![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/assets\/Roberto_Danovaro-1.jpg\")
Roberto Danovaro<\/b><\/p>\nRoberto Danovaro<\/b><\/p>\n
Inspirational Board member of UNISG's Sustainability and Circular Economy Lab;<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n President of the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station of Naples, National Institute of Biology, Ecology and Marine Biotechnology, \"top scientist\" in the world in research relating to seas and oceans in the decade 2010-2020<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ocean represents the past, present and future of humanity<\/strong>. Scientific research, starting from Darwin's theory of evolution, has shown that life originated in the sea over 3.5 billion years ago. The very atmosphere we breathe is due to the action of microscopic organisms that appeared in the oceans more than a billion years ago. The sea is fundamental in our life today; over 1 billion people depend inextricably on it to feed themselves, finding their primary source of protein in fish. We owe the sea's ecosystem services essential for human survival and the quality of our life.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Just think that marine organisms produce almost 50% of the oxygen we breathe<\/strong>; the oceans absorb nearly 40% of the carbon dioxide produced by industrial activities and play a key role in purifying water by collecting organic waste and man-made products. Furthermore, it is thanks to the oceans that we have the water cycle. However, it is now that our seas and oceans are experiencing perhaps the most dramatic time in millions of years because human activity is causing unprecedented impacts on marine ecosystems. Despite the positive effects caused by many actions aimed at reducing the release of contaminants into the sea (think of purifiers and laws to prevent the washing of tanks at sea), the oceans are increasingly degraded. Over 66% of the oceans have been altered, and the percentage increases over time, together with population growth and the increase in the consumption of marine products, starting with fish<\/strong>. We are, therefore, facing an increasingly uncertain future. The progressive reduction of spaces on the mainland pushes us towards the sea. But the reckless use of biological resources and, in particular, indiscriminate fishing, which is not very selective and often destructive, is degrading all coastal habitats and is pushing everything to greater depths. Man has decimated all the great vertebrates of the oceans, reducing the populations of many shark species by 90-99%, as with the white shark in the Mediterranean, due to whaling practices. In fact, the life expectancy of all marine mammals is reduced by 50% compared to the past.<\/span><\/p>\n Humankind is extending its life expectancy at the expense of that of our planet's great animals<\/strong>. The future of the seas is made even more uncertain by the growing impact of climate change that is manifesting itself more and more evidently, not only with the increase in temperatures, starting from the Mediterranean, with profound changes in the biology of many species, but also with a progressive reduction of oxygen concentration and the expansion of hypoxic or anoxic oceanic areas. In addition, for 35 years, we have been documenting progressive acidification of the seas, precisely due to the absorption effect of excess carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere. A growing invasion accompanies this by non-indigenous or alien species favoured by international freight transport, which increasingly travel by sea. Furthermore, destructive fishing such as trawling or turbo blowers (the so-called clam) causes severe damage to many coastal and deep benthic habitats. <\/span><\/p>\n As a result, we are facing real desertification of the seabed. It is as if an Amazon rainforest was transformed into a ploughed field and it happens on the Adriatic coast up to three times a year, as well as on the French or Spanish ones. In these conditions, recovery of resilience on the part of natural ecosystems is unthinkable<\/strong>. The decade 2021-2030 that the United Nations dedicated to \"Ocean Research for Sustainable Development\" calls us to an unprecedented effort to reverse this trend. We need to be aware that the oceans cannot continue to support man's growing impact, and we need to ask politicians to do their part. To sign international treaties is not enough; we must keep our promises. The adoption of the UN 2030 Agenda requires responsibility and protection by 2030 of 30% of marine environments, of which 10% should become strictly protected.<\/span><\/p>\n In Italy, we are still very far from these percentages. If we put together all the Natura 2000 areas (SCI, SAC etc.) and the biological protection areas, we barely touch 12%. But 10% of our seas are protected only on paper, i.e. not managed in practice. Here the fishing, even if illegal, continues without rules and control. We must ask the institutions for greater responsibility. But we can also do a lot on an individual level<\/strong>, with simple choices that do not require great sacrifices and can be kept. I propose the following three: the first is not to use single-use plastic<\/strong> since at least 5% of all the plastic we use ends up in the sea where it is reduced into microparticles that are assimilated in the food web, then arriving at the fish that are ultimately served in our dishes, with damage to nature and our health. The second is the need to change our habits in terms of fish consumption. It is enough to choose bluefish and farmed molluscs which are the most eco-sustainable products<\/strong>, and give up tuna, swordfish, sea cicadas, lobsters, or worse, like shark fin soups, grated seahorses, or sea cucumber snacks, as we see in the East. Finally, we can pay more attention to our actions when we are at sea, not anchor on the Posidonia oceanica meadows, not collect sea stars (in fact, they are close to extinction), in short, not to plunder the creatures of our coasts or devastate coastal habitats to allow these ecosystems to still be there the next time we visit<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Roberto Danovaro Inspirational Board member of UNISG's Sustainability and Circular Economy Lab; President of the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station of Naples, National Institute of Biology, Ecology and Marine Biotechnology, \"top scientist\" in the world in research relating to seas and oceans in the decade 2010-2020. The ocean represents the past, present and future of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22331,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"content-page.php","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-58236","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/58236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58236"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/58236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58241,"href":"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/58236\/revisions\/58241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.unisg.it\/assets\/infografica-mare_definitiva_ENG-1.jpg\")
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