Earth Focus - Oceans: Turning the Tide

September 14, 2011 from Earth Focus

Our life depends on the oceans, and they're under threat. A new book "The Atlas of Coasts and Oceans" tells why. One out of three fish sold in the US may be mislabeled; it's called seafood fraud and a new campaign aims to stop it. Then, the film "Bag It" looks at how plastic kills marine life. Plus a look at research into how vegetarian fish may be the future of seafood.

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Marine dead zones

Dead zones are hypoxic areas in the world's oceans and large lakes, caused by "excessive nutrient pollution from human activities coupled with other factors that deplete the oxygen required to support most marine life in bottom and near-bottom water.." In the 1970s oceanograph... Explore this topic

Ocean

An ocean is a body of saline water that composes a large part of a planet's hydrosphere. In the context of Earth, it refers to one or all of the major divisions of the planet's World Ocean – they are, in descending order of area, the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, and Ar... Explore this topic

Sylvia Earle

Sylvia Earle appeared in the 2012 documentary film Chasing Ice. Explore this topic

Overfishing

Overfishing is the act whereby fish stocks are depleted to unacceptable levels, regardless of water body size. Resource depletion, low biological growth rates, and critically low biomass levels result from overfishing. For example, overfishing of sharks has led to the upset of... Explore this topic

Marine conservation

Marine conservation, also known as marine resources conservation, is the protection and preservation of ecosystems in oceans and seas. Marine conservation focuses on limiting human-caused damage to marine ecosystems, and on restoring damaged marine ecosystems. Marine conservat... Explore this topic

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions, or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions. Cli... Explore this topic

Coral reef

Coral reefs are underwater structures made from calcium carbonate secreted by corals. Coral reefs are colonies of tiny animals found in marine waters that contain few nutrients. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, which in turn consist of polyps that cluster in group... Explore this topic

Marine biology

Marine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on t... Explore this topic

Earth Focus

An environmental news magazine that puts a human face on pressing global issues. This essential series features under-publicized stories on how changes to the earth's resources and climate are affecting everyday people all around the world. Earth Focus is funded by grants from... Explore this topic

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Ocean

Marine conservation

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