Boris Worm

Boris Worm is a marine biologist and an Assistant Professor in Marine Conservation
Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax. His research focuses on the causes and
consequences of changes in marine life, and its conservation on a global scale.

The open ocean is by far the largest place on Earth, covering more than 70 per cent
of the planet by area and an even larger percentage by volume. Humans now
dominate many aspects of ocean life through the combined effects of overfishing,
habitat destruction, pollution and climate change. Many species, particularly large
predators such as some tuna and billfishes, sharks and turtles are being driven to
dangerously low levels.

Apart from looming species extinction, there is some wider ecosystem concerns.
Large predators can play an important role in maintaining aquatic diversity and
ecosystem health, and the elimination of some large predators and herbivores from
inshore areas has triggered cascading ecosystem effects. These ecological chain
reactions contributed the collapse of some coastal ecosystems. If similar changes
occur in the open ocean they are bound to be massive in scale, and probably difficult to reverse.

This is why Boris Worm tries to assess changes in marine biodiversity, to understand
the consequences of these changes and how to halt or reverse deleterious trends.