Conservation

I'm curious what everyone feels about the idea of conservation. Whether or not we're playing God so to speak or if we're not doing enough, etc. where we draw the line.

I think we should be conserving and protecting marine life, it's a whole hearted thought. I do however think we should draw the line at where our influences stop. The thing is, we influence climate and marine biology to such a point where I think we have so much work to be done. Imagine in a century, we by some miracle stop impacting the ocean (never happen, but for the sake of argument), do we keep re-introducing species and protecting itself against extinction? Or do we allow nature to introduce its own new species and let other species become extinct naturally?

I'm especially curious to hear from biologists in this because they work so hard to help the planet at large and in all honesty, with all the individuality out there, it's hard to nail down the goals of individuals and their opinions.

personally i think we should conserve and do as much as possible to effect the ocean positively. human inadvertently play God so to speak now by killing of large amounts of sea creatures via pollution, over fishing, ignorance etc.

I couldn't agree more! I believe (and know, from my training as an ecologist and conservation biologist) that many ecosystems (aquatic, marine, and terrestrial) and species on our planet are imperiled. Some ecosystems have been altered or destroyed to an extent that there is no remediation possible. Look at what's going on to coral reefs in many parts of the world. Between temperature changes, pollution and the affect of effluence on them, reefs, like glaciers on land, are diminishing in size and scope.

The challenges to our existing ecosystems and the humans that are dependent on them are substantive but not impossible to meet -- if we change our priorities. Of course for those species that are already extinct and habitats that have been destroyed, it is too late. But, this begs the question: what are our society's priorities and how do they undermine conservation and protection of our ecosystems and ecosystem services? The answer, I believe, is all too evident -- just look around and see what we've chosen ... At every turn it's short-term gain over long-term needs and take and use all we can today, as if tomorrow doesn't matter. Look at what's happened to many fisheries throughout the world. Over and over humans act as if there is no end to 'nature's bounty' and that our harvesting or use of resources has no consequences. To some, this is ok because they may believe that technology and science will bring us solutions down the road, or that we can alter natural systems and replace them with human-made ones that will serve the same biological and ecological purposes. (e.g. fish farming to replace depleted fish stocks).

However, I believe it's somewhat foolish and implausible for humans to believe they can adequately 'engineer' habitat and ecosystems (aka habitat remediation) that will be the equivalent of the natural ones that we alter/remove, etc. At best, these are facsimiles that take a lot of resources and $$$ to do a job very poorly when nature does it better and for free. It's much better from both a biological and economic perspective to protect and conserve what nature has in place rather than try to ameliorate damage or 'fix' things after the fact; worse even, in my view, is the folly of removing a habitat (e.g. a wetland or mangrove habitat) to build something (e.g. a development) and then to 'remediate' the wetland or other habitat loss by engineering a replacement -- these never can truly replicate the original and are often just $$ sinks.

But to me, here's the rub: science and humans know what we should and shouldn't do, but in our economically driven society the best courses of actions are mostly ignored in the hope that someday down the road we'll figure out a solution. In the meantime, less habitat, species, and ecosystem services are available for our children's future world. It's for this reason that some argue that the best solutions is to give an economic 'value' to nature and ecosystem services so that humans can better appreciate them. This, in fact, is what carbon trading arguments are based upon. So, how well is that working for us?

So that I don't end up in a totally cynical note I'll add this. I do believe we can be much better about conservation, but that also means we need to be much better about not acting as if all resources are there to be fully extracted and then we move on to the next one.

Well said RenneB. Couldn't agree with you more.

It's sad to hear stories from other divers of how they saw the reefs 20 years ago and how much it's changed since then. Especially in regards to the massive decline in shark numbers worldwide.

