WELCOME to OCEAN BLUE :: Information concerning the protection of Ireland's marine environment, sustainable use of its natural resources and conservation of its biodiversity.

Introduction

FROM the first shellfish gathering shore-dwellers millennia ago to the coastal communities of today: throughout history the people of Ireland have relied on the seas and coasts to provide for their spiritual, social and economic well-being.

The oceans and seas have long been viewed as inexhaustible reservoirs of living and non-living natural resources and as limitless sinks for the disposal of our industrial, agricultural and domestic wastes. We have only recently begun to acknowledge that there are limits to the extraction of fish and minerals and that marine ecosystems are vital and not immune to the effects of human activities taking place on land or at sea, and cannot withstand the pollution we put in.

It is now apparent that the oceans and seas are undergoing profound human-induced alteration and that the scale, intensity and speed of such change has increased tremendously in the past century as a consequence of growing human populations, higher levels of consumption and increasingly potent technologies.

The symptoms of the resulting ecological stress include overexploited fish stocks, hazardous substances in the food chain, immune system disorders in marine mammals, genetic pollution of wild salmon populations, invasive exotic species disrupting coastal ecosystems, ancient deep-sea corals and seabed habitats damaged by fishing gear, nutrient pollution and harmful algal blooms, radioactive hotspots, oil spills, undersea noise pollution, littered beaches, eroded dunes, diminished coastal wetlands, disturbed wildlife breeding sites, and the potentially enormous effects of global climate change on marine ecosystems, habitats, species and human settlements along the coast.

Together these threats and pressures make a potent, though little understood, synergistic complex that according to growing scientific consensus poses an unprecedented threat to the stability of ecosystems and the existence of species on a worldwide scale. By allowing these threats to the oceans and by adding to the related pressures, we jeopardise our own health and well-being.