Capturing the complex : vimarsana.com

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(Santa Barbara, Calif.) Despite the fact that our planet is mostly ocean and human maritime activity is more intense than it has ever been, we know remarkably little about the state of the ocean s biodiversity the variety and balance of species that support healthy and productive ecosystems. And it s no surprise marine biodiversity is complex, human impacts are uneven, and species respond differently to different stressors.
It is really hard to know how a species is doing by just looking out from your local coast, or dipping underwater on SCUBA, said Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara and Director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. You only see a small patch of where a species lives and what it is experiencing, and only the few species you happen to see on that day. Though valuable, these snapshots are only part of a much larger picture of cumulative human impacts on at-risk marine species. Even less obvious are changes in impact over time and assessments of vulnerability to these impacts, which differs across species.