Marine biodiversity resources have high vulnerability due to the specific nature of habitat and geographical regional complexities. Besides, coastal areas in general are also more vulnerable to the impacts of human activities. Most of our fishermen only exploit the existing resources in the coastal areas due to the limited facilities and infrastructure.
In fact, almost all marine ecosystems which are in front of the big cities or close to the centers of development have experienced severe degradation due to pollution from activities on land. "Many ecosystems in general have changed in terms of function, it can even be regarded that the ecosystems are not functioning anymore," explained Prof. Dr. Suharsono, at the Faculty of Biology, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) on Monday (27/9).
Head of Research Center for Oceanography of LIPI (The Indonesian Institute of Sciences) said this at the celebration of the 55th Anniversary of the Faculty of Biology. Delivering a scientific speech entitled Biological Perspectives in the Management of Sustainable Marine Biodiversity Resources, Suharsono revealed that in order to manage sustainable biodiversity resources, it is necessary to understand the concepts of ecosystem resilience and ecosystem connectivity with each other as well as an understanding of the key species in the ecosystem.
According to Suharsono, ecosystem resilience is the ability of an ecosystem to be able to recover if being exposed to a negative impact. This negative impact could come from human activities or derive from nature. "Recently, global climate change impacts in some places have shown effects. The frequency of El Nino to occur is becoming more frequent. We have seen the mass death of coral reefs, decrease or loss of fish resources at some place that were abundant previously," he said.
He said that the ecosystem resilience varies from one place to another, and it all depends on the condition of the ecosystem that existed before. A good ecosystem will have the ability to recover more quickly than the worse ecosystem. If the worse ecosystem is disrupted, the ecosystem will change totally and will never return to its original structure.