Very well said ReneB. Interesting questions. I first saw ningaloo reef 45 years ago...its not the same place it was then by a long shot no matter how much it is sold as a pristine ecosystem. You didnt use a spotter plane to find whalesharks, the coast sometimes was full of the things making nuisances of themselves at the tandabidi creek boat ramp. As a person with a scientific background I also agree with ReneB about our attempts to engineer artifical ecosystems or environments..and I lecture that side of Engineering (Sustainability and Environmental awareness units are embedded in all our engineering courses here - civil, mech, electrical and of course enviro). Nothing I say or do is going to stop progress nor human pressures on the ocean.
As Cousteau said...Mankind has probably done more damage to the ocean in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.
The original post..an ecological theoretical question - great post btw. I dont have an ocean example to use (other than where have all the fish gone?) but conservation where engineered solutions (genetic or hard engineering..any interference) is problematic in that its rarely successful.
The best land example I can use is a bird called the Kakapo from New Zealand where millions of dollars are spent relocating and protecting every single last remaining bird....they are flightless, clueless, fat, are reliant on a very particular diet to bring them into mating condition, have a ridiculously complex mating behaviour which involves how good your decor is....and as a result of all these years of hard work and conservation they have managed this -
Shagged by a rare parrot - Last Chance To See - BBC Two - YouTube
In 20 years of the Kakapo program the return on investment has been minimal
So to the original question..if tommorow onward not a single human put anything into or took anything out of the ocean anywhere in the world..would endangered species become extinct? some..some would recover..something may have always been destined to extinction. Like the Kakapo. Do we have a right to play god? we have been without written permission. Would we find new species would appear? yes..we are finding new species all the time..somethings are discovered, classified and declared endangered all in a week. There's still enough we don't know about whats topside that to even begin to think we know what is under the surface is pretty arrogant ..JMHO.

We have already "played God" to such an extent, mostly with our destruction of the healthy ecosystems that were largely here before we (at least western man) arrived in North America that we may need tyo "play God" to an extent to bring them back.

I've been diving the waters of SoCal for almost 45 years now and I've seen serious degradation... as well as examples of "natural" recovery (after constraints were placed on fishing or attempts were made to captive breed a species and reintroduce it). The unfortunate thing is that we have no real baseline against which to judge the health of our oceans. There were no scientific surveys done back in the 1500s when we arrived to base our analysis on, nor any really good baselines incorporating human resource harvesting.

I do worry about "ecological engineering," or making changes to an ecosystem without fully understanding the ramifications. An example would include introducing non-native predators to control an invasive species.

I'm also very curious about ecological engineering. It does raise a great question: say we could achieve large scale biome creation? Would it be good enough as nature? I have faith in science, science brought us to the moon but I think engineering nature is on a different level. I think we currently lack the skills to develop to such a large scale degree any sort of living organism from scratch (or little known DNA, records or data) that would survive in a hostile environment. For years I've also been curious specifically about living species ie. a fish breed and human breeding and then "releasing" it into the wild. Certain instinctual behaviours are learned through time and experience, mass releasing species who have little to go on by how they're supposed to live doesn't seem "forward thinking". One of the better examples I've seen with this is giant pandas and elephants. Training them in captivity slowly and building them up towards a wild environment. I'm sure not sure how successful one can be at this in such a completely foreign environment. At least we have a common denominator with creatures on land; we all breathe, walk and live on land.

The general consensus on why biomes wont ''work'' gleaned from historical attempts at biomes isn't so much the tech problems.....its human behavior..ego.

Until we have FAR better understanding of the ecological relationships between species, I am less than optimistic about "creating" ecosystems. There are far too many unknowns (and far too little research into them) for us to do so as successfully as Nature has done over the millenia through co-evolution.

I know from personal experience that successfully reconstructing an ecosystem is way tougher than it may appear to be. I'm a longtime volunteer at a natural wildlife refuge that is the sole habitat of a butterfly on the endangered species list. Habitat there has been dramatically changed - essentially destroyed - through human activity, and we're working to bring it back to the original state. One would think that's just a matter of restoring the soil and encouraging the native species along, but we're constantly wresting with competition from invasive species and numerous other problems. Despite some of the best scientific input one can imagine, we appear to be losing the battle and our butterfly may soon go extinct. As Dr. Bill points out, it's often the unknowns that are the issue and frequently there simply isn't enough information available to make an informed decision.