List of Interesting Facts about Sea. <br /> <br />1.Oceans cover 70 percent of the Earth's surface. <br /> <br /> <br />2. More than 90 percent of the planet's living biomass is found in the oceans. <br /> <br /> <br />3. Eighty percent of all pollution in seas and oceans comes from land-based activities. <br /> <br /> <br />4. Forty percent of the world's population lives within 60 km of a coast. <br /> <br /> <br />5. Three-quarters of the world's mega cities are by the sea. <br /> <br /> <br />6. By 2010, 80 percent of people will live within 100 km of the coast. <br /> <br /> <br />7. Death and disease caused by polluted coastal waters cost the global economy US$12.8 billion a year. <br /> <br />The annual economic impact of hepatitis from tainted seafood alone is US$7.2 billion. <br /> <br /> <br />8. Plastic waste kills up to one million sea birds, 100,000 sea mammals and countless fish each year. <br /> <br /> <br />9. Sea creatures killed by plastic decompose, the plastic does not. Plastic remains in the ecosystem to kill again and again. <br /> <br /> <br />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. <br /> <br /> <br />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. <br /> <br /> <br />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. <br /> <br /> <br />13. Oil tankers transport 60 percent (approximately 2,000 million tons) of oil consumed in the world. <br /> <br /> <br />14. More than 90 percent of goods traded between countries are transported by sea. <br /> <br /> <br />15. Each year 10 billion tons of ballast water is transferred around the globe and released into foreign waters. <br /> <br /> <br />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. <br /> <br /> <br />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. <br /> <br /> <br />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. <br /> <br /> <br />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.
