Shipping sustains global trade but poses escalating threats to marine biodiversity, with wildlife-vessel collisions, noise, and pollution endangering species such as cetaceans (whales and dolphins), s...

This list focuses on (what I’m calling) scientific dialogues—in which researchers respond to each other’s work using published papers as messengers. Often, a paper sparks a reply, which may, …

Danish Scientist, Prof. Sven Erik Jørgensen, founded the international journal Ecological Modelling and Systems Ecology (ECOMOD) in 1975 with the support of Elsevier Publishers. The journal, which was...

Humans dominate the Earth—we inhabit it, we disrupt it, and we traverse it. Ecologists have dedicated themselves to studying the impact of roads on terrestrial systems since the end of the 20th cen…

The growth of global maritime traffic poses increasing threats to marine biodiversity, including vessel collisions, behavioural disturbances, and poll…

Current Conservation The Silent Impact: How Roads Are Eroding Europe’s Food Webs

Our study reveals that roads and traffic not only cause direct wildlife mortality but also destabilise entire ecological networks by altering predator-prey interactions. By mapping high-risk areas for...

Roads stand as major threats to biodiversity because they affect the functioning of ecosystems and the provision of ecosystem services. Understanding how the effects of roads affect the dynamics of e...

Those who know my work, now that I have had some scientific contributions to a branch of Conservation Biology related to the impacts of roads on wildlife, **Road Ecology**. Now, working in a research centre mostly devoted to marine science, I’ve broadened my research scope to include the impacts of _marine_ roads on _marine_ biodiversity. This approach is exciting and challenging in many ways. For starters, in the ocean, there are no roads _per se_. **Terrestrial roads, actual roads, are physical things. Marine roads are fuzzy, not actually there**. On roads, we sometimes lack information on traffic intensity, on shipping lanes that’s all we have (I’ll stop calling it “marine roads” to make it simple, you get the analogy!). **On the sea, the transportation routes are defined by the density of ships in any given area (check outthis website). That’s the very definition of the transportation route.** Source: https://globalmaritimetraffic.org/ **Other essential difference: on roads, we can see many of the impacts, such as the animals flattened by cars in the runway. On shipping lanes evaluating direct mortality is way more complex, the Ocean is a dynamic ever-moving system.** The paper we just made available as a preprint, “**Mapping global shipless areas and conflict zones between shipping and marine biodiversity** “, presents a first approach to evaluating the effects of such a pervasive threat on marine biodiversity. Shipping traffic is increasing, therefore these threats are likely to become even more serious in the future. Also, marine traffic will be affected by climate change (with new, polar, routes becoming available), political and military instability and other disturbances (e.g. piracy). Here, we identified “**shipless areas** ” (**areas with minimal shipping activity**) by examining the overlap between shipping density and key marine taxa (cetaceans, sea turtles, pinnipeds, and seabirds). We also evaluated the extent to which these shipless areas and conflict zones are encompassed by Marine Protected Areas, Exclusive Economic Zones, and High Seas. **Our findings reveal that shipless areas are mostly restricted to polar and remote oceanic regions**. We have designated “**Priority Preservation Areas** ” (regions where high biodiversity intersects with low vessel activity, in yellow in the image below) and “**Priority Mitigation Areas** ” (regions where high biodiversity intersects with intense vessel activity, in – sort of – red). We suggest that low-conflict zones should be maintained and that targeted mitigation strategies should be implemented in high-conflict zones. This study highlights the**urgent need to take action to protect marine biodiversity from the threats of shipping**. We suggest a variety of mitigation strategies, such as traffic rerouting, speed reductions, and enhanced protection measures. By providing a comprehensive spatial and taxonomic framework, this study supports global efforts to balance maritime trade with marine biodiversity conservation. I hope you find this interesting! ### Share this: * Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) * Like Loading... ### _Related_

YouTube video by Frederico Mestre

The growth of global maritime traffic poses increasing threats to marine biodiversity including vessel collisions, disturbance, and pollution. Protecting areas

A bióloga e pesquisadora Talita Menger aborda uma nova metodologia para escolher qual rodovia deve receber ações para reduzir fragmentação de hábitat.

We have developed a new version of the gDefrag package. The previous version has been retired from CRAN due to dependencies on outdated packages. This updated version is still under development and…