Marine biodiversity loss in Finnish coastal waters: Evidence and implications for management

Marine biodiversity loss poses significant ecological and socio-economic challenges. This paper examines how coastal biodiversity loss is expressed and outlines implications for management. Synthesizing scientific literature on biodiversity change in the well-studied Finnish coastal waters (Baltic Sea) as a case study, we show that biodiversity loss occurs throughout the area in virtually all biotopes and organism groups examined. Biodiversity loss was expressed in 43 different ways. The three most common forms of biodiversity loss—local disappearance of species and decrease in abundance and biomass—covered nearly half of the observations. For these, the most common underlying causes were eutrophication, climate change, and physical disturbance of the seabed. Overall, eutrophication and climate change were the most frequent ones among the 13 loss drivers identified. We emphasize that critical knowledge gaps must be bridged, and monitoring improved, but, importantly, resolute decisions for action are required for the recovery of coastal marine ecosystems.