Sea level rise is one of the most tangible and consequential expressions of climate change. For a country like Australia, with some of the world’s most densely populated coastal zones and vast stretches of low-lying coastline, understanding its causes, projections, and implications is not merely academic — it is a matter of urgent practical importance. What Drives Sea Level Rise?…
Author: Lance Evans
The Ocean’s Role in Regulating Earth’s Climate
The ocean is not merely a passive victim of climate change — it is the planet’s primary climate regulator. Covering more than 70 percent of Earth’s surface and with an average depth of nearly 4 kilometres, the ocean stores and transports enormous quantities of heat, absorbs carbon dioxide, and drives atmospheric circulation patterns that determine weather and climate across the…
Marine Protected Areas: How Ocean Sanctuaries Work and Why They Matter
The ocean is a global commons — vast, largely invisible, and historically managed as an open-access resource available to whoever has the means to exploit it. This model has led to the dramatic depletion of fish stocks, widespread habitat destruction, and the loss of biodiversity across much of the ocean. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) represent a fundamentally different approach: designating…
Overfishing: The Scale of the Problem and the Path to Recovery
For most of human history, the ocean’s abundance seemed limitless. Fish were there to be caught, and the sea would always provide more. The industrialisation of fishing in the 20th century shattered that assumption. With factory trawlers, sonar, GPS, and fine-mesh nets capable of sweeping millions of tonnes of fish from the sea each year, humanity has pushed many of…
Restoring Oyster Reefs: Nature-Based Solutions for Coastal Resilience
Once one of the defining features of temperate estuarine ecosystems around the world, native oyster reefs have been reduced to a fraction of their historical extent. In Australia, the flat oyster (Ostrea angasi) once built extensive reef structures across southern estuaries, supporting extraordinary biodiversity and filtering enormous volumes of water. Their loss represents one of the least-told stories of marine…