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Importance of Oceans

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The ocean is one of Earth's most valuable natural resources. It provides food in the form of fish and shellfish—about 200 billion pounds are caught each year. It's used for transportation—both travel and shipping. It provides a treasured source of recreation for humans. It is mined for minerals (salt, sand, gravel, and some manganese, copper, nickel, iron, and cobalt can be found in the deep sea) and drilled for crude oil.
The ocean plays a critical role in removing carbon from the atmosphere and providing oxygen. It regulates Earth's climate. The ocean is an increasingly important source of biomedical organisms with enormous potential for fighting disease. These are just a few examples of the importance of the ocean to life on land. …show more content…

In Massachusetts alone, the cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder industries collapsed, causing an economic disaster for the area.
Due to the importance of fishing to the worldwide economy and the need for humans to understand human impacts on the environment, the academic division of fisheries science was developed. Fisheries science includes all aspects of marine biology, in addition to economics and management skills and information. Marine conservation issues like overfishing, sustainable fisheries and management of fisheries are also examined through fisheries science.
In order for there to be plenty of fish in the years ahead, fisheries will have to develop sustainable fisheries and some will have to close. Due to the constant increase in the human population, the oceans have been overfished with a resulting decline of fish crucial to the economy and communities of the world. The control of the world's fisheries is a controversial subject, as they cannot produce enough to satisfy the demand, especially when there aren't enough fish left to breed in healthy ecosystems. Scientists are often in the role of fisheries managers and must regulate the amount of fishing in the oceans, a position not popular with those who have to make a living fishing ever decreasing populations.
The two main questions facing fisheries management are:
1. What is the carrying capacity of the ocean? How many fish are there and how many of which type of fish

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