If you’re ever feeling insignificant, like nothing you do has any effect, think again. A map released this week shows just how much impact humans have on the ocean. (press release)

The work comes out of the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and was published in Science.

Human activities across the globe were tallied to get the final picture. The depressing thing is the amount of yellow on the map – areas of medium to high ‘impact’ (where ‘impact’ means things like over-fishing or pollution). The worst-affected areas include the North Sea and Japanese waters, which make up the 40% of the oceans that are heavily effected. Unsurprisingly, coral reefs sit in some of the worst damaged areas, while Arctic zones remain relatively untouched (so far).

Science has covered the story itself, with links to the map in Google Earth style.

Or you can listen to the story via NPR, where they also have an animated version of the map set to music.

National Geographic sums it up well by shouting: “No pristine oceans left”.

While the world rots, the Scots fear for only themselves:

And it’s nice to see that even lifestyle magazines like Marie Claire are picking up such stories – though admittedly you have to read them in the middle of adverts for hair products.