We all know that the 71% of the world covered by ocean is a beautiful place home to species such as whales, dolphins, sharks, octopuses, seals that inspire awe and spark the imagination. On this World Oceans Day, celebrated worldwide every June 8th since 2002, we want to show how our oceans are also natural resources critical to the worldwide economy, and why Aquaterra DHA Canola represents a whole new way of protecting those oceans.
The gross domestic product (GDP) of the oceans is $2.5 trillion per year.
It’s impossible to put a number on the value of our oceans. However, there have still been many attempts at doing just that: calculating their financial value. As a collection of saleable assets, the oceans are estimated to be worth $24 trillion.
In terms of gross domestic product, the oceans have an annual GDP of $2.5 trillion, making them collectively the world’s 8th largest economy, just shy of the United Kingdom’s and France’s $2.7 trillion/year, and beating out Italy ($1.9 trillion), Brazil ($1.8 trillion), Canada ($1.7 trillion), and Russia ($1.6 trillion).
More than 30 million people owe their full-time employment to the oceans.
Fishing. Tourism. Wind power generation. Shipping and ports. Oil and gas extraction. These and other industries have vast sectors reliant on the ocean in one respect or another, which generate not only revenue, but jobs as well. In 2010, it was estimated that 31 million people worldwide had full-time employment due to ocean economies.
However, the livelihoods of many more people are at least partially reliant on the oceans. The jobs of more than 200 million people directly or indirectly rely on marine fisheries alone.
Nearly half the world’s human population rely on the oceans for protein.
According to the United Nations, more than 3 billion people rely on the oceans as their primary source of protein. The impact that those 3 billion people—and the state of their health—have on their communities is immeasurable.
Being underfed has an obvious negative impact on individuals, and society at large. When people suffer from malnutrition, they can’t effectively grow, learn, work, provide for their families, or serve their communities.
These three facts should make it clear that it’s not an option to ensure the health and well-being of our oceans and their ecosystems. It’s a necessity. We rely upon our oceans. Our families rely upon them. Our economies and societies rely upon them.
That’s why we spent 20 years developing Aquaterra DHA Omega-3 Canola, the world’s first plant-based, land-based source of complete omega-3 nutrition. With every hectare of Aquaterra grown on existing canola croplands, enough omega-3 can be produced to keep 10,000 one-kilogram fish in the ocean, helping to perpetuate and protect stocks of small fish that are harvested to capacity. We’re literally onshoring the production of critical nutrients, so that the biological impacts on offshore ecosystems can be reduced.
On this World Oceans Day, take a moment to think about not only the natural wonder of our world’s oceans, but also the scale of the impact those oceans have on our daily lives.