While the ocean today represents over 90% of the volume available to life, it is home to no more than 13% of known species, all groups combined. This may be due to our lack of knowledge of this gigantic environment, but that's not all. Thanks to its connectivity and incredible stability over the last 120 Ma, the ocean has "diversified" less than the continents. Exclusively oceanic at the start, life then conquered the continents and exploded in the great tropical rainforests. The co-evolution of flowering plants and pollinators played a considerable role.
Today, the oceans are threatened by human activities, global warming and melting polar ice caps, global acidification, overexploitation of stocks, destruction of coastal ecosystems, massive pollution including those monstrous "plastic continents", anarchic dissemination of species including those 12 billion tonnes of seawater exchanged by giant tankers... that's a lot! And now comes the exploitation of the deep seas through fishing and mineral resource extraction permits. Fishing resources and landings have stagnated over the past 25 years, despite ever-increasing efforts in terms of animal detection and catching equipment. The animals landed are increasingly smaller and of lesser value. It's high time to move to an ecosystem-based approach. Aquaculture, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly productive and has already far surpassed fishing in terms of value. But it needs to be developed in much greater harmony with the environment and without wasting protein. There are still problems of carnivore farming, species dissemination and environmental impact.
The marine environment also provides highly relevant models for fundamental research, with 13 Nobel Prizes in physiology and medicine won thanks to "apparently insignificant species " such as the squid, torpedo ray, sea slug, sea urchin or starfish, and today more than 25,000 molecules of pharmacological or cosmetic interest! It's imperative that we rethink our use of the oceans and protect vast areas.
