Of particular concern are vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs)-special habitats on the seafloor that are highly sensitive to disturbance and slow to recover. This study highlights the importance of mitigating direct human impacts as species continue to suffer environmental changes beyond our immediate control.Īddressing growing threats of overexploitation to the world's oceans is especially challenging in the High Seas, where limited data and international jurisdiction make it difficult to determine where and when conservation measures are necessary. If these trends continue as they have over the last 3‐6 decades, they threaten to diminish regional seamount ecosystem diversity and cause local extinctions. By examining the changing conditions within the narrow realized bathymetric niches for a subset of vulnerable populations, we resolve chemical trends that are rapid in comparison to the lifespan of the taxa and detrimental to their survival. Based on our visual surveys of four Northeast Pacific seamounts, these deep‐sea features support ecologically important taxa typified by long lifespans, slow growth rates, and limited mobility, including habitat‐forming cold‐water corals and sponges, echinoderms, and fish. Additionally, carbonate saturation horizons above the OMZ have been shoaling at a rate of 1‐2 m/year since the 1980s. Over that time, the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ), ranging between approximately 4 m has expanded at a rate of 3.0☐.7 m/year (due to deepening at the bottom). Based on our new and rigorous analysis of the Line P oceanographic monitoring data, the upper 3000 m of the Northeast Pacific has lost 15% of its oxygen in the last 60 years. Our study coalesces one of the longest deep‐sea observational oceanographic timeseries, reaching back to the 1960s, with a modern visual survey that characterizes almost two vertical‐kilometers of benthic seamount ecosystems. In deep‐sea environments, where conditions have typically changed over geological time scales, the associated animals, adapted to these stable conditions, are expected to be highly vulnerable to any change or direct human impact. Anthropogenic climate change is causing our oceans to lose oxygen and become more acidic at an unprecedented rate, threatening marine ecosystems and their associated animals.
0 kommentar(er)
