“Underwater, you can’t really see what’s going on. And so by assessing species status it gives us a real indication of what’s really going on out there, and that’s not good news.”
Hilton-Taylor said the share of marine species that went extinct was likely much higher than the current data show because there are a wide range of fish species among those analyzed so far, which are not currently threatened.
The IUCN said the population of the dugong, a plump, gray herbivorous mammal commonly known as a sea cow, has declined to fewer than 250 adults in East Africa and 900 in the French territory of New Caledonia.
In the case of Mozambique, they face the loss of their main food source, seagrass, due to pollution from oil and gas exploration and production and nickel mining in the Pacific.
The latest list reviewed abalone species, a type of mollusk first sold as a luxury seafood item, and found that about 44% of them face extinction. The IUCN states that increasingly severe and frequent marine heat waves have caused mass mortality, spreading disease and killing off their food sources.