An international team of marine scientists has identified and assessed major threats to marine megafauna.Lead authors PhD student Michelle VanCompernolle and Associate Professor Ana Sequeira, from University of Western Australia’s Oceans Institute
An international team of marine scientists has identified and assessed major threats to marine megafauna.
Lead authors PhD student Michelle VanCompernolle and Associate Professor Ana Sequeira, from University of Western Australia’s Oceans Institute and School of Biological Sciences, worked with more than 300 contributors from 51 countries on the paper published in Conservation Biology.
The study assessed the vulnerability of 256 marine megafauna species including whales, sharks, bony fish, turtles, seabirds, polar bears, seals and sirenians (dugongs and manatees), to 23 threats that originate from human activities.
“We put the main threats into four categories, which included climate change, coastal impacts, fishing and maritime disturbances,” VanCompernolle said.
“The major threats identified within these categories were temperature extremes, drifting longlines and fixed fishing gear.”
The study examined the severity (intensity of impact) and scope (extent of exposure) while accounting for the timing of the expected impact (present or in the future) of the threats.
The resulting vulnerability scoring framework based on timing, scope and severity of threats builds on the existing International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List classification system, which classifies species into nine categories based on their risk of global extinction.
“We found some threats such as fishing gear
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