Introduction The abundance of anthropogenic litter (i.e., garbage; AL) in marine ecosystems has received attention from researchers, the public, and the media. AL has many detrimental ecological effects such as ingestion and entanglement by animals and assistance in invasive species dispersal (Moore 2008). Accumulation of AL in the environment also presents an economic burden from costs related...

Marine benthic communities face multiple anthropogenic pressures that compromise the future of some of the most biodiverse and functionally important ecosystems in the world. Yet one of the pressures these ecosystems face, night-time lighting, remains unstudied. Light is an important cue in guiding the settlement of invertebrate larvae, and altering natural regimes of nocturnal illumination cou...

Mixing ratios of seven C1–C5 alkyl nitrates (RONO2) were measured during a 16-month study (August 2001–December 2002) at Tai O, a coastal site 30 km west of central Hong Kong in the Pearl River Delta, the fastest-growing industrial region in the world. The C3–C4 (rather than C1–C2) RONO2 were most abundant throughout the study, showing the importance of photochemical (rather than marine) RONO2 ...

Pollution of marine waters is one of the important issues that has a irreparable effects. Also, in the organic oil pollutants, due to inappropriate effects on the environment and humans health and ability to create cancer, hydro carbons of polycyclic (PAHS) and heavy metals (Ni,Hg,V) have a particular importance. According to the importance of study of the environ mental contaminants in the fou...

Ships transport about 80 percent of world trade and transfer approximately three to five billion tons of ballast water internationally every year. Due to the likely presence of pollutants, the ballast water discharged by ships can have negative effects on aquatic ecosystems. This study was conducted on 10 ships that entered the Bushehr port to determine the effectiveness of the ballast water ex...

Fishing and pollution are chronic stressors that can prolong recovery of coral reefs and contribute to ecosystem decline. While this premise is generally accepted, management interventions are complicated because the contributions from individual stressors are difficult to distinguish. The present study examined the extent to which fishing pressure and pollution predicted progress towards the M...

The coastal marine environment of Japan is characterized by its high biological productivity, which contributes to generally high fishery yields. However, both the productivity of coastal ecosystems and coastal fisheries are being threatened by substantial changes in the coastal marine environment. This situation is making it increasingly imperative to take an ecosystems approach to management ...

Long-term changes in nutrient supply and primary production reportedly foreshadow substantial declines in global marine fishery production. These declines combined with current overfishing, habitat degradation, and pollution paint a grim picture for the future of marine fisheries and ecosystems. However, current models forecasting such declines do not account for the effects of ocean fronts as ...

INTRODUCTION The study of marine ecosystems has become a hot research topic in recent times. In fact, the number of manuscripts including the words “marine ecosystems” published since 1970 has immensely increased reaching between 1100 and 1500 articles per year in the past five years (Figure 1). Based on the keywords used in these manuscripts, the most frequent topics can be grouped into: (i) m...

Healthy oceans are essential to human survival and prosperity, yet oceans are severely impacted worldwide by anthropogenic threats including overfishing, climate change, industrialization, pollution, and habitat destruction. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been implemented around the world and are effective conservation tools that can mitigate some of these threats and build resilience when ...