Ecosystems

Abstract

Ecosystems are composed of living animals, plants and non living structures that exist together and ‘interact’ with each other. Ecosystems can be very small (the area around a boulder), they can be medium sized (the area around a coral reef) or they can be very large (the Irish Sea or even the eastern Atlantic). One of the first tasks marine scientists must decide on is to define the boundaries of the ecosystem they want to look at (e.g. is it Dublin Bay? the Irish Sea? the north east Atlantic?). Once the ecosystem we are interested in is defined then we can think about how this part of the ocean should be managed. This must be agreed by consensus with all the stakeholders (users of the ecosystem).The idea here is that we are managing an ecosystem with many users not just a fish stock exploited by fishermen.