguarding marine life: conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems Ward et al ( 2020 ) 3. Food for all: designing sustainable and secure future seafood systems Farmery et al ( 2020 ) 4.…”

“…The Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge team followed a distinct approach to developing their paper and futures, which are detailed in Fischer et al ( 2020 ). This team also co-authored, reviewed and/or provided critical input for the other Key Challenges (Bax et al 2020 ; Farmery et al 2020 ; Haas et al 2020 ; Kelly et al 2020 ; Melbourne-Thomas et al 2020 ; Nash et al 2020 ; Novaglio et al 2020 ; Smith et al 2020 ; Trebilco et al 2020 ; Ward et al 2020 ; Willis et al 2020 ), based on their chosen preferences and interests, and initiated and elected to draft a preface for the special issue as a whole (Mustonen et al unpublished).…”

Deep aspirations: towards a sustainable offshore Blue Economy

“…With a few exceptions, the spatial divisions mean that potential opportunities for co-location of industries or other bio-design inspired synergies are lost, and that the assessment of cumulative effects is compromised. Minimal investment in monitoring that is useful at a systematic scale and constrained regulatory budgets further hamper the assessment and management of impacts, leaving marine ecosystems exposed to significant risk of degradation (see also Ward et al 2020). These limitations play out in different ways for different sectors.…”

“…The growth in offshore economic activity brings additional environmental risks, including further exacerbating climate change, pollution (e.g. plastics and chemicals) and habitat degradation (Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno 2010;Halpern et al 2019;Pörtner et al 2019;Egger et al 2020; see also Melbourne-Thomas et al 2020, Trebilco et al 2020, Ward et al 2020, and Willis et al 2020. Marine ecosystems are inter-connected, and the full cumulative implication of emerging offshore developments is uncertain (Halpern et al 2019).…”

Warming world, changing ocean: mitigation and adaptation to support resilient marine systems

“…Extreme climate-driven events, such as droughts, extreme rainfall, floods, and atmospheric and marine heatwaves are predicted to become more frequent and severe (Oliver et al 2019 ), and in many locations increased severity and frequency of extremes is already evident (Cai et al 2015 ; O’Gorman 2015 ; Oliver et al 2017 , 2018 ). These changes in the physical environment will in turn lead to changes in the distribution, abundance and dynamics of marine life (Melbourne-Thomas et al 2021 ; Ward et al 2020 ; Pecl et al 2017 , 2019b and see www.redmap.org.au ), emergence of new habitats (e.g. coral reefs extending polewards in Japanese waters; Kumagai et al 2018 ) and disruption and/or decline of iconic habitat-forming species and ecosystems, such as kelp (Arafeh-Dalmau et al 2019 ), coral reefs (Hughes et al 2017 ) and mangroves (Bergstrom et al 2021 ; Magnan et al 2019 ) in their current locations.…”