Science: Unit 4 Marine Science

Article on commercial website.

Microplastic (MP) contamination has been well documented across a range of habitats and for a large number of organisms in the marine environment. Consequently, bioaccumulation, and in particular biomagnification of MPs and associated chemical additives, are often inferred to occur in marine food webs.

Merriam Webster dictionary definition

Website entry from Ocean Twilight Zone

Microplastics (MPs) are considered an emerging issue as environmental pollutants and a potential health threat. This review will focus on recently published data on concentrations in food, possible effects, and monitoring methods.

2012 news article from website - Live Science.

2018 article from Frontiers in Marine Science.
Microplastics are a ubiquitous pollutant in our seas today and are known to have detrimental effects on a variety of organisms. Over the past decade numerous studies have documented microplastic ingestion by marine species with more recent investigations focussing on the secondary impacts of microplastic ingestion on ecosystem processes.

Website entry from Better Health, a VIC government website.

Encyclopaedia entry / definition from National Geographic.

2018 article from Food Safety Magazine.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), microplastics are small plastic pieces less than 5 mm long that can be harmful to marine and freshwater organisms. A variety of sources have been cited for microplastic pollution, such as dumping of plastic waste into the oceans that degrades slowly and the use of microbeads as exfoliants in beauty products. Because of their tiny size, these pollutants escape water filtration systems and end up either in the oceans or in other water bodies, and cause serious environmental and food safety concerns.

2021 article from Toxics.
Recently, studies on microplastics (MPs) have increased rapidly due to the growing awareness of the potential health risks related to their occurrence.

Produced by Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.

2018 article from Current Opinion in Food Science.
The consumption of seafood with marine toxins can cause intoxications of varied severity and often-fatal symptoms which may appear in few minutes. Marine toxins are resistant to cooking and freezing, posing a serious hazard to public health.

Plastic litter has become one of the most serious threats to the marine environment. Over 690 marine species have been impacted by plastic debris with small plastic particles being observed in the digestive tract of organisms from different trophic levels. The physical and chemical properties of microplastics facilitate the sorption of contaminants to the particle surface, serving as a vector of contaminants to organisms following ingestion. Bioaccumulation factors for higher trophic organisms and impacts on wider marine food webs remain unknown.

2020 Scientific Reports article.
Microplastics are frequently detected in the gastrointestinal tracts of aquatic organisms worldwide. A number of active and passive pathways have been suggested for fish, including the confusion of microplastic particles with prey, accidental uptake while foraging and transfer through the food chain, but a holistic understanding of influencing factors is still lacking. The aim of the study was to investigate frequently suggested theories and identify relevant biotic factors, as well as certain plastic properties, affecting microplastic intake in fish.

NOAA Fisheries annual summary report on U.S. recreational and commercial fishery landings.

Methylmercury (MeHg) is a global environmental problem and is listed by the International Program of Chemical Safety as one of the six most dangerous chemicals in the world's environment. Human exposure to MeHg primarily occurs through the consumption of contaminated food such as fish, although catastrophic exposures due to industrial pollution have occurred.

2012 article from Journal of preventative medicine and public health.
Methylmercury is a hazardous substance that is of interest with regard to environmental health, as inorganic mercury circulating in the general environment is dissolved into freshwater and seawater, condensed through the food chain, ingested by humans, and consequently affects human health. Recently, there has been much interest and discussion regarding the toxicity of methylmercury, the correlation with fish and shellfish intake, and methods of long-term management of the human health effects of methylmercury.

2022 article from Journal of hazardous materials.
Bioaccumulation of mercury along continuous fauna trophic levels in the Yellow River Estuary and adjacent sea indicated by nitrogen stable isotopes

Education brochure published by Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. No date.

Factsheet from World Health Organisation website.

Factsheet from the Australian Academy of Science website.

2018 press release from BalticSea2020 website.

2011 article from Annual review of marine science.
In marine ecosystems, rising atmospheric CO2 and climate change are associated with concurrent shifts in temperature, circulation, stratification, nutrient input, oxygen content, and ocean acidification, with potentially wide ranging biological effects. Population-level shifts are occurring because of physiological intolerance to new environments, altered dispersal patterns, and changes in species interactions.

Species directory from the website Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Information page from US website National Environmental Education Foundation.

Information page from US website National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

2019 article from Annual Review of Marine Science.
The geographic distributions of marine species are changing rapidly, with leading range edges following climate poleward, deeper, and in other directions and trailing range edges often contracting in similar directions. These shifts have their roots in fine-scale interactions between organisms and their environment—including mosaics and gradients of temperature and oxygen—mediated by physiology, behavior, evolution, dispersal, and species interactions.

