List of Interesting Facts about Sea.
1.Oceans cover 70 percent of the Earth's surface.
2. More than 90 percent of the planet's living biomass is found in the oceans.
3. Eighty percent of all pollution in seas and oceans comes from land-based activities.
4. Forty percent of the world's population lives within 60 km of a coast.
5. Three-quarters of the world's mega cities are by the sea.
6. By 2010, 80 percent of people will live within 100 km of the coast.
7. Death and disease caused by polluted coastal waters cost the global economy US$12.8 billion a year.
The annual economic impact of hepatitis from tainted seafood alone is US$7.2 billion.
8. Plastic waste kills up to one million sea birds, 100,000 sea mammals and countless fish each year.
9. Sea creatures killed by plastic decompose, the plastic does not. Plastic remains in the ecosystem to kill again and again.
10. Harmful algal blooms, caused by an excess of nutrients -- mainly nitrogen from agricultural fertilizers -- have created nearly 150 coastal deoxygenated "dead zones" worldwide, ranging from 1 to 70,000 sq km.
11. An estimated 21 million barrels of oil run into the oceans each year from street runoff, effluent from factories, and from ships flushing their tanks.
12. Over the past decade, an average of 600,000 barrels of oil a year have been accidentally spilled from ships, the equivalent of 12 disasters the size of the sinking of the oil tanker Prestige in 2002.
13. Oil tankers transport 60 percent (approximately 2,000 million tons) of oil consumed in the world.
14. More than 90 percent of goods traded between countries are transported by sea.
15. Each year 10 billion tons of ballast water is transferred around the globe and released into foreign waters.
16. Ballast water often contains species -- such as the zebra mussel and comb jellyfish -- that can colonize their new environment to the detriment of native species and local economies.
17. Pollution, exotic species and alteration of coastal habitats are a growing threat to important marine ecosystems, such as mangroves, seagrass beds and coral reefs.
18. Tropical coral reefs border the shores of 109 countries, the majority of which are among the world's least developed. Significant reef degradation has occurred in 93 countries.
19. Although coral reefs comprise less than 0.5 percent of the ocean floor, it is estimated that more than 90 percent of marine species are directly or indirectly dependent on them.
