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Why are shelf seas so important for the Earth system?
Climate change will alter the marine environment.
Coastal areas are where it will most dramatically affect people's lives: 37 percent of the world population live within 100km of the sea.
Shelf seas are regions of exceptionally high biological production. Around 14-30 percent of the marine plant growth - the base of the marine food chain - occurs in shelf seas.
Furthermore, everything that travels between the land and the deep ocean goes via the continental shelves, be it nutrients, pollutants, carbon or fresh water. On the way, they get mixed physically and transformed chemically.
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