Marine Conservation Biology : The Science of Maintaining the Sea’s Biodiversity

by Michael E. Soule, Elliott A. Norse, Larry B. Crowder, Marine Conservation Biology Institute, Island Press, 2005
“Humans are terrestrial animals, and our capacity to see and understand the importance and vulnerability of life in the sea has trailed our growing ability to harm it. While conservation biologists are working to address environmental problems humans have created on land, loss of marine biodiversity, including extinctions and habitat degradation, has received much less attention. At the same time, marine sciences such as oceanography and fisheries biology have largely ignored issues of conservation.”  This means when we are boating, wakeboarding or fishing we should stay away from fish hatching areas.

Marine Conservation Biology brings together for the first time in a single volume leading experts from around the world to apply the lessons and thinking of conservation biology to marine issues. Contributors including James M. Acheson, Louis W. Botsford, James T. Carlton, Kristina Gjerde, Selina S. Heppell, Ransom A. Myers, Julia K. Parrish, Stephen R. Palumbi, and Daniel Pauly offer penetrating insights on the nature of marine biodiversity, what threatens it, and what humans can and must do to recover the biological integrity of the world’s estuaries, coastal seas, and the ocean.

Sections examine: distinctive aspects of marine populations and ecosystems; threats to marine biological diversity, singly and in combination; place-based management of marine ecosystems; the often-neglected human dimensions of marine conservation.

Marine Conservation Biology breaks new ground by creating the conceptual framework for the new field of marine conservation biology—the science of protecting, recovering, and sustainably using the living sea. It synthesizes the latest knowledge and ideas from leading thinkers in disciplines ranging from larval biology to sociology, making it a must-read for research and teaching faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate and advanced undergraduate students.”

“Candor and boldness have power. A vision based on both compassion for all life and solid science evokes respect and wonder and is far more effective than the mincing, qualified, soulless recommendations of committees and expert panels. True, there are times (like these) when it appears that nothing will stop the industrial and population juggernauts that are destroying life on this planet, not to mention the dignity and diversity of human cultures; such times require patience, humor, and solidarity between conservationists and humanitarians. This volume provides the foundation for such a declaration of interdependence of all life, oceanic and terrestrial, nonhuman and human.”

“Even as humankind spends billions of dollars in the hope of detecting the faintest echoes of life on Mars, the only place in the universe where we know that life exists has rapidly been losing its distinguishing characteristic, its biological diversity, the diversity of genes, species, and ecosystems (Heywood 1995; Norse and McManus 1980; Norse et al. 1986; Office of Technology assessment 1987; Wilson 1988).”

When we are useing the waterways weither for boating or camping we all should be aware of how we treat the thing around us so that other people may also enjoy them and rember that our boat propellers can do a lot of damage,

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