Will Mckenzie's List: IIP2 Shortlist

• represents a giant-sized link in the global food chain
• These small, shrimp-like crustaceans are essentially the fuel that runs the engine of the Earth’s marine ecosystems.
• They in turn are the main staple in the diets of literally hundreds of different animals, from fish, to birds, to baleen whales.
• Simply put, without krill, most of the life forms in the Antarctic would disappear.
• recent studies that show Antarctic krill stocks may have dropped by 80 percent since the 1970s.
• Scientists estimate that the total weight of all the Antarctic krill is more than the total weight of all humans on Earth.

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• In Antarctica, a tiny 0.2% is

  strictly protected
• Nearly 10,000 other species shelter within this beautiful, icy environment, many of which can be found nowhere else on the planet.

• But, imagine what it would be like if these animals were struggling to swim and feed in waters polluted by too much shipping traffic.

   

  Or, if the shrimp-like krill - their main food source - was overfished and there was not enough left to feed the vast colonies of other animals.

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• fishing has divided  the marine biomass by ten in a century. Not bad.....