Chapter 12: Marine Resources and Pollution

Human Impacts: Marine Resources and Pollution

Humans have been exploiting ocean resources for as long as our ancestors have been living on its shores back into antiquity. The oceans provide a major means of subsistence for about a quarter of the world’s population. The exponential growth of the human population in the last 3 centuries have significantly impacted the physical environment, both land and water. This chapter starts with an examination of natural resources the oceans provide and also examines the degradation of the quality of the marine environment due to the addition of anthropogenic (from humans) materials. The production and consumption of natural resources by the growing global human population is harming sea life throughout the world’s oceans. Laws and regulations are helping to manage some of the sources of ocean pollution. But, perhaps most detrimental, and the hardest to control, are the impacts of the behavior of people in their daily lives. This chapter examines the types and causes of ocean pollution, and the effects on sea life, and provides suggestions for some ways to mitigate problems.

Ocean Resources

A resource simply defined means something useful. Humans have been utilizing marine resources extending back into antiquity, but within the last couple centuries, exploitation of world marine resources have lead to increasing vulnerability to both resources of the natural environment and the communities who rely on them. Marine resources include exploitable physical resources (primarily petroleum, construction materials, and minerals) and biological resources (fish, shellfish, plants, and other wildlife utilized for fishing and aquaculture). A third category is aesthetic resources which include preservation of coastal scenery, wetlands and wildlife preserves, park lands and recreation, and applies to environmental quality of coastal communities. Unfortunately, economic and social factors with our growing human population lead to a myriad of conflicts relating to marine resources.