- Plastic waste kills about one million sea birds, one hundred thousand marine mammals and countless fish each year.
- Even after being the cause of the death of many marine animals, plastic remains in the ecosystems to kill more animals over and over again.
- An estimated 21 million of barrels of oil reaches the oceans of the world every year by runoff, wastewater from factories and by washing tanks for transport of that fuel.
- About 40% of the remaining reefs in the world are at significant risk of being lost over the next 20 years.
- The average level of the seas has increased about 10cm to 25cm over the past 100 years. If all the ice in the world melts, the oceans would increase their level by about 66 meters!
- Beyond 70% of the sustainable limit of the marine edible resource has already been obtained from the oceans.
- Attractively commercial fish stocks such as tuna, cod, swordfish and marlin have declined by about 90% during the last century.
- Destructive fishing practices are killing hundreds of thousands of marine species each year and also causing the destruction of important deep ocean habitats.
- About 100 million sharks are hunted each year for their meat and fins that are used for shark fin soup. Hunters regularly catch sharks to remove their fins and while still alive they throw them back into the ocean where they unfortunately die from drowning or bleed to death.
- Incidental capture mortality only of small whales, dolphins, and porpoises is estimated to be slightly larger than 300.000 annual specimens.
Source: http://www.eurocbc.org: 50 Key facts about oceans.
