Page 45 - Research & Innovation Report 2020

SCIENCE

We have to shock

people and governments

into facing reality

“It’s imperative to alert the world to the impending disaster in the Western Indian Ocean,”
says Professor Mike Roberts, head of the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) in
Ocean Science and Marine Food Security.

“During the past five years of the SARChI Chair in Ocean Science in the region, as well as species diversity, is rapidly declining as a
and Marine Food Security we’ve done enough research to expose result of overfishing, ocean warming and pollution.
and determine the seriousness of the impending food security,
ecosystem and livelihoods disaster in the Western Indian Ocean The Chair’s research in the oceans off the Kenyan and Tanzanian
(WIO), which extends from South Africa all the way up the east coast reveals that within the next 80 years the commercial fisheries,
coast of Africa. The WIO is also warming faster than any other part artisanal fisheries and the biodiversity of marine species will be
of the global ocean,” says Prof Roberts, whose Chair has been reduced by about 70%. This scenario applies throughout the
renewed for another five year cycle from the beginning of 2021. tropical WIO which extends from the Mozambique-Tanzanian
border to the Red Sea.
“We are facing the continuous superheating of the WIO – about
four degrees Celsius by 2035. Sixty million people in the WIO “At the same time, populations in the WIO are rapidly rising,”
directly depend on the ocean for food and livelihoods, and fish explains Prof Roberts. “In 80 years’ time the current rate of
abundance projections clearly demonstrate that the amount of fish population growth in Mozambique, for example, will increase

Mozambican woman gleaning. Ocean warming directly impacts the livelihoods and food security of communities in the WIO
region, who depend on the shallow coral reefs for their food source. Photo: Credit Garth Cripps

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