The oceanographer Sandro Carniel, member of the Scientific Committee of One Ocean Foundation, answers four basic questions:

Why is the ocean so important?

Why is the ocean’s health at risk?

How serious is the plastics pollution problem?

How can we deal with it?

The ocean actually encompasses our present but also our future. The ocean alone produces almost 50% of the oxygen we breathe, removes more than 30% of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, provides protein to more than 2 billion people, stabilizes the climate by transporting heat from the equator to the poles.