Three main groups of ocean life are plankton, nekton, and benthos.

Marine life, or sea life or ocean life, is the plants, animals and other organisms that live in the salt water of the sea or ocean, or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. The term marine comes from the Latin mare, meaning sea or ocean.

Marine invertebrates include sea worms, jellyfish, sea anemones, shellfish, squid, octopus and starfish. Fish are vertebrates that are found in marine environments. Examples of ocean fish include sardines, anchovies, sharks and barracudas.

Oceans are an important source of food. They host 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity, and are the largest ecosystem on Earth. Fish provide 20 percent of animal protein to about 3 billion people.

WHAT ARE THE 5 MARINE ECOSYSTEMS?

• Neritic Zone.
• Oceanic Zone.
• Supralittoral Zone.
• Intertidal/Littoral Zone.
• Sublittoral Zone.

The marine ecosystem includes: marshes, tidal zones, estuaries, the mangrove forest, lagoons, sea grass beds, the sea floor, and the coral reefs. Just like every other ecosystem in the world, the aquatic ecosystems rely on each other for maintaining a balanced marine ecosystem.

Fish, seabirds, sea turtles, and marine mammals can become entangled in or ingest plastic debris, causing suffocation, starvation, and drowning. Plastic waste kills up to a million seabirds a year. As with sea turtles, when seabirds ingest plastic, it takes up room in their stomachs, sometimes causing starvation.

If the ocean dies, we all die. The ocean is also the pump that allows us to have fresh water. It is the driving force, along with the sun, of the global circulation system that transports water from the land to the sea to the atmosphere and back to the land again.

An estimated 70 percent of fish populations are fully used, overused, or in crisis as a result of overfishing and warmer waters. If the world continues at its current rate of fishing, there will be no fish left by 2050, according to a study cited in a short video produced by IRIN for the special report.

Paul Watson: The reality is that if the ocean dies, we die – because the ocean provides all of those things which make it possible for us to live on the planet. Over 70% of the oxygen is actually produced by phytoplankton in the ocean, and since the 1950 there’s been a 40% diminishment in phytoplankton population.

“Global warming, combined with the negative impacts of numerous other human activities, is devastating our ocean, with alarming declines in fish stocks, the death of our reefs, and sea level rise that could displace hundreds of millions of people.”

Experts say that by 2050 there may be more plastic than fish in the sea, or perhaps only plastic left. Others say 90% of our coral reefs may be dead, waves of mass marine extinction may be unleashed, and our seas may be left overheated, acidified and lacking oxygen. It is easy to forget that 2050 is not that far off.

Deadliest plastics: bags and packaging biggest marine life killers, study finds. Plastic bags and flexible packaging are the deadliest plastic items in the ocean, killing wildlife including whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds around the globe, according to a review of hundreds of scientific articles.

Global warming is causing sea levels to rise, threatening coastal population centers. Many pesticides and nutrients used in agriculture end up in the coastal waters, resulting in oxygen depletion that kills marine plants and shellfish.

Shockingly, we might have sea levels rise by as much as 19 inches by 2050. Some species of marine life will continue to migrate, while others will be killed off. A contributing factor to this is that there’ll be more plastic than fish in our oceans.

What the great majority of people do not understand is this: unless we stop the degradation of our oceans, marine ecological systems will begin collapsing and when enough of them fail, the oceans will die. And if the oceans die, then civilization collapses and we all die.

With no changes to current production, consumption, or waste management of plastic, by 2040 almost 30 million metric tons of plastic will end up in the ocean per year. Industry and government promises would cut annual plastic leakage into the ocean by just 7 percent by 2040.

By 2050, plastic in the oceans will outweigh fish, predicts a report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, in partnership with the World Economic Forum. The report projects the oceans will contain at least 937 million tons of plastic and 895 million tons of fish by 2050.

Each year we produce nearly 300 million tons of plastic and by 2050 there will be more of it than fish in our oceans by weight.

China

Rwanda

As a nation, Americans generate more waste than any other nation in the world with 4.5 pounds (2.0 kg) of municipal solid waste (MSW) per person per day, fifty five percent of which is contributed as residential garbage.

Germany

Sweden is aiming for zero waste. This means stepping up from recycling to reusing.

The Estrutural landfill in Brasilia, Brazil is one of the largest municipal waste landfills in the world, spanning some 136 hectares….Size of largest landfills globally as of 2019 (in acres)

Thanks to an innovative waste-to-energy (WTE) program, Sweden was in a position where it was actually forced to import garbage from other nations. In the years since Sweden’s energy revolution has helped the nation virtually eliminate its waste while helping other trash producers rid themselves of refuse.