A new report by the World Wildlife Fund has shown that marine life populations around the world have halved in two human generations.

Let’s put that into context, half of the world’s marine life has been wiped out between 1970 and 2012. Using the Living Planet Index, the WWF found that mammals, birds, reptiles and fish have been pushed out of their habitat, had their habitat destroyed, or were hunted or fished to the point of extinction. Tuna and mackerel populations have seen a nearly 75% decline and Bluefin tuna in the Pacific are on the brink of extinction. This is largely due to the global problem of overfishing, according to the authors

All marine bodies of water are at risk, including the Mediterranean, the report stated, but it is the Pacific that is most at risk. Overfishing due to lax regulations in Asia is one of the biggest problems, but this is also having a knock on effect on human populations that live in poverty and mainly rely on traditional fishing methods to feed themselves.

In addition, shark-finning, where sharks are harvested only for their fins and dumped back into the sea to drown could see an estimated 25% of shark species becoming extinct in the next 10 years.

In addition, over 25% of ocean marine life lives on coral reefs and roughly 850 million people directly benefit from them -- the loss of coral reefs could be catastrophic, according to the report.

A second problem is pollution. There is 250,000 metric tons of plastic in the oceans. Plastic harms smaller fish that bigger fish rely on for survival and may also harm larger fish and mammals who become tangled or trapped, resulting in suffocation.

The world’s oceans and seas are becoming more acidic, which is giving rise to more toxic algae blooms. When we consider that we have overfished so many specieis, we come to realise that we have also altered the food chain. We have hunted apex predators into extinction.

Many may ask why all this should bother us. The reasons are many. First of all, we are an island, surrounded by water. We export fish, and we breed them for consumption. However, if we continue to fish at the rate we are doing, especially with foragers and spear fishermen hovering up every last mollusc, crustacean, cephalopod and wild fish close to our shores, there will be nothing left. On an economic level, we also have a booming niche tourism sector in diving. If we continue to deplete our local environment of marine life, Malta will become just a wreck dive destination.

We are rapidly altering our environment and have over harvested multiple sources of food. There are two other species of animals on our planets that do this, ants and termites. When they have stripped the surrounding area of resources, they migrate and move on. The difference is, that we will not have anywhere to move on to. We are literally ruining our future.