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SDG 14 – Exploiting and Managing the Alien and Unseen World below Water
Summary
This review traces humanity's historical exploitation of and impact on marine ecosystems from the Paleolithic to the present, arguing that because most marine life is invisible to us, societies have consistently responded to environmental damage only after harm became undeniable, making proactive ocean management especially difficult.
Abstract The marine realm has played a pivotal role in human development but remains a largely unknown world full of surprises to science and societies. This chapter reviews human impacts by moving from the surface to the deep sea and from the Paleolithic to the Modern. As much of life below water is not visible to us, humans have responded to problems only when they surfaced. It is argued that as top predators, humans rarely have had the perfect knowledge to conserve an ecosystem, much less so an ecosystem below water. Legacies of past exploitation and contamination pose challenges to future ocean management.
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