Most Interesting Facts You'll Ever Hear about Ocean
Deep-sea ecosystems form the largest realm on Earth that harbour a vast number of species, but remain least explored.
Ajay Mohan
Let's get into the facts presented in UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) related to the oceans.
Scientists estimate that about 90% of species in the oceans are not yet discovered or have no name.
Fact No. 1
The deep sea and its unique and rich biodiversity play a key role in ecosystem services, such as food supply or regulating global climate by absorbing heat and sequestrating carbon dioxide from the atmo sphere.
Fact No. 2
The ocean is an open and interconnected system and as a whole plays a central role in ecosystem processes and human well-being.
Fact No. 3
Deep-sea species are exposed to pollution, ocean acidification from increased carbon dioxide emissions, habitat destruction from oil and gas extraction, fishing and potentially deep-seabed mining.
Fact NO. 4
Accelerated environmental changes are in creasingly threatening coastal areas (e.g., coral reefs) as well as deep-sea ecosystems and the species that live there.
Fact No. 5
Recently, more than 150 deep-sea species have been assessed as threatened or even critically endangered.
Fact No. 6
Most deep sea species, however, still have no name and lack the information needed to qualify them for Red List assessment.
Fact No. 7
It is predicted that more than half of the undescribed species are likely threatened with extinction.
Fact No. 8
Tiny plant in the ocean Phytoplankton provide 50% to 85% of the Oxygen on Earth.
Fact NO. 9
Fact No. 10
95 percent of species found inside ocean are invertebrates, animals that don’t have a backbone, such as jellyfish and shrimp.
The UN Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable development (2021-2030) recognizes the deep sea as a frontier and has endorsed Challenger 150, a deep-sea science programme to thoroughly expand our knowledge on deep-sea species via a coordinated global field survey.