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The ocean covers more than 70% of our plane. It is so immense(巨大的) that explorers once thought there was no way to cross it. When our ships were advanced enough to do so, naturalists then thought it impossible for humans to ever exhaust fisheries or drive marine species to extinction. They were wrong.

Commercial fishing now covers an area of four times that of agriculture, and much of that expanse has been rendered completely unsustainable. We have reduced 90% of formerly important coastal species. Fish have been harvested so heavily that they are nearly wiped out in many places.

Some may hope that there are immense areas still untouched, given that humans do not live on the ocean, and we need specialized ships to go far beyond the coast. But that is incorrect. Just13% of the ocean remains as wilderness, and in coastal regions where human activities are most intense, there is almost no wilderness left at all. Of the roughly 21 million square miles of marine wilderness remaining almost all is found in the Arctic and Antarctic or around remote Pacific island nations with no populations.

What concerns us now is that most wilderness remains unprotected. This means it could be lost at any time as advances in technology allow us to fish deeper and ship further than ever before. Thanks to a warming climate, even places that were once safeguarded because of year-round ice cover are now open to fishing and shipping.

This lack of protection seems in large part from international environmental policies failing to recognize the unique values of wilderness, instead, focusing on saving at-risk ecosystems and avoiding extinctions. This is similar to a government using its entire health budget on emergency cardiac(心脏的) surgery without preventive politics, encouraging exercise to decrease the risk of heart attacks occurring in the first place.

If Earth's marine biodiversity is to be preserved forever, it is time for conservation to focus not only on the ER but also on preventive health measures.