“We had the warmest temperature in Villefranche-sur-Mer, 28.2 degrees and this leads to mass mortality,” says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributor Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso in this episode of Ocean Calls.
The scientist describes a marine heatwave that hit the picturesque French Riviera this summer.
“Approximately 20 per cent of the coastal zone between the surface and ten-metre depth is lost.”
“In 2015 we had 80 per cent mortality of the coral reefs in the southern Red Sea, and they haven’t recovered yet, seven years after,” says Prof Carlos Duarte, a marine ecologist at the King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia, our second guest on this episode.
In 2020, the two scientists co-authored a paper ‘Rebuilding Marine Life’ in the journal Nature, in which they listed five main actions to take in order to restore the abundance of marine life lost to human activity and climate change.
First, the actions needed to protect species. Second, spaces – the so-called Marine Protected Areas, then removing pressures on the ocean and addressing climate change “with a high level of ambition”.
“Then it’s also to harvest wisely and to remove pollution,” Duarte highlights.
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Ocean Calls, 8 December 2022. Podcast.