2010 article published in Marine ecology progress series.
Recent studies in the marine environment have suggested that the limited phenotypic plasticity of cold-adapted species such as Atlantic cod Gadus morhua L. will cause distributions to shift toward the poles in response to rising sea temperatures. Some cod stocks are predicted to collapse, but this remains speculative because almost no information is available on the thermal tolerance of cod in its natural environment.

Article from United Nations Chronicle website.

2020 short article from the Natural History Museum UK website.
Climate change is having a bigger impact on animals and plants in the ocean than those on land, according to new research.

This could be because organisms that live on land are better able to avoid the negative consequences of global warming than their ocean counterparts.

Information page from website - United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Information page from website - United States Environmental Protection Agency.

2015 Research Article published in PLOS ONE. Many studies have documented long-term changes in adult marine fish distributions and linked these changes to climate change and multi-decadal climate variability. Most marine fish, however, have complex life histories with morphologically distinct stages, which use different habitats.

2016 journal article published in Proceedings. Biological sciences.
Interactions between multiple ecosystem stressors are expected to jeopardize biological processes, functions and biodiversity. The scientific community has declared stressor interactions-notably synergies-a key issue for conservation and management. Here, we review ecological literature over the past four decades to evaluate trends in the reporting of ecological interactions (synergies, antagonisms and additive effects) and highlight the implications and importance to conservation.

2013 article from Estuaries and Coasts.
Ocean acidification due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions is a dominant driver of long-term changes in pH in the open ocean, raising concern for the future of calcifying organisms, many of which are present in coastal habitats. However, changes in pH in coastal ecosystems result from a multitude of drivers, including impacts from watershed processes, nutrient inputs, and changes in ecosystem structure and metabolism.

2008 article published in Science.
Dead zones in the coastal oceans have spread exponentially since the 1960s and have serious consequences for ecosystem functioning. The formation of dead zones has been exacerbated by the increase in primary production and consequent worldwide coastal eutrophication fueled by riverine runoff of fertilizers and the burning of fossil fuels.

2010 article published in Ecology letters.
Ocean acidification is a pervasive stressor that could affect many marine organisms and cause profound ecological shifts. A variety of biological responses to ocean acidification have been measured across a range of taxa, but this information exists as case studies and has not been synthesized into meaningful comparisons amongst response variables and functional groups.

Information page from the US website National Oceanic and Administration.

Information page from United Nations website.

Information page from the United Nations website.

2013 article published in Nature Climate Change.
Anthropogenic CO2 emitted to the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans, causing a progressive increase in ocean inorganic carbon concentrations and resulting in decreased water pH and calcium carbonate saturation.

Information page from Natural History Museum UK.

2011 article published on PLOS ONE.
Changes in olfactory-mediated behaviour caused by elevated CO2 levels in the ocean could affect recruitment to reef fish populations because larval fish become more vulnerable to predation. However, it is currently unclear how elevated CO2 will impact the other key part of the predator-prey interaction – the predators.

2003 Commonwealth Government Document

OECD Policy highlights 2016

Chapter 20 of book of "Marine protected
area management’ 2015

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have as a primary objective the conservation of biodiversity and prevention of harmful human activities.

Article on the Marine Stewardship Council website.

Article from the Canadian Encyclopedia.

2005 short article from CBC News.

2020 article in ICES Journal of Marine Science.
The spatial distribution of fish early life stages can impact recruitment at later stages and affect population size and resilience. Northeast Arctic (NEA) cod spawning occurs along the Norwegian coast. Eggs, larvae, and pelagic juveniles drift near-surface towards the Barents Sea nursery area. In this study, a 35-year long time series of NEA cod larvae data was analysed in combination with factors that potentially may affect the distribution of eggs and larvae.

Article on Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Website.
Newfoundland and Labrador's historic cod fisheries attracted local and international fishing fleets for almost five centuries before the Canadian government shut the industry down indefinitely in July 1992. By then, once-plentiful fish stocks had dwindled to near extinction and officials feared they would disappear entirely if the fisheries remained open.

Chapter from the book -Resiliency of Gadid Stocks to Fishing and Climate Change, 2008.
Many stocks of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) on both sides of the North Atlantic are currently at much reduced levels of biomass, but this situation is not in all instances the result of long, continuous decline. Most Northwest Atlantic stocks declined to low levels during the 1970s, but increased during the 1980s before declining even more severely during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Several of these stocks have shown
little recovery despite severe restrictions on directed fishing.

Information sheet from website called Environmental Law Australia.

Information page and 2 minute clip on the Marine Stewardship Council website.

Northeast Fisheries Science Center in USA Reference Document

5 minute clip

Information page from a species directory. Taken from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Department of Commerce website.

2015 article from journal called Science.
Several studies have documented fish populations changing in response to long-term warming. Over the past decade, sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine increased faster than 99% of the global ocean